Midwest Render

Odessa Church Portfolio Page

2012-01-23T15:22:00.000-08:00

This was a church design I worked on for a congregation in Odessa, MO. It was sort of an exercise in making a nice looking building on a budget. We designed it to be built in two phases, so the church could do the initial building, and then wait to add on until they had enough money.

They wanted to have a basketball court space, for youth activities, and fellowship dinners. So the plan was to have this be the sanctuary during the first phase.

Most of the structure was planned to be a pre-engineered metal building, rather than conventional structural steel and metal stud framing. This would work because most of the mass of the building consists of large, rectangular, gabled shapes. There would be some conventional framing at the tower and the sides of the sanctuary, but the difficulty of these would be considerably less than the larger volumes.

Broad design strokes were made with aluminum storefront glass. All of the colunmns, banding, and detail at the eaves would be done just with EIFS. This is just a stucco-like coating over shaped Styrofoam. It's what most malls and retailers use to make their buildings look fancy.

The one pretty cool part would be the entry tower - probably 25' up on the inside and mostly glass.

Fresh Ideas - Food Service Renovation at Maryville University

2012-01-21T17:22:00.000-08:00

Here's another portfolio spread - this one is from a proposal I worked on for a renovation of Maryville University's dining hall, for a company called Fresh Ideas out of Columbia, Missouri.

The existing dining area was very institutional, and working mostly within the building that was already there, we wanted to try and transform the perception of the space to fit with Fresh Idea's more modern image. This would be accomplished with changes in materials, forms, and some modification to the building structure.

The existing dining hall and serving line would be replaced with free-form curved counters and soffits. A new, open dining area would be added at the rear of the building, which would have a glass and aluminum wall facing out into the center of campus. A new entry and vestibule would be added, connecting the space with an outdoor patio. To help reinforce the connection to the campus quad, an operable glass roof was proposed over a small portion of the dining area.

portfolio page:

interior animation:

3DS Max Tutorial - Creating a model from a sketch

2012-01-18T17:20:00.000-08:00

There are a lot of my design projects where, once a concept is established, the first thing the client wants to know, is what it will look like. So often times it's most efficient for me to create a 3d model directly from a concept sketch.

In reality, I have too big of a volume of work to do all of this 3D modeling myself, I need other people who can do it. That's what this video is - me teaching someone my process of modeling for architectural projects.

It is pretty hard to find the right type of person to help with this kind of work. Experienced professionals are usually in no hurry to turn around work, and ask for a big fee. Enthusiastic young people don't know what their doing. Off-shore outsourcing has no familiarity with construction standards here.

In the traditional setting of an architecture firm, a project like this could go through up to three people:

- the project manager, who comes up with the concept

- the draftsman, who draws the plan and elevation

- the 3d artist, who produces a rendering from the drawing

While in my case, I do steps 1 & 3 myself, and skip step 2.

For this particular video, I am modeling a concept for some townhomes. I am starting off with 3 things:

- an incorrect floor plan

- an incorrect elevation

- a rough sketch of how I want the elevation to look

I primairly use poly-modeling, that is, moving faces and edges of polygons in a free-form manner to create a concept 3d model, without doing any real measuring. As long as everything is approximately correct, exact measurements are not really critical in a rendering. I will try to post of the final rendering of this project when we get it.

And remember, WATCH IN 1080 RESOLUTION

we rendered out a test image after we were finished for review and revision

Vacation Home in Montpillard, France

2012-01-06T17:56:00.000-08:00

This is a design I worked on several years ago for a couple in the UK who had bought an old farm structure in France, and wanted to turn it into a vacation home. They had a pretty good idea of what they wanted, but needed me to design and visualize it for them. It was a smaller budget project, so I had to work some magic and quickly move on, and I really don't know how the house ever turned out. You can check in on their progress over at Montpillard.com

After I had the 3d model made, I went ahead and set up my computer to turn our this surreal looking animation, just for fun.

Real Estate Office Evictor

2011-09-04T08:08:00.000-07:00

This is from user jobthreadthrowawayon reddit, but it was so well written i decided to copy it onto here as not to lose it:

I work at a real estate office. We primarily sell houses that were foreclosed on by lenders. We aren't involved in the actual foreclosures or evictions - anonymous lawyers in the cloud somewhere is tasked with the paperwork - we are the boots on the ground that interacts with the actual walls, roofs and occasional bomb threat.

When the lender forecloses - or is thinking of foreclosing - on a property one of the first things that happens is they send somebody out to see if there is actually a house there and if there is anybody living there who needs to be evicted. Lawyers are expensive so they send a real estate agent or a property preservation company out to check. There is the occasional discovery of fraud where there was never a house on the parcel to begin with, but such instances are rare. Sometimes this initial visit results in discovering a house that has burned down or demolished, is abandoned or occupied by somebody who has absolutely no connection with the homeowner. Sometimes the houses are discovered to be crack dens or meth labs, sometimes the sites of cock or dog fighting operations, or you might even find a back yard filled with a pot cultivation that can't be traced back to anybody because it was planted in yet another vacant house in a blighted neighborhood. The house could be worth less than zero - blighted to the point where you can't even give it away (this is a literal statement, I have tried to give away many houses or even vacant lots with no takers over the years) or it could be a waterfront mansion in a gated golf community worth well over seven figures that does not include the number "one". Sometimes they are found to have been seized by the IRS, the local tax authority, the DEA or the US Marshal. Variety is the rule. The end results are the law.

If the house is occupied my job is to make contact and determine who they are: there are laws that establish what happens to a borrower as opposed to a tenant and the servicemember relief act adds an additional set of questions that must be answered. Some of the people have an idea of why I am there. Some claim they never knew they were foreclosed on, or tell me that they have worked something out with their lender, some won't tell me a thing and some threaten me to never return in the name of the police, their lawyer, or the occasional "or else/if I were you". During one initial visit the sight of 50-60 motorcycles parked on the lawn suggested that we try again the next day. At a couple the police had cordoned off the area and at one they were in the process of dredging the lake searching for the body of a depressed former homeowner.

If nobody is home I have to determine if they are at work, on vacation, in the army, wintering/summering at their other home, in jail, in a nursing home, dead or if they moved away. It isn't easy. Utilities can be left on for months. Neighbors can be staging the yard and house to appear occupied to prevent blight in their neighborhood. By the same token people will stop cutting the lawn for months, let trash and old phone books pile up on their porch, lose gas and electric service and continue to live in properties that have not only physically unsafe to approach but are so filthy that when it comes time to clean them out the crews have to wear hazmat suits. One house had a gallon pickle jar filled with dead roaches on the porch. Somebody lived in that house and thought that was a logical thing to do. People like me are tasked with first contact.

Evictions are expensive and time-consuming. Ultimately once the process gets that far there isn't much that can be done to prevent it. You didn't pay your mortgage, the lender gets the house back. There are an infinite number of reasons why the mortgage couldn't be paid, some are more sympathetic than others, but in the end you will be leaving the property willingly or not. The lawyers handle the evictions - they churn through the paperwork in the background, ten thousand properties at a time. They have it down to rote function based on templates, personal experience with the various judges and intimate knowledge of the federal, state and municipal laws, along with dealing with the occasional sheriff who refuses to evict somebody, the informal policies established by the local judges and a myriad of other problems that can arise. As a business decision many lenders have determined that it is cheaper to settle with the occupants - instead of going through the formal eviction they will offer cash. In exchange for surrendering a property in reasonably clean condition with the furnace still hooked up, the kitchen not stripped and the basement not intentionally flooded the lender will cut the occupants a check. It costs much less than an eviction, provides reasonable hope that the plumbing won't freeze and can take a fraction of the time to obtain possession. This is where the personal element becomes real.

Some people jump at the chance. They don't want to live here anymore. They may be getting married and moving in but couldn't sell the unneeded house. They have a new job across the country, they're moving to the other side of the planet. They were renting and found a better place in a neighborhood where the thieves don't grin at them through the kitchen window while they disconnect a running air conditioner knowing that the average response time for the police is measured in weeks for a call like that. The cash is a down payment, a security deposit (since their landlord never returns theirs), or maybe a moving van. These are the best cases. Sometimes they are happy to hear from me. Other times, not so much.

When I make first contact and explain that the lender is offering them money to leave sometimes they tell me that they haven't slept for months, knowing that something was going to happen but never knowing if tomorrow was the day when somebody kicked in their door and threw their kids out on the lawn. Their lenders won't tell them anything, they have nothing to go on but horror stories from other people that they never knew. It never occurred to them that they should call an attorney and ask what was going on. I can be the first people to discuss their situation who isn't a debt collector: you can hear the release of a massive weight in their voice. It isn't much, but at least it is something.

Or they can get angry and defensive, tell me that they were never foreclosed on, tell me that I am trespassing and owe them $5,000 in "land use fees" for "using" their property as I walk to the front door. They threaten to sue, they threaten to call the cops, they say I should look under my car before I start it from now on. They send letters written in various forms of English - one time scribed in crayon - detailing their rights and how I am violating some maritime treaty from the 1700s. In my travels I have learned that if you copyright your name you can't be named in any kind of legal action, if you never write down your ZIP code then you aren't a resident of the United States and that if I tell somebody that their lender is offering them money to vacate while leaving the staircase (yes, these get stolen) and driveway (yes, these get stolen) in place then I am guilty of slave trading under some United Nations something or other.

For those who reject the deal, nothing changes. They don't lose any rights and it isn't counted against them in any way - neither the lawyers nor the courts care because the lenders don't have to offer anything - the eviction process continues. I listen to the stories why they can't/won't take the deal. They can't afford anything else. They don't have anywhere else to go. They want to make the eviction as expensive as possible. They're going to get "a big settlement" from some vague lawsuit any day now. They want their kids to finish out the school year. They intend to take the furnace as soon as they find a new house. All kinds of reasons. Some are heartbreaking, others not so much.

For those who do take the deal, at the appointed date and time I meet them at their former home. I walk the yard and enter every room. I open every drawer and cupboard making sure the house is clean and doesn't have old engines, toxic chemicals or dead dogs lingering anywhere. Sometimes the kids are there, maybe waiting in the car, maybe not. I see the marks on the wall showing how the kids grew over the years. I see the anguished poetry scribbled on the wall by stoned teenagers and the occasional hole punched in the wall. One woman handed me the key to her reinforced bedroom door - during the divorce her now ex-husband was still living in the house and she had to barricade herself in at night. Another said "right there is where I found my son - he couldn't handle losing the house".

Sometimes they don't want the money and don't want to be evicted so they sign a waiver stating that everything left inside can be disposed of. Hospital beds. Oxygen tanks and wheelchairs. Hundreds of boxes of shoes. A mannequin. A 2nd grader's homework portfolio. A wedding album filled with pictures with one person torn out. Get rich quick "business plans". 40 years worth of drafting documents. To the lenders and the lawyers, these things don't exist - they close the file and order a trashout. Sometimes I linger as I check the basement for mold and lead. I am the final period on so many significant chapters. To most other people it is just part of the job but in so many other universes this is where I ended up. There is no difference between myself and these people other than the intangible twists of experience.

And so I listen. I feign dispassion but I'm not fooling anybody. Somehow they can tell that I care and thank me even as they admit that it isn't my fault, that it isn't my responsibility to listen. I've stood inside another's dream for an hour as they spoke, not really to be heard but to say goodbye - to leave the ghosts behind.

They go to the car and return with the openers.

The keys are peeled from a ring.

They thank me. Sometimes they cry.

And they're gone.

I wait for their car to vanish before I put up the sign. To most everybody else it is just another house on just another block in just another city in just another financial catastrophe.

But I was there. I saw the dream end.

But at least I don't make them turn out the lights one last time as they leave.

That's my job.

Apartment Brochure

2011-02-18T17:56:00.000-08:00

Here is a book I designed for advertising/leasing purposes for the downtown project. This book combines almost all of the assets I had created, as well as some photos I took, and some that had been taken professionally. These books were staple bound and are handed out to potential tenants. Apart from some boring, report style documents I put together at my last job, this is the first real book I have created since college. Click the image below to view, it may take a minute to load the whole document.

8-Plex Apartments

2011-01-21T07:13:00.000-08:00

There is plenty of student housing in Columbia, and this was a package of material to help one development stand out in the crowd. It involved taking a site off of Rock Quarry Road and designing the apartment buildings, as well as a pool house. Most of the site planning was completed by the civil consultant as part of the PUD package.

The first step was taking another apartment development that would serve as a model, and seeing how those building would look on the site.

The developer was not really pleased with how these looked, and a re-design was to proceed. But first, some other materials needed to be created. For leasing and to help show off the site amenities, a site plan was made.

Then for advertising, illustrations were created for the floor plan design that was chosen.

A new elevation was drafted up as part of the new building design. The client had a couple pictures of other buildings he liked, and once I looked at the constraints of the building construction in depth, this became one of the few practical aesthetic choices.

This design was illustrated for review by the client. These 2d illustrations take less time than a full computer rendering, but can still be pretty nice for advertising, and are usually convince the client about the quality of the design pretty fast.

