Shawn Olson Creative Arts

Art, Poetry, Photography, Writing and 3D

Greetings Earthling. Welcome to my creative portal. My name is Shawn Olson. I'm a creative jack-of-all trades who has years of experience in 3ds Max, game development, web development, journalism, photography, graphics and parenting. You may know me as a technical artist for Black Mesa or as the developer of Wall Worm if you came here as a game developer. I now also work on USD workflows and capabilities in 3ds Max and Maya at Autodesk. All opinions here are my own.

If you need help with any of these things, then I'm your guy:

Problem Solving
3D Environments
3D Assets
3ds Max pipelines
Game Design
Documentation
Journalistic Coverage
Application Education
Web Application Development

If you must know more about me, feel free to read A Short Biography. But more importantly, enjoy the various photos, poems, editorials and scripts across the site.

I always enjoy feedback from visitors. Feel free to send me an email with any comments, ideas, praise, criticism or corrections. Of course you can always interact with me on the Wall Worm forums or other 3D forums where I haunt.

Latest Articles

Get a Form Element's Label with JavaScript

Posted by Shawn Olson on Jul 7, 2009 | Last Updated Nov 12, 2011

This JavaScript finds the label for a form element, which is helpful for dynamically highlighting or changing a label based on user input.

Jack Buckingham Retires after 31 Years in SWCS

Posted by Shawn Olson on May 30, 2009 | Last Updated Nov 12, 2011

Jack Buckingham was one of my teachers at Westland High School. This is a short feature on Buck.

buckingham, buck, westland, high school, whs

Web Statistics

Posted by Shawn Olson on Mar 30, 2009 | Last Updated Nov 12, 2011

A brief introduction to understanding website statistics, including a discussion of visits, hits and other topics to be aware of.

website, stats, statistics, logs, analyze, traffic, visits, hits

Animal House

Posted by Shawn Olson on Mar 27, 2009 | Last Updated Nov 12, 2011

Our home is the animal house. A golden retriever, a cat, a chinchilla, fish and several children roam the hallways of the house. And others live outside.

animal, animals, dogs, cats, fish, pets

Dab Attributes

Posted by Shawn Olson on Jan 25, 2009 | Last Updated Nov 12, 2011

Video tutorial demonstrating the usage of dab attributes to control the look of brush strokes in Corel PHOTO-PAINT.

dab, dabs, attribute, attributes, brush, cpt, ppt, photopaint

Custom Nibs in Corel PHOTO-PAