Donald Trump's Loose Lips

The U.S government has always placed a premium on keeping its secrets, and this has extended into its  messaging to civilians as well, though today the emphasis is more on being aware of what we see and hear (If you See Something, Say Something) rather than what we say. But during WWII, wartime posters clearly sent the message that careless blabbing could carry dire consequences.

Last week's meeting in the Oval Office between Donald Trump and high ranking members of the russian government, in which classified information was allegedly revealed, reminds us that trusting information to someone with "loose lips" could ultimately sink ships and all of us with it.

March for Science- Earth Day 2017

Earth is the only world, as of this writing, known to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.  ? Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space

This Earth Day, April 22, 2017, scientists, those who support their work, and those concerned about our current government's disastrous environmental policies will gather in cities and towns worldwide in a march to bring awareness to the state of our planet and what we're doing to it. I, along with thousands of others, will be marching in downtown Chicago (and doing some sketching).

Here's the March for Science mission statement as presented on their webpage:

The March for Science champions robustly funded and publicly communicated science as a pillar of human freedom and prosperity. We unite as a diverse, nonpartisan group to call for science that upholds the common good and for political leaders and policy makers to enact evidence based policies in the public interest.

Hope everyone I know will be there and/or lend their support in body or spirit.

Theater of War

Only the dead have seen the end of war.  ~Plato

Administrations, leaders, and civilizations come and go, and through it all, warfare seems to be the one unavoidable constant that afflicts our world. For all our technological advancements, we as a species still just can't seem to all get along.

This week, with the horrific chemical weapon attacks by Bashar al-Assad in Syria and the nuclear missle tests by Noth Korean madman Kim Jong-Un, we're reminded yet again how fragile global stability is.

May cooler heads prevail and a saner world lie ahead. Peace.

LasVegas ConExpo map & VR

This week from March 7-11, the CONEXPO-CON/AGG show is being held at the LasVegas Convention Center. I was asked to create a 3D map for convention visitors. The finished product was a large scale file that could be reproduced large enough to use for signage at the entrance to the show. Along the way, it underwent many changes and iterations depending on the purpose. The challenge was to balance aesthetics with clarity, so ultimately it was simplified from the earlier designs.The 3D model I built was based on floorplans and images captured from Google Earth, which proved to be invaluable:

And here's an an earlier version, which was to include lots of construction equipment rendered at various angles.

Another part of the assignment was to create a 360-degree environment that could be viewed using a Google Cardboard (or similar) viewer. If you aren't familiar with Google Cardboard, it's a simple inexpensive virtual reality (VR) platform developed by Google for use with a head mount for a smartphone. While it isn't as totally immersive as more costly VR headsets like the Oculus Rift, it does give a pretty convincing feeling of being in an environment.

When first given the assignment, I'd never done anything like this before, and online solutions for creating content for Google Cardboard were slim. It took some trial & error, but I finally hit on a way to render out the 3D environment and the client was pleased with the result. If you have access to a Google Cardboard viewer, you can click on the above image to see it in action. Once I had a workflow, creating another environment for Dipstick Studio, my ideation sketching business, was easy:

This is the second year I've done an assignment for the ConExpo show. The previous work can be seen here. Thanks to all the great folks at Slack & Co. for bring me in on this fun job!

Chicago Field Museum sketchbook

Here in Chicago, we're lucky to have a wealth of world class museums to visit. Several of them, including the Field Museum, the Shedd Aquarium, and the Adler Planetarium, are clustered in a group next to Soldier Field known as the "Museum Campus". As a student, I made numerous trips in from the western suburbs to visit each of them years before I could appreciate what local treasures they are. Fortunately, I'm part of the Chicago Urban Sketchers, a group open to artists of all backgrounds and training, who are interested in sketching in a live environment, and our regular sketching meetup this month took us to the wonderous Field Museum of Natural History. Here are some of the sketches from that trip: This one is of a Peregrine Falcon, which has recently been upgraded from "endangered" to "threatened", thanks to the efforts of wildlife conservationists. This is a sketch of a Black Hat Dancer's costume worn by Buddhist monks in the ritual of the Cham dance, which is considered a form of meditation and an offering to the gods. This is the Field Museum's most famous resident, Sue, sketched during an earlier visit. She was acquired in 1997 and is, to date, the largest, most complete, and best preserved Tyrannosaurus rex ever discovered. Here's a sketch of a pair of fighting African elephants who, along with Sue the T-Rex, are featured prominantly in the main hallway of the museum. These elephants are one of the first specimens displayed by the Field Museum in 1909. Here's a fun video about the people & taxidermy involved in bringing the pair to life. And finally, here are a few more miscellaneous sketches of various exhibits throughout the museum.