An alternate design was explored, to try some value engineering, but was dismissed pretty quickly because it was so ugly.

The elevation design was turned into an exterior rendering that will be the main advertising image for the development. After 'looking around' the site for awhile in 3d, this became the angle/position that seemed to look the best, considering the sun, background, and other factors.

The 3d model was also used to see how some different brick colors would look on the building, light and dark:

Several interior renderings were created, also for advertising. There was basically no reference for how to pick out colors, furniture, ect. so these were all things i had to just make up as i went along. There was really no time or budget for review and revision, so the developers basically just rely on me to get it right without any help.

Of course, some plans were draw with all of this too. In many cases where the client is also the builder, the drawings don't need to be as detailed as when you have contractors bidding or a general contractor subbing things out.

A new rendering of the overall site was made to reflect the design changes to the buildings.

Finally, plans for the pool house were drafted up, and a basic illustration of the pool house elevation was made. This may still be developed further to make the pool house more prominent and attractive on the site.

While there are many apartments that have a lot more amenities and fancy interiors, and you could do much more in-depth design work, this kind of package of design material is about average for a development.

Unrealized Projects: Ice Chalet - Columbia, MO

2010-12-13T19:43:00.000-08:00

This is one of several projects that I put a lot of design work into, but was never built. Usually these projects are just never seen again, but I will try to post the relevant design material up here.

The plan was to take the rear portion of the ice chalet (also known as the old flea market, and more recently, the galactic fun zone) and turn it into a call center for a local company. The front part would remain untouched in the first phase, and then be renovated into a retail space.

Major renovation is always expensive, especially when you're trying to provide a really clean looking interior space. But that was the design parameters - to work with the existing building shell.

Since a call center is mostly desks and phones, a lot of the design emphasis was put on the entrance.

I did not actually come up with the idea of it being round or having those radial spoke things, but I did have to do the sketch and make up the details. The solid portion was to have a space frame and flat roof to act as a drive/walk up or drop-off point.

The shapes were to extend inside the building, and make the corner of the building / center of the circles the focal point of the design. It definitely would have been... round?

The interior space was to have an open 'floor' of cubicle type spaces with a perimeter of mezzanine offices along the exterior walls. New skylights and clerestory windows would provide natural light to the inside.

Though it would have been kind of a tight fit, the design made use of the existing structure and utilities to feature break rooms, restrooms, offices, and other private spaces. Also plenty of circulation and some little trees here and there. They could even harbor a community of endangered birds (they shit all over the desks, but still, ya gotta love 'em).

The large laminated roof beams would remain exposed, and along one side a glass wall, going up to the ceiling, would contain the primary conference room. The circular element of the entry would be finished in stone along the interior side.

In elevation, the design looked very modern, and looks like it would be interesting to actually see. The perspective sketches always over-emphasize the impact of the shapes. But that's inherent to the medium. Also, it's a lot harder to build than it is to sketch, so who knows what it would have actually looked like had anyone attempted to undertake construction.

The plan was to continue the circular shapes and modern materials around the front of the building also, but because it was to be a future phase, no specific elevation was created for it. This would have contrasted somewhat with the obviously dated building shell, but maybe it would have been repainted or something. There was also going to be plenty of parking though, and the whole lot would have been reworked. It would have been a lot of people coming and going at the same time.

So that is the big picture. And while it would have been a good way to reuse some empty space, it might have been questionable if the project would have fit with the image of the company, or even really been big enough. It seems to me that the ice chalet is a dead end for the companies that go there, and there is plenty of more suitable commercial space and real estate waiting to house successful businesses.

5th & Walnut Parking Garage - Columbia, Missouri

2010-11-24T07:10:00.001-08:00

This project was completed at Peckham & Wright Architects while I worked there for the City of Columbia.

Now that the new parking garage in downtown columbia is nearing completion, I thought it was time to add the design process to my portfolio. I do have a static portfolio but I don't think it gives nearly enough detail to understand what what went into a project.

For about a year now, the structure of the garage has been rising as a bland, gray framework of concrete. That has begun to change recently as the precast panels are being applied to the structure. These panels are just large pieces of concrete with thin brick or textured stone finishes. They could be considered inefficient from one point of view , mostly because they waste material, both in their composition, and because the frame of the garage has to be stronger in order to carry them. All garages though, are decorated in almost the same way. The ideal, from an architectural viewpoint, is to design the structure itself in a way that is pleasing rather than to simply fasten panels cover it. The problem with that approach is expense - either in materials that can be worked in a way that is attractive, or the labor involved in making it happen. There are some very cool rounded and curvy parking garages that use only concrete, but they labor cost and inefficiency of space involved would make them unacceptable here.

Take a look at the panels going onto the structure:

Also, the appearance of the garage had to be selected before the structure was designed. That was the first thing that pushed the design in the direction of a panel system - it could be applied over almost any structure without a problem. The architecture firm does not actually design the structure of the garage, there is a separate structural engineer that specializes in parking structures. So a design that will be most successful for an architecture firm is usually one that can be easily coordinated with the structural engineer, and does not require them to do anything out of the ordinary. Although this design is very much 'out of the ordinary' I still thought it would be possible. Here is a sketch showing the idea that we started from. This was actually done after the design was selected, because there was no time beforehand, with all the drafting that had to be done for the submission:

The way this design worked is that each of the principals had a concept that they focused on developing (though I had to pretty much do the drafting for all four.) Early on, I had an idea to draw up an 'offset grid' design that would hide the boring regularity of the structure by using panels that would appear as staggered tiles. My first draft got picked up by one of the principals as the design he was interested in pursuing, and was turned into this first draft:

Four options were presented to the City for consideration, and this ended up being the design that was chosen. Some features were rearranged however, and the design looks better for it. The idea with variation the panels, is at the northwest corner, the brick panels start down near the bottom, and slowly work their way up to their highest point at the southwest corner. They move in a staggered path though, rather than having some kind of strong diagonal. Again, this intended to be contrary to the underlying structure which is repetitive and horizontal (actually the structure slopes, but I didn't know that at the time.) The glass on the stair towers also leans outward.

If you notice in the rendering, each adjacent panel is at a different height, but in the finished building some adjacent panels are at the same height. This is because some panels had to be combined, two or three in a row, in order to reduce the total number that had to be manufactured for cost purposes. That process of going back and altering a design for cost savings is typically called 'value engineering.'

