American Gothic explained and renovated
As many of you know, I was in Chicago last weekend for my industry's big trade show and conference, KBIS. As many of you know too, I was there to do three presentations a day on the subject of Google SketchUp. There were five of us presenting topics related to technology and the kitchen and bath business and we were sponsored by Kraftmaid Cabinetry . Our presentations were considered to be continuing education and we were awarding CEUs, so this was pretty serious business. My fellow presenters were Mark Johnson, the Director of Sales + Marketing for Kraftmaid ; Bart Frost, the Manager of Sales Training at Kraftmaid ; Eric Schimelpfenig, a designer with his own training company called Sketch This! ; Alex Oliver, the CEO of Igloo Studios and me. Thank you fellas, thank you Google and above all thank you Kraftmaid. Last weekend's presentations were a rollicking success by any measure.
I did a sneak peak at one of my presentations before I left called Help Me Grant Wood . Well, it wasn't so much a sneak peek as it was a lot of chest beating because I was worried that I'd painted myself into a corner. I wanted to tell a story first and foremost. I also wanted the technology I was using to support my story, not be my story and I think I did pretty well. Enough people have asked, so I'm going to recreate what I did here. Imagine this as a multimedia extravaganza with flashing lights, roaring crowds and me in a Madonna headset at center stage.
My tale starts with Grant Wood's iconic painting, American Gothic.
American Gothic debuted in 1930 when it won a contest at the Art Institute of Chicago. The judges hated it, the critics hated it and it won because a wealthy patron of the Art Insitute loved it. Needless to say, it went on to become one of the world's most iconic images.
The house in the background of that painting is a real house and it still stands in Eldon, Iowa. The woman is Wood's sister Nan and the man is Wood's dentist, Dr. Byron McKeeby. Dr. McKeeby never dressed up like an Iowa farmer and Nan never dressed up like a farmer's wife. Neither of them stood in front of the house in Eldon. Wood painted studies of all three subjects separately and merged them when he painted what would become American Gothic.
So what does this should do with kitchen design? Everything and not anything.
Google Earth is another Google project and it's a community-generated 3D map of the world. So if we start in Google Earth, this might make a little more sense. Bear in mind that his is all animated in my presentation.
If I zoom in at the convention middle as proven in Google Earth, you may see that it's a three-D model. That model and the rest of the fashions in Google Earth had been rendered in Google SketchUp.
So let's pop up the road to the Art Institute of Chicago, where Grant Wood's American Gothic still hangs.
And finally, let's zoom down to Eldon, IA. Eldon has no 3D models yet, but that will be fixed soon enough. [Edited to add, as of 4/28/10 The American Gothic House IS on Google Earth now --PA]
OK, again to Chicago now.
I wanted to recreate the house in Grant Wood's portray and I wanted to make it as accurate as viable. I poked round on Google for multiple weeks and I observed the assets information for the famous house at the nook of Burton Street in Eldon, IA.
On that belongings report, I discovered a measured foot print of the residence. It changed into some full-size progress.
I dug round a few greater and I discovered a gaggle of pix of the house, and it appeared that each one confirmed me a detail I become lacking. I gathered pretty a set of pictures.
I even observed and antique newspaper clipping that confirmed me the again of the residence.
So because I'm running within the splendid SketchUp, I imported that foot print I determined as a .Jpg, scaled it after which built my house right on top of it. Here's the footprint, in scale and on the floor.
I then imported a group of reference pix and stacked them at the back of my model. I'd delete them later, however through having my references in the front of me at the same time as I worked, I ought to see what I became aiming for at all times.
So with the house drawn and my references hidden away, I ended up with this.
Using the tools in SketchUp and my reference photos, I could calculate the pitch of the roof in the photos, I could recreate the columns on the porch and most amazingly of all, I could recreate that Gothic window.
Keep in mind that I drew all of this from scratch up to now and I used handiest the capabilities to be had inside the unfastened version of SketchUp. By drawing the entirety to scale and via recreating the house nearly exactly, it is now an acceptable model for Google Earth. My American Gothic residence is inside the system of being located in Google Earth and in about some other week, Eldon gets its first 3-D constructing.
OK, so the outside's drawn. Now what? Grant Wood's Dinner for Threshers presents a glimpse of what the American Gothic house would have gave the look of in its day.
I want to do something distinct even though. This is in spite of everything, my story. So I went with something a touch greater present day however still grounded in vicinity.
Knock on the display screen door and take a peek.
Here's my interior renovation. I used Kraftmaid cabinetry in a maple slab door called Avery. The stain color is Honey Spice and Kraftmaid's catalog is available in the 3D Warehouse now . And. It's. Free.
The appliances are by GE Monogram , the furniture is by Thos. Moser , the faucet's from Brizo and all of those components are available to download through Google's 3D Warehouse .
I made the gantry that hangs from the ceiling at the suggestion of Chuck Wheelock from Johnny Grey . He actually suggested a pitchfork but I liked that Gothic window shape so much that I repeated it as a light fixture.
If I zoom up to the ceiling and look down, you can see that the table and chairs are sitting on a braided rug. I made that from a .jpg image I found on the internet. It's now a texture on a three dimensional image instead of a photo. The floor too started out as a photograph of a pile of lumber that I morphed into texture for the floor.
Recreating the American Gothic house after which renovating the indoors become plenty of a laugh and a number of paintings. I couldn't have finished it the manner I did it with some other rendering application accessible. SketchUp's not locked behind a wall of proprietary software program. One of the reasons I like it so much is that it is fully included with the rest of the internet and I'm confined by way of my imagination alone.
So with that said, let's make a few videos!
All thanks go to Mark Johnson and Susan Prater from Kraftmaid; Bart Frost from Kraftmaid; Alex Oliver, Mike Tadros and Ann Savino from Igloo Studios; Eric Schimelpfenig from Sketch This!; Chris Cronin from Google and as always Peter Saal who got this whole ball rolling last year. You can download your own copy of Google SketchUp here. While you're downloading software, take Google Earth for a spin too.