Specimen

3D, motion, visual design
Rhode Island School of Design, 2020
Instructor: Cem Eskinazi

As academic establishments were shifting to remote learning due to COVID-19, the idea of digital preservation felt increasingly relevant.

A digital archive of beings that used to be, Specimen is inspired by Cyanotype, a photographic printing process often used by naturalists in the 19th century—on the one hand precise, scientific, but on the other ethereal, ghostly, mystical.

I began work on this project during my last physical days at RISD. I finished it in quarantine in NYC.

I digitally sculpted the skulls of these nine animals—fox, oribi, king vulture, ram, snapping turtle, wolverine, barred owl, black bear, and human—based on 3D scans I made of real specimens from the Edna W. Lawrence Nature Lab.