Here is the rendering created after the design was chosen and refined:

Another of the nicer things about this garage is the incorporation of grade level retail spaces. One of the retail spaces is situated in a way that provides it a two level interior space, which allowed us to create a balcony level. These spaces have back doors off of a utility corridor accessed from the rear of the garage. I think they will be owned by the city and available as retail space. There is even some kind of police parking / substation underground. Below is a grade level plan of the spaces along with a basic model done in sketchup of the retail storefront and balcony:

If you are interested in the technical side of the rendering, it was at first intended to be done completely in sketchup. However I had recently convinced my work to purchase V-Ray for sketchup, and I wanted to test it out. I took the model that had been created for this project, threw in a few basic settings and rendered it out. The resulting image ended up being the final one used for publicity. I would have liked to do a lot more work with lighting textures, or even take it into 3ds max, but there was just no time for that, and I still consider that perspective rendering a draft, or test image. Now that the building is up I could just go photograph it, but you will find that standing on the street, it's impossible to replicate the perspective view that makes it so easy to comprehend the building in it's entirety in the rendering.

Brookside Downtown - Phase II - Columbia Missouri

2010-11-05T17:19:00.000-07:00

For information about these apartments, visit www.BrooksideDowntown.com

I'm finally getting a chance to post up some of the media being created for the new building. This is Phase 2 of the brookside downtown project. Above is a rendering of the building from the southwest corner, on tenth street, towards campus. As you can see, this building has a few more balconies than its predecessor, which I think is a good thing.

In the background, you can see phase 1, which is already built. In this image however, that phase 1 building in the background is also a computer model. In the original photo I took from the street and used in this rendering, the phase 1 building was very obscured, and at an angle that made it difficult to see. So I had to render both buildings, and heavily photoshop the picture to make it work.

There is also a site plan, below, shows the entire development and some of the surrounding area. There will be 3 buildings in total, spanning between the Cherry Street and Hitt Street parking garages. One of the best features about these apartments in their location, and this site plan doesn't show all the great stuff near by - it is just a legend for the different types of apartments available. There is another map in the works that will show all the cool stuff downtown.

If you get over to the brookside website, you will see plenty of 3d floor plans like the one shown below. These were made because the 2d illustrated floor plans I usually do just weren't conveying the quality of finishes and such used in the apartments. They turned out pretty nice, although I would like to improve the lighting even more to make it look like realistic interior lighting. That can end up being a problem though, because as floor plans they are still supposed to look like diagrams, more than very dynamic pieces of art.

Advertising - Apartment Finder - Brookside Columbia MO

2010-10-16T13:13:00.000-07:00

If you're looking for information about these apartments, visit them here.

In the course of doing some graphic design work, I recently got to do the cover, and inside back cover, for Apartment Finder in Columbia. The only way to differentiate these ads at all from everything else in there, is to put an emphasis on style rather than just bland pictures of building exteriors. That's why the cover is a cool night shot. Originally I had not thought the night picture I used would not be suitable because it was all an orange-ish color that cameras usually produce when they take incandescent lights, but after a lot of color correction, it came out pretty good.

The other important thing is to get pictures with people having fun in them. Many of the ads have ambiguous statements like 'the lifestyle you deserve.' Yet the pictures all look so desolate. An empty pool, an empty apartment, no mention of anything that could really be a lifestyle at all. Maybe I'm over-analyzing it, but when im seriously looking for a place to live, i try to imagine what they're talking about. Or I just look for the lowest price. Because I'm definitely not going to pay extra for 'lifestyle' at a run down, 50-year-old apartment building in a poor blue collar neighborhood next to the industrial district with a murky crumbling pool that faces the highway.

Some of the apartments advertised in there are actually really ugly. So ugly, in fact, that when they photograph them, the try to include some trees in front of the buildings to make them look wooded and homey. In many cases, they get so many trees that you can't actually make out the building (which is probably for the best.) Flipping though the ads though, you would think they're advertising wooded lots, as they do such a good job concealing their ugly buildings.

View the top of the page for more information about living at Brookside.

The Falls at Bethel Ridge - Marketing Package

2010-09-10T22:21:00.000-07:00

These images were created as part of a marketing package for a new residential development in Columbia, Missouri. The whole development consists of duplexes marketed to students, which is typical of the area. visit them.

The most unique part of this project was their request for a interactive exterior fly-around rendering (it takes a couple minutes to load on my slow website, it would be faster on a better server.) The spin-around was created from just 100 images to reduce rendering time. It runs in java, so the page I have set up is an example of how to integrate the script into a page.

The most prominent part of a marketing graphics package is usually the exterior rendering. It is the most realistic and bold part of the project. It takes the most time, but can be very useful for helping promote the property in listings before the development is ever built.

This is a very basic and typical kind of building to do such a detailed rendering of, but it was also a study on how to set up certain geometry and materials that will be reused in other, more complicated scenes. Almost all the surfaces have 3d vray displacement, which uses a black and white image file to create detailed geometry on the 3d surfaces. All of the plants are 3d, because they had to rotate along with the house in the fly-around.

Below is what I would call an 'illustrated elevation,' and was really the first thing created for the project. They already had some floorplans created by a local architect along with a drafted elevation that was part of the construction documents, but nothing suitable for presentation. It was hand sketched and colored in photoshop. An image is fast to do and can be used for real-estate listings, so its a quick and easy way to make a big impact on the marketability of the whole project.

The site plan was drawn in autocad and colored in photoshop. The shadows were created in 3ds max, which automatically calculates the angle and depth of all the shadows, which is a much better alternative to trying to figure it out in photoshop. A watercolor brush was used for the grass texture.

This image will go on the website to orient people to the size and layout of the development, but it will be even more useful in the leasing office, where it is like a directory for staff and tenants.

These images, that I would call 'illustrated floor plans' take the drafted floor plans and make them clear, and easy to understand. Color, texture, and shadow help convey the quality of the interior space to a prospective tenant even at a small scale. It also used sketched lines and textured watercolor brushes for a more traditional, hand drawn feel.

FunZone Concept Rendering / Animation

2010-09-04T17:02:00.000-07:00

This project, completed at Peckham & Wright Architects, was a package of visualization material for an indoor water park and entertainment center concept.

The renderings were drawn in autocad, modeled in sketchup and 3ds max, rendered with vray, and the individual frames of animation were batch-post-processed with photoshop and compiled with adobe premiere, then compressed with xilisoft video converter, and uploaded to youtube.

There was also illustrated plans and elevations created with this package that are a part of my portfolio but not posted here.

This design was created, not with construction in mind, but just to make a strong visual impact. The way these marketing images are used, because of the size they are displayed and whatnot, important visual elements have to be overstated to come across.

