Artist Turning Real 2D Graffiti Into Virtual 3D Sculpture

This is supercool: Nettrice Gaskins, an East Coast artist and academic who's written some of the best analysis on Second Life's art scene, is still making SL art of her own, through her avatar Nettrice Beattie: Specifically, 3D virtual sculpture derived from real graffiti. Here's what it looks in its early stages, colorful 2D street art which usually just exists on the walls and sidewalks of our everyday periphery, suddenly exploded into substantial, colorful reality (virtual though it may be):

"I'm applying my old 3D form study knowledge from my foundation year course at Pratt," Nettrice tells me, "extruding the positive and negative shapes of the original drawing with an eye on other visual elements to create 'organic unity' which comes from the idea that a thing is made up of interdependent parts -- all assembled in such a way to make a whole." Practically speaking, "I don't use sculpted prims, so the process is basically manipulating prims (taper, twist, etc.) and extruding shapes."

Read more about it on Nettrice's blog here. The project is still in a private area of Second Life, though hopefully it'll open to the public at some point. Meantime, here's a breakdance-heavy update with some slamming James Brown:

Comments

[Nettrice]

Thanks so much for covering this work! Here's a link to my avatar breakdancing adjacent to the graffiti sim: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BAgmIVu0oTM&feature=related. The Flickr photoset showing my process is here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/nettiebeatrice/sets/72157626770859365. I plan to reveal the final version of this project soon.

[Nettrice]

fyi - This work can be seen at LEA5: http://slurl.com/secondlife/LEA5/128/14/22

[canvas wall art]

Graffiti has been used as a means of advertising both legally and illegally. Many graffiti artists see legal advertising as no more than 'paid for and legalised graffiti' and have risen against mainstream adverts.