Category Archives: Portfolio

Automotive Design Course at the College for Creative Studies

Automotive design course at CCS
Automotive design course at CCS
Clement Shimizu and Gary Meyer of the University of Minnesota
The students of the College for Creative Studies

As visiting scholars, Clement Shimizu and Gary Meyer helped teach a special course at the renowned College for Creative Studies. The industrial design department offers an automotive design course where students design a car from concept art to fully painted clay mock-up. The students used the BRDF Design Suite to pick and design colors for their concept vehicles. The colors were formulated and sprayed onto clay models.

Image Based Appearance Design

Image of the the Ford Motor Company's S Studio
Image of the the Ford Motor Company’s S Studio
Clement Shimizu and Seth Berrier of the University of Minnesota

A special rendering engine was designed to allow for real time material editing when using high dynamic range environment maps. In this image Ford’s S Studio was photographically captured using hundreds of photos from various angles and exposures. This environment map is used for interactive design and realistic rendering of automotive paints.

Houminn Practice’s Cloak Wall

Architectural Facade by Houminn Practice featuring a progression of Metallic surface coatings selected with Computer Aided Color Appearance Design tools
Architectural Facade by Houminn Practice featuring a progression of Metallic surface coatings selected with Computer Aided Color Appearance Design tools
Title: Houminn Practice’s Cloak Wall

Team: Marc Swackhamer of HouMinn Practice; Seth Berrier, Clement Shimizu, and Gary Meyer of the University of Minnesota; Allan Rodriguez and David Griffus of DuPont Performance Coatings

The prototype of the Cloak Wall was exhibited in the Goldstein Museum of Design. The key colors in the color scheme were selected directly from the photograph of the intended site using the BRDF Design Suite and interpolated mathematically.

This is the Color

Spot Color Preview Tool For Specialty Color Treatments By: Clement Shimizu, Sarah Steil, Nicole Steinhofer When creating product packaging, the appearance of specialty color treatments, like foils and embossing, is unknown until the design is sent through the printing press. Mistakes are costly, if not impossible, to correct at this stage. A software prototype was created to explore the utility of an Adobe Illustrator plugin to show a realistic preview of specialty foil and gloss spot colors. Continue reading This is the Color

Metallic Foil Logo Designer

Design Housing and Apparel Logo contest
Metallic Foil Design Software Workspace
Software Title: Metallic Foil Logo Designer By: Clement Shimizu and Sarah Steil Sarah Steil(then graduate student from Design Housing and Apparel (DHA)) and I partnered to win first prize in a logo design contest for the University of Minnesota. Instead of creating a single static logo, we created a whole software work-space for rapid prototyping of metallic foil logo designs. Personal note: I enjoyed the privilege of taking three courses in the UMN DHA program as a graduate student of Computer Science. This particular project was a done as part of a project where Computer Science students were paired with Design students. The student pairs created collaborative work in the area of color in computer graphics and design. I have very high recommendations for educational programs that provide opportunities where creative minds are joined with technical minds to realize ideas that would be impossible otherwise.

The Wall of Inspiration

Benjamin Moore Wall of Inspiration for previewing architectural color finishes
Benjamin Moore Wall of Inspiration for previewing architectural color finishes
Title: The Wall of Inspiration University of Minnesota Team: Seth Berrier, Clement Shimizu, Gary Meyer, and D’nardo Colucci Benjamin Moore Paints Team: Patrick Chong and Carl Minchew The Wall of Inspiration was a joint project between the University of Minnesota and Benjamin Moore paints. Customers are often dissatisfied with how different a color looks on a large wall compared to a small color chip. The purpose of the project was to explore the question of electronic color on a large scale display device. By carefully utilizing gloss and BRDF measurements we were able to create a realistic shader that simulated the appearance of paint given the various gloss levels.