Residential Design Process

2010-08-23T16:22:00.000-07:00

For people not involved in the design or building industry, there is a general lack of familiarity with the process of taking a residential design from idea to finished project. And of course, there are many ways to do it. One issue I have seen come up repeatedly is the disconnect between the architect (or designer) and the contractor who is building the project.

Often times I will see clients receive plans that show 'ideal' construction. 'Ideal' meaning - the best possible quality and very expensive. That always sounds like a good idea, but what clients really want is to have those ideals balanced by cost and necessity. And they usually are, once a contractor takes control of the project. Then the message is usually, "I could save you $xx,000 if I changed ______ part of the project"

At that point nobody really knows what it might end up looking like, because the alterations only take place in the mind of the contractor. Incorporating those cost saving alterations earlier in the design process, where the client still has an opportunity to see the effect of any changes on the finished design, can provide a better experience for everyone involved.

That's why, on most residential projects, I recommend involving a contractor before the final construction drawings are completed. Below you can see an explanation of how involving the contractor in the design phase impacts the overall process.

Red Cross Rendering

2010-08-07T16:07:00.000-07:00

These renderings and animation were part of a proposal for a Red Cross building. It's a typical metal building with a neat looking concrete entry structure. Rendered in 3ds max with vray.

How do I geometrically divide a rectangle into 3 equal parts without measuring (in sketchup)?

2010-07-24T11:55:00.001-07:00

draw a diagonal. draw a line from the corner to the midpoint. the intersection is 1/3

Email from Lawrence Lile

2010-05-04T12:44:00.000-07:00

Breaking News

(Reuters May 4, 2010)

Oklahoma Wind Farm operator admits responsibility for major air spill.

“We will be paying all costs associated with this disastrous spill” said Wind Farm Owner CEO Mark Linkerbacker. Estimates are that up to 2 million gallons a day of air are being leaked from the wind farm. Effects of the air spill are being felt as far away as Kansas, where farmers say that the trees are swaying and some of the screen doors that aren’t latched have begun creaking.

Effects of the air spill are widespread. One man lost his toupee, and another man lost his Stetson in the breeze. “I was mightily inconvenienced…” said the Stetson owner “since I have some arthur-itis and it makes it hard to bend over and pick up my hat after it blows off my head”. A girl visiting from California said that the air spill “Like… totally messed up my hairdo. I had to … like… brush my hair out of my eyes again!”

Fishermen have been negatively affected by the air spill. One catfisherman, for example, said that when the wind shifted he got a sniff of his catfish bait. “I had been sitting upwind, but when that air spill happened the smell plumb near knocked me over.”

The problem has been traced to an issue with an Air Spill Preventer, a complex system of pipes and boilers that takes corn mash and turns it into a concentrated substance that is usually about 180 proof. Linkerbacker admitted he had been using the Air Spill Preventer to make another batch of illegal hooch when the air spill occurred. “We thought about putting a 74 ton box over the top of the Air Spill Preventer, then we said, Naaah.“ The County Sheriff was asked if he was going to arrest Mr. Linkerbacker for making illegal hooch, but the Sheriff replied “Arrest him? For What? I didn’t see anything wrong.” Then he took another swig from a flask he kept in his pocket.

Crews of volunteers have been pouring into the State from all over the nation to help clean up the devastation caused by the air spill. Some are bringing kites, paper boats, and bubble machines. “It is really cool to watch the bubbles float over the landscape and then pop” one 6 year old grinned, as his dad turned on the bubble machine.

Dawn® Company, makers of the preferred brand of soap used in spill cleanup, offered free bubblemaking kits to anyone volunteering to help with spill cleanup. “I recommend dipping the little plastic ring in Dawn soap, and then just holding it up in the breeze” says Dawn® CEO Dr. Hirschel Bronner.

charcoal drawings, old art

2010-04-24T15:58:00.000-07:00

i just photographed and posted up some of my old artwork that has been sitting around in a big folder portfolio. It had all been sprayed pretty well with spray fixative at one point, and was not exposed to any light, so it has all help up pretty well. so now i am finally moving towards having a complete portfolio of all my old traditional art, which i never really get to work on anymore. click the picture below to see the whole gallery.

Eco Schoolhouse Panorama

2010-04-22T06:49:00.000-07:00

I have just finished compiling this panoramic image of the new Eco School house at Grant Elementary in Columbia, Missouri into a flash file that is viewable on the web. I used Panorama Studio by TSHSoft.

The schoolhouse was designed by Peckham & Wright Architects, and has a number of sustainable features, earning it LEED Gold Accreditation. It sits next to a number of trailers on the school property that act as outdoor classrooms for the large number of students. You can read more about it's sustainable features here.

Flash Panorama:

Montpillard Animation

2010-04-09T06:34:00.000-07:00

I had previously done renderings of this house for the project shown here but decided to animate the scene, as my computer would just be sitting around anyway. I'll discuss some technical differences in the process from how i usually animate.

Like several previous animations, most surfaces in this model use the vraydisplacementmod feature to add depth to all of the textures. I have noticed this generally makes them look much more realistic, but also adds a lot of render time.

The scene has a full ring of 3d trees encircling it to provide a dynamic looking background. The sky is a half-sphere with a texture applied to it. There are two 'suns' so that when you fly around to the other side of the building it is still illuminated.

With each frame, I exported the specular channel, and make a complex photoshop action for recombining them to create the look i have going. This meant i had to sit there and click on the photoshop action for each frame, because it doesn't work to automate combining two images.

Welek Residence Interactive Portfolio Page

2010-04-07T14:32:00.000-07:00

To showcase a recent residential design, I have created a web page that acts as an interactive portfolio for the project. Typically with these kinds of projects, we go though many sketches, revisions, different designs, and end up producing a lot of different media to help communicate the design.

When presenting a portfolio of design work, however, including all of this preliminary work makes looking through the portfolio tedious. With a presentation like I have created in the link below, each part of the design is reduced to a few visual blurbs that only need to be expanded if the viewer is really interested. That way I can present a wide range of experience without potentially boring someone who might be interested in it.

MVC Student Housing

2010-04-06T13:01:00.000-07:00

This graphic presentation was created at Peckham & Wright Architects for some on-campus student housing buildings at a rural college. We identified on the site prospective locations that could accommodate the buildings and laid out a preliminary site plan. This plan, shown below, highlights the projects areas and shows how they fit into the existing campus site.

For the style, they wanted us to match the existing apartments. These apartments were quite plain, but we embellished the elevations as much as possible to add some detail. The sketch was actually created from the standpoint of thinking about how the existing buildings could be renovated in order to look better. The new buildings would just match the renovated ones.

