Polygon Home

Back in 1999, I initially intended Pollie Gone Home to be an exercise in teaching myself more about 3D modeling and animation. I had no intention of producing anything more than a flythrough of the japanese-style treehouse I modeled, itself a blend of my own interests calculated to sustain my attention throughout the uncertainties of the production.

Once the treehouse was done, though, it begged to be explored by more than a simple flythrough. So, Pollie was born, a little wooden bird as peculiar, in its way, as the elaborate treehouse seemed to be. The story that evolved between them took on a life of its own, in the process forcing me to learn much more than I had anticipated.

The project took three months to complete, start to finish, including a solid week of rendering. I used 3D Studio Max for every aspect of the modeling and animation, Photoshop for texture editing, and the Iomega Buz VideoWave system to edit the 26 scenes together and output to videotape. 

Just for the heck of it, and being a recent transplant to the San Francisco Bay area, I entered Pollie in the North Bay Multimedia Association's annual competition, and was very surprised to learn I won Best of Show.