This arts-based research study grows out of the examination of a lifelong practice of art making I dub Call and Response. Gaining insight through the research and exploration of doodling, automatic drawing and other surrealist techniques and ideas about perception, I not only better understood the development of my creative processes and strengthened my artistic voice, but learned how these practices could be beneficial in teaching and learning the visual arts in the k-12 classroom.

Computer graphics is the act of bringing the imagination of creative people to life. It’s something that helps bring out what cannot be sought after in real life and realized through artistic talent and technical skills. For me, computer graphics is a way to tell the stories no one dared to look after and bring to life the characters that help tell these stories in an engaging and uplifting way. This bachelor thesis report is a project seeking the knowledge about the appeal and characterizations of inanimate objects. How to bring the lifeless to life by comparing how the established artists do, and at the end try and recreate my own characters by using the same aspects as they all work towards.

This thesis describes a novel terrain synthesis method based on distances in a weighted graph. The method begins with a regular lattice with arbitrary edge weights; heights are determined by path cost from a set of generator nodes. The shapes of individual terrain features, such as mountains, hills, and craters, are specified by a monotonically decreasing profile describing the cross-sectional shape of a feature, while the locations of features in the terrain are specified by placing the generators. Pathing places ridges whose initial location have a dendritic shape. The method is robust and easy to control, making it possible to create pareidolia effects. It can produce a wide range of realistic synthetic terrains such as mountain ranges, craters, faults, cinder cones, and hills. The algorithm incorporates random graph edge weights, permits the inclusion of multiple topography profiles, and allows precise control over placement of terrain features and their heights. These properties all allow the artist to create highly heterogeneous terrains that compare quite favorably to existing methods.

This thesis describes a novel terrain synthesis method based on distances in a weighted graph. The method begins with a regular lattice with arbitrary edge weights; heights are determined by path cost from a set of generator nodes. The shapes of individual terrain features, such as mountains, hills, and craters, are specified by a monotonically decreasing profile describing the cross-sectional shape of a feature, while the locations of features in the terrain are specified by placing the generators. Pathing places ridges whose initial location have a dendritic shape. The method is robust and easy to control, making it possible to create pareidolia effects. It can produce a wide range of realistic synthetic terrains such as mountain ranges, craters, faults, cinder cones, and hills. The algorithm incorporates random graph edge weights, permits the inclusion of multiple topography profiles, and allows precise control over placement of terrain features and their heights. These properties all allow the artist to create highly heterogeneous terrains that compare quite favorably to existing methods.

Research on the phenomena pareidolia and its relation to simulacra.