Art lessons. (editor's note).

Any client who has worked with an artist--or any artist who has worked with a client--knows that when both parties are in sync, the outcome can be a great success; but when they're not, it can be a disaster.

This month, we were fortunate enough to have the former experience with an artist without even really trying. In fact, the outcome was so successful, we thought we'd ask how he was able to exceed expectations with minimal direction and absolutely no follow-up communication.

The story begins when we asked 3D artists in the XYZ & You users group (www.xyzand-you.org) to participate in a contest to help us spruce up our serviceable but simple 2002 Computer Graphics World Innovation Awards logo. Our original 2D logo worked well in the print article describing the winners (see December 2002, pg. 28) and as an icon in our e-newsletter and Web site announcements. But when it came to designing the actual award plaques, we felt we needed something as innovative as the developers we were honoring.

So we provided the willing XYZ & You artists with the original logo and asked them to enhance it "by creating a 3D version and taking some artistic license." In return, we offered to display the winner's work on our Web site (though in the end, we chose to highlight it here, as well).

Two weeks later, on deadline, we received a half dozen of the top entries, as determined by the users group president. And after much debate, we selected our favorite (above), a stunning 3D rendition by Michael Ingrassia, a classically trained artist from Bellevue, Washington (www.mephytis.com/Michael), who impressed us with a bold, clean look; a sense of motion; a dramatic choice of materials and colors; a powerful use of lighting; and a faithfulness to the original design intent.

How did he do it? According to Ingrassia, the assignment was typical of what a commercial artist could be expected to create on any given day, but the interaction (or lack of it) with the client (us) was anything but. "I used 3ds max as my modeling tool running on a dual processor Pentium 4 system with a GeForce 3 video card," he says. "I spent 30 minutes modeling the scene, then about two to three hours lighting it and arranging the camera angle until I was pleased with the overall balance. My initial thought was to use more organic shapes, but that would have been light years from your original concept. So I simply tried to match what you had regarding shape and color. I brought in volume lighting to add a sense of mystique to the scene and give it a professional appearance that I thought would be appropriate for a magazine specializing in computer graphics. The only artistic license I took was to make the star look like glass to give it more importance over the plainly colored box shapes."

As he worked, Ingrassia says that he relied on his instincts and had to make numerous assumptions. But he would not normally recommend this approach. "If I had a one-on-one relationship with you, I would have ...