This article is featured in the 2024 Homecoming Special Issue.
For some creative students at Dartmouth, their passion for digital art was realized in an unlikely place: two courses in the computer science department, COSC 123, “AR/VR Design and Development,” taught by professor James Mahoney, and its prerequisite, COSC 122, “3D Digital Modeling,” taught by professor Lorie Loeb.
Of the 21 students in the 3D modeling class each fall and winter, many stumble upon it by accident or enroll to fulfill a distributive requirement, according to past participants. Despite students’ varied reasons for joining the class, they tend to leave it feeling inspired.
“I actually only took the class for the [Technology or Applied Science with lab] distributive, but I fell in love with it,” Gabriel Modisett ’25, a film major with a digital art minor, said. “I’ve been a TA for that class ever since — I’m now the lead [TA].”
Studio art intern Peyton Bond ’24, who graduated last June with a studio art major and digital art minor, said she had “always” been interested in digital art but put the 3D modeling course off until her senior fall. She described the offering as one of her “favorite classes.”
“It was so awesome, and I felt like I discovered this new facet of art that I’m really good at and really like, and I was just super happy and fulfilled taking it,” Bond said.
The 3D modeling course introduces students to platforms such as Autodesk Maya, a 3D computer graphics software, which they use to create a digital room and a biped animation — any “character with two legs that walks” — according to Bond.
For the room assignment, Malik Terrab ’25, a comparative literature major with a digital arts minor, recreated his father’s childhood home in Morocco.
“Recreating that was really impactful for me because it’s a way of studying the space and also, in a way, archiving it,” Terrab said.
Bond said she created an entire house for the assignment because she “thought that a room was a bit too restricting.” She “put a river coming through [the] house” and developed “super abstract architecture,” she added.
Loeb, who also serves as the co-founder and director of the Digital Applied Learning and Innovation Lab, contributes to students’ enjoyment of the 3D modeling class by actively engaging with students. Terrab described Loeb as “one of the coolest professors at Dartmouth.”
“I actually saw [Loeb] yesterday and gave her the biggest hug,” Bond said, a year after taking the course.
After positive experiences in the 3D modeling course, some students get hooked on digital art and enroll in the AR/VR course. Terrab, for example, said he changed his D-Plan because of his commitment to taking the class.
“I got the bug for digital art, and instead of going on the film [domestic study program] in [Los Angeles], I dropped it and enrolled in AR/VR,” Terrab said.
The AR/VR course builds on the skills developed in COSC 22 and introduces another software program called Unity, which students can use to create “whole worlds,” according to Bond. For Modisett, the AR/VR course “further solidified his love for both 2D and 3D visual design.”
Terrab said the AR/VR class is “collaborative” because teams of designers, developers and coders work together to produce a film or video game. For the main assignment, Terrab and Bond worked with a graduate student to create a VR film that Terrab described as a “digital psychedelic trip” with “lots of fun things … throughout the air.”
Terrab described both the AR/VR and 3D courses as time-intensive –– requiring lots of devotion to “grinding out your project.”
“You have to be on a screen all the time,” Bond added. “You get such bad headaches.”
Terrab echoed this sentiment, adding that it can be “tough” to “not see the sun for a whole term.”
However, their passion for digital creation makes it all worth it.
“By the end, you have this project that is a culmination of all that time you sacrificed,” Terrab said. “It’s really beautiful and rewarding.”
Terrab explained that most people’s relative inexperience with digital art –– compared to other artistic mediums like drawing or painting –– adds an extra level of “cool[ness]” to the learning and creation process.
“Everyone kind of just starts at ground zero, but their past art experience allows them to blossom in digital art in different directions,” Terrab said. “It’s really cool to see how it aids people’s artistic vision and develops it.”
In Terrab’s case, he has merged his filmmaking experience with his newfound interest in digital art to create digital films.
Compared to other art forms, students especially appreciate the level of autonomy granted by animation.
“Part of what I think is so awesome about animation is that as the creator, you have precise control over every single step of the process in a way that you don’t really have in any other type of filmmaking,” Modisett said.
Similarly, Bond described digital art as “another language” that is “malleable because you can just do something and undo it.”
Modisett said he sees himself continuing to pursue digital art at Dartmouth and looks forward to developing an animated short for his senior thesis.
Bond hopes to get back into digital art this term through her own projects and sees art in her future, whether or not it is in a digital art capacity.
“It would be so cool to make animations for a place like the Sphere [in Las Vegas] one day or just like concerts,” Bond said.
While Terrab was introduced to digital art through the computer science department, he said he now pursues digital art outside of class through the Data Experiences and Visualizations Studio, run by Dartmouth lecturer John Bell and the studio’s 2022/2023 Neukom XR Fellow Claire Preston. Currently located in the basement of North Fairbanks, the studio is a research program that works with Dartmouth community members to integrate pioneering extended reality technologies with interdisciplinary research, teaching and learning.
Terrab is developing a couple of 3D and VR film projects utilizing the studio’s “awesome” equipment, he said, while also “creating resources” for students to help develop the future of studio and digital art at Dartmouth.
“My [digital art] journey is just beginning,” Terrab said.
Taylor Kruse ’27 contributed to reporting.
Gabriel Modisett ’25 is a cartoonist for The Dartmouth. He was not involved in the writing or production of this article.