The next two images are enlargements of each of the two building sites. The idea was to create a village type area where the back patios all face into a common courtyard. for the buildings in the L-shaped configuration, it's more of just a common area, but each site still includes a pagoda with grass and landscaping.

Finally, we created perspective renderings to present to the campus administration. These were the culmination of the site plan and elevation design, and were intended to communicate the feeling of the outdoor space and landscaping. They were created in sketchup to start with. Next i printed them, and sketched over the top with tracing paper to add some details. After that, I took the 3d model into 3ds max to create shadows and ambient occlusion type of effects. Finally, I combined these elements in photoshop and added color.

If i can find all of my working files I would also like to create a tutorial showing all the steps in creating an image like this quickly using several various programs, like i did in this post.

BasteFest

2010-04-06T11:10:00.000-07:00

At one time, my girlfriend's friend was having a 21st birthday party that was 'BasteFest' themed. This refers to a party concept they had created in which everyone takes shots of alcohol out of typical cooking basters. This was to be the third baste fest, and they wanted me to use the number 3 and the recently-released movie '300' to as the motif to make a flyer for the party.

In the movie, the Pythia is a youthful looking girl, who in the throes of prophecy, throws her head back in a dramatic pose captured in the movie poster. I took this pose, but photoshoped in the head of the birthday girl along with a baster as if she was about to take a shot. I combined this with other elements of the 300 movie poster and my version of the commonly corrupted phrase 'tonight we dine in hell'.

some art favorites

2010-04-01T14:01:00.000-07:00

we'd like to take this post to throw out links to a few artists that we like.

Task Rollover

2010-03-21T15:28:00.001-07:00

There's an idea I had today when I was thinking about how I still prefer writing out schedules instead of putting them into an electronic calendar or on my phone, or making task lists on my phone.

My biggest problem with keeping a lost of tasks on my phone is that I don't look at them. When I want to see what's happening I look at my calendar.

My biggest problem with scheduling the tasks i'm supposed to do on my calendar is that whether or not I do them, after the scheduled date is passed, I don't see them anymore and forget I ever did.

What I would like is to put a task on my calendar, and if I don't mark it as completed, it would roll over to the next week, on top of all the new things I am supposed to do, so I can see just how little time I have to accomplish everything I intended too.

The tasks would roll over every week until you either mark them as completed, or decide they were not important anyway and delete them.

And this is why i like written schedules. Even if I don't complete the list, I still have it sitting on my desk so I can see what things were supposed to be important to me.

I do see that outlook has kind of a feature like this. It lets you schedule a task and create a 'follow up' date by which the task is supposed to be completed. Now, if the task is not completed will it prompt me to assign a new date? We will see.

A few pictures of downtown columbia

2010-03-13T12:54:00.000-08:00

Lately I have been trying to get out and take some pictures around columbia. I'm using a DSLR camera to take multiple exposures and combine them as HRD images. It is going to take some time to find nice vantage points to get good shots but these are a start.

See the full gallery

Dusk has always been one of my favorite times of day in terms of lighting. But on a conventional camera it's pretty hard to capture the range of light that you perceive normally. The HDR images have a bit of an unnatural glowing effect, but at least they give a good feeling of the range of intensity. Next I am hoping to get out when it's a little more wet outside to capture some reflections. The pavement downtown should work especially well.

Apartment tower downtown Columbia Missouri

2010-03-10T02:21:00.000-08:00

Here's one building that you definitely won't see coming to downtown Columbia. The design was by Stephen Bourgeois for a piece of property on 9th street. The building flyaround was designed to show how it would fit into the context of the city. Needless to say, it would be very big.

There were some new technical challenges working with a view to the horizon like this, because the horizon needs to move along with the camera. the first thing i did was to get up in another tall building and get plenty of pictures of the downtown columbia skyline to use as material. I put these together into one panoramic image and used it to texture a sky dome over my scene. Next i added 3d trees along why the sky dome meets the ground plane to create the horizon. In actuality the horizon is probably a little too low, but because the camera angle changes so much, it is difficult to notice. Putting basic textures on the other buildings would also have been ideal, but I was running out of time on the project.

While I was up taking pictures for the horizon, I also grabbed this shot that I inserted the final rendering into.

Food Service Workflow Images

2010-02-28T13:21:00.001-08:00

The food service renovation project from my earlier post was created using an unusual method of combing output from various programs. Having never seen anyone detail using these kinds of methods, I thought I would create a visual workflow to explain how it all works. Click on the images on the workflow page to enlarge.

Brookside Downtown Columbia MO Apartments

2010-02-17T08:20:00.000-08:00

If you are looking for information about these apartments:

visit their website

follow them on facebook

or contact the leasing office at 573-815-7475.

to email them, fill out the form on their website.

Just completed this rendering at Peckham & Wright Architects for a new apartment structure in downtown columbia. It's a design build project in conjunction with Trittenbach Development. The new complex will include 16 4-bedroom units. The apartments are 2-story on the inside, with 3 bedrooms upstairs and one downstairs adjacent to the spacious living area.

These new units will be the most modern centrally located units closest to the heart of downtown, just 1 or 2 blocks away from the best attractions on 9th street, and almost across the street from harpos. They feature balconies on the third floor perfect for football season partying, and security gates at the entrance to keep out unwanted riff-raff. See information about these apartments.

Downtown Columbia Skyline Photos

2009-12-09T11:13:00.000-08:00

On a rare day with a nice sunset, I decided to get out and take some photos of downtown from as high a vantage point as i could get. since they are soon to renovate the tiger hotel, I figures this would be my last chance to get up and take some nice shots from there.

I didn't have the best camera ever, but the light is still pretty nice. This gallery should include images in all directions, as well as some close ups of particularly interesting looking buildings. i'm also going to try and add some evening HDR photos to this gallery. Using a different camera, I had taken some multiple-exposure shots around town.

Vistas Web Gallery

2009-11-29T08:51:00.000-08:00

The Vistas at Old Hawthorne web gallery is online - actually it has been for some time. This is a collection of photography taken by myself and others of a housing development I am working on. This is that first residential project that for me, has really been a combination of art and architecture, which allowed me to do a lot of design sketching and promotional art. And of course, the actual drafting and technical work. This project is covered briefly in my residential portfolio, but this post should provide a consolidated link to most of the creative work I have done on the project. Obviously projects like this have been a bit scarce lately, but at least it will weed out the less talented... or level or playing field.... or... hey i'm trying to be optimistic here!

Enter the gallery here (through the door, of course):

Food Service Renovation

2009-11-18T21:19:00.001-08:00

Recently completed these presentation boards for a new design on an existing dining hall at a university. With this project I again was moving a model between sketchup and 3ds max, so part of my time was spent figuring out how to get the best image using a combination of both programs. In the axon you can see sketchup linework overlaid on a v-ray rendering, which was pretty effective.

At the start of the project, there was little direction about the purpose of each image, and part of the process was just seeing what we could do visually with the design to create a template for future projects. I started out withing the basic framework of site>plan>axon>perspective and getting these images to this level took all the time I had for the project. Revisions were also very slow, because if the sketchup model was changed significantly, it had to be completely re-imported and textured in max.

UPDATE: workflow for this project is posted here - http://www.midwestrender.com/foodserv/foodserv.html

Quick Perspective Workflow Tutorial

2009-10-06T17:45:00.000-07:00

This image was created pretty quickly using several programs and media in a custom workflow. It has pretty good visual impact considering the effort.

I don't usually see tutorials explain workflow like this, so I thought I'd post one up. Comment with questions.

First i started with a plan and elevations in autocad. I disilled the plan down to the basic exterior walls as seen below, and exported it to sketchup. I kept the elevations open in autocad in a seperate window to measure off of

1) delete unnecessary detail from plan
2) export to sketchup
3) measure elevations while modeling

next i modeled the building in sketchup. i created a scene with the angle i wanted to see the building from.

4) model building in sketchup

to get the site in, I went and took some pictures of the surrounding area, and created the site in google earth. then i took a snapshot of the site from about the same angle i had the building in sketchup. unfortunatly it is not possible to export a camera to google earth, so i had to guess.

5) get site pics
6) model site in google earth
7) snap background images for compositing

sketchup's visual styles don't really cut it for me. i prefer to draw by hand. so my next step was to print out the sketchup model and trace it. the i scanned it back in for recompositing.

8) print model
9) trace
10) scan linework

now it was time for the real substance of the image - the color. I exported the sketchup model as a 3ds file. when i imported the file into max, the scene saved in sketchup imports as a camera. however, the depth of field is slightly different in max by default, so you have to adjust it as best you can. though with all the composting that happens in photoshop, you can edit most of it out.

here are some of the key things i did with the image in max to get it looking nice:
- direct vray light source at an angle that will reflect off the building into the camera
- reflective brick material
- HDRI enviornment light source. drag the vray HDRI environment slot to the material editor to increase the intensity.
- drag the HDRI map to the 'override reflection' slot. this will compensate for having no environment around the building.
- select a background image in the environment slot. drag the image to the material editor to boost the brightness in the 'output' tab if necessary
- lot of reflection
- make sure you use an awesome HDRI map

11) export sketchup model
12) import into max
13) use camera from sketchup, adjust to fit
14) set up scene like the screenshots beflow

now all thats left is to composite the image, and make minor edits and adjustments to make it all fit. im posting the components of my photoshop file below

15) open images in phtotshop
16) comoposite image

thats it! comment with questions

Case Studies - Residential Portfolio

2009-09-28T14:00:00.000-07:00

To be more relevant in the currently-shrinking-market of residential design, I thought a little summary of my practical experience would be in order. I have worked on quite a few built residences in Columbia and beyond, but they are not usually associated with me. Usually I just post up single images or photos that show off the best looking part of a project, but I thought a collection of case studies would show a bigger picture, or at least a snapshot, of the thought process involved in the design.

Midwest Render: Case Studies - Residential Portfolio

What this all demonstrates is a design process and style the people prefer over the competition in this area, a level of service that is hard to find anywhere else, and a finished product that will sell a home. I can say i particularly like working on this guy's house since i got a chance to meet him. I'll soon start working on adding in commercial project that have been completed in my professional experience at an Architecture firm, and some advertising literature.

Texas Spec House

2009-07-30T10:06:00.000-07:00

Below are images for a new house under construction in Texas. This is a single family spec house, I created these images for marketing purposes. Because the house incorporates a courtyard and side entry garage, using a simple 2-D elevation of the house would not have been very descriptive. The lighting helps convey the feeling of the place, and the interior images use 3d furniture as an alternative to actually setting up furniture and taking pictures once the house is completed. These images will be posted on the real estate listing for the home, and as a marketing tool for the relator involved in selling the house.

Thomas Fields Preview Animation 2

2009-05-15T22:11:00.000-07:00

Here is a preview of our latest rendering work for Thomas Fields Homes. This animation should improve significantly on the last one, and look for even better quality in the future. The lighting and furniture layout on this one look somewhat better than the last one, I have to say, though I am still not happy with parts of it.

The biggest problem has been checking the scene, once there is a lot going on. Because of the complexity of the models, everything has to be displayed as bounding boxes while editing. So, you can't see if there is anything not lining up. And rendering out preview images takes about 30 minutes per image, so you end up not doing a whole lot of these beforehand. I suppose I should just be more careful, but that can be hard.

New Wilson's Fitness Downtown

2009-05-07T08:48:00.000-07:00

As Columbia residents may know already, Wilson's Fitness is opening it's new location downtown. It will be located in the basement of the Berry Building, which is currently under renovation, at the corner of Ash and Orr streets.

Midwest Render completed several renderings of the new interior space for Wilson's marketing efforts.

Thomas Fields Homes Interior Animation

2009-04-23T13:47:00.000-07:00

Midwest Render's first video preview is now available to show the work we have been doing with Thomas Fields Homes, a Canadian homebuilder. We are working on 5 models in all, and expect to see animation quality improvements on each one. Videos like the can be created for any type of home, with a wide variety of finishes and furniture. So if you need one, let us know!

This animation was created from a single complete model, interior and exterior. Also, everything here is 3D, static images were not used to 'fake' things in. The rendering time for this was pretty long on a single computer, but with adequate budget, it can be completed in just days.

visit Midwest Render

What a bunch of sheet

2009-04-16T13:36:00.000-07:00

In company news, our firm is rolling out a new employee efficency program today. The program will introduce a monitering system for each drafting workstation to measure the frequency of changes to the printed drawings.

"It's called 'Hot Sheet'," a company spokesperson said. "and we'll be getting into everybody's sheet."

The system, which highlights activity areas on the sheet layout, and color codes them based on the time between which substantive material is produced, will display on a supervisors computer and allow management to identify slower employees.

"Everyone will have to get thier sheet together now" the spokesperson continued, "Our employees need to understand that we can't just have sheet sitting around. This firm is filled with more sheet than ever before, and we have to keep feeding that sheet to our clients."

As this system measures work not by the creation of usable material, but on the way that material is applied to the sheet layout, draftspeople could be facing some substantial changes to they way they work.

"I used to really try and think about what I was doing," one employee commented, "but now I just turn out this sheet all day. I end up with sheet all over the place, I mean, this is some nasty sheet we have to deal with."

Althrough the new system is highly reviewed, it still may be succeptible to manipulation. On the issue of security, we were directed to a technical officer for the company.

"There will obviously be a few sheet disturbers," he conceded, but followed up with a reminder, "just because you think you have the hottest sheet out there, doesn't mean your sheet don't stink."

France House - First Impressions

2009-04-14T19:18:00.000-07:00

It's called Montpillard. I don't know how to pronounce it.

Apparently they are pretty strict in france about what you can do to your house. This was my first design concept for the renovation of an old stone farmhouse. The biggest problem with the local authorities - 'you cant have windows that are wider than they are tall'

I suppose to be authentic, non-reinforced masonry openings would work best structurally like that. But really, this is someones house, not the renaissance fair. It's all going to be faked on there anyway, its just to maintain the style. I mean, why did i even draw this by hand? I was tracing what I drew on the computer. It's just to make it look a little more rustic.

For more info in this thing, head over to www.montpillard.com

Vistas Exterior Pics

2009-02-07T21:52:00.000-08:00

At 4:35 today I rushed out the door, knowing i had less than an hour of good light left. Being unusually warm for this time of the year, it will probably be the only time in the next few weeks that there is a decent

sunset. I needed to use this light to get some warm looking pictures of the newly built homes for the website. Some have people living there already, so I had to hold off going up too close in some cases since i didnt
have time to warn anyone i was coming. And it's hard to shoot with so many construction materials still around. But what i ended up with was better than what's currently up on the site (nothing). Check it out for youself in the picture gallery: http://www.vistasatoldhawthorne.com

exterior residential animation

2009-01-13T07:37:00.000-08:00

so it looks like i will be doing some animations of residential exteriors with the quality of the attached image. pricing on these is hard because most of the time used is for the computer to sit and render out each frame of the animation.

why does it take so long to render each frame? simply put - plants. organic things are very complex. built things are simple - straight lines, flat surfaces. providing a realistic backdrop for the house uses many times the computer resources of the house itself, but it's also what makes the whole thing believable.

on that note, landscape design is hard! it's frustrating to spend all that time with the computer bogged down trying to drop all that landscaping into the scene, only to realize you have made the house into a goofy abomination.

shadows and linear workflow

2009-01-06T12:49:00.000-08:00

I'm getting much better results with shadows since switching to linear work flow.

3D programs computer light with realistic values, however your monitor has a curve built into it's display software that lowers the color values, to work better with the display properties of the screen. A linear work flow changes the values inside your rendering program to compensate for the monitor.

all this creates an image with much more natural shadows

using this house as an example, I tried working normally, but was not getting acceptable results. but now it looks good. Next I will be working on the interior.

exteriors and living walls

2008-12-09T08:39:00.000-08:00

so i finally picked up a commercial exterior project to render. its pretty boring on the outside but at least i have something to show besides single family houses. If i could get some cooler projects to work on i would be set. Why cant i? i am pretty cheap. maybe im not getting enough exposure.

i heard about a 'futuristic apartment' project someone is working on, and i was trying to think of ideas that would get me exited about doing that project. because it could be really boring - white, plasticy stuff everywhere, very tedious to complete. so how about a living residence idea for an apartment. integrated electronics and things like you would expect, but instead of wires you would have plasma-ish blood stuff pulsing through reveal panels, and bulgy veins running through translucent walls. if you left dirt on the floor too long it would develop a sore like skin would, scab over the offending item and eventually completely absorb it.

it would be so weird! lots of fun

webiste revamp

2008-10-16T08:25:00.000-07:00

I have been updating the wesite recently, and devising some advertising material in an effort to expand our operations. Hope fully there will be much more work to post up soon.

We are also getting out animations up online. These will be available at:

http://www.youtube.com/user/dave5264

and dont forget to visit the website at:

www.midwestrender.com

exterior renderings

2008-08-11T10:12:00.001-07:00

so after watching some video training, im trying to step up the quality of my exterior renderings. luckily i can experiment on actual paid projects. although i cant really bill all the time i work on it, because there is a lot of learning time involved that will pay off in the future.

the realistic looking surfaces are a result of using 3d displacement, which subdivides surfaces up into millions of polygons to create surface deformations and grooves. it takes a lot of computer power and time to work correctly, but it sure is a nice image to show off afterwards.

the one comment i get the most is that it looks like there is a storm in the background, which i though was kind of cool.

interior renderings

2008-08-11T07:21:00.000-07:00

im now working on trying to stir up some interest for my interior renderings by doing some sample ones. though usually doing a combination of interior and exterior renderings can be difficult, its a good way to get away from computery looking typical daytime renderings. but what i really need is an interior designer who can tell me what is going to look good placed inside this thing.

vista pics

2008-05-03T06:02:00.000-07:00

to take some pictures of a subdivision project, i borrowed a nikon d200 and bought a tripod from best buy. its nice being able to take portfolio quality pictures on my own. as the next two units interiors get finished off i will have an oppertunity to take a lot more nice pictures. i want to keep these seperate from my main gallery just because there are so many of them and they dont refelct my direct design. heres a link to the rest:

http://picasaweb.google.com/DaveODesign/VistasInteriors

back to billiards

2008-04-30T09:23:00.000-07:00

as i anticipated, since the guy who owns the pool hall likes to work through details, he is coming up with lots of small changes to the graphic design stuff. which is good because i can pick up an hour here and there changing things for him, which will accumulate into a lot of free pool and food.

the guys at the office are happy about our trips there being free now. we are going for the first time today, so i will see how it goes over when i ask to use my credit.

ad card

2008-04-29T07:55:00.000-07:00

i have an ad card ready to email out to businesses once i have the website ready. it is really a teaser ad. i dont think most people understand the elements of an promotional campaign - that you dont really need to put all the information out there all at once. you want to have a cohesive series of elements that sort of hint at each other.

it helps create presence....but only for people that are actually interested in what you are doing. maybe its because i am not truly advertising. i am creating awareness.

there is already a demand for the services. i am not trying to convince people to buy something they dont already want. i am just depicting the merits of my particular company. the product does the convincing.

billiards

2008-04-28T08:02:00.000-07:00

im meeting with the owner of the pool hall today about doing his graphic design. my firm did the architectural work on it, which is how i met him. he got interviewed by the newspaper recently, but didnt mention our firm....but who cares.

we go eat and play pool there about once a week. the deal will be that he will pay me in credit, which im hoping to accumulate enough of to translate into a decent amount of free beer. which i will use.... when?

http://www.billiardsonbroadway.com/Site/Home.html