“Blender as an Educational Tool” by Gumster

With the ubiquity of technology increasing, teaching artists has become more multifaceted. Art students are typically taught to think very openly and conceptually. While extremely beneficial, a problem arises when graduating artists have no developed means of analytical problemsolving, putting them at a disadvantage when dealing with the technology they use to create their art. It is critical that computing courses that include programming be introduced early in an art student’s career, exposing them to the knowledge of how their tools work. A solution to this is to use the open source 3D modeling and animation suite, Blender, and its integration with the Python scripting language as a means of teaching this valueable way of thinking to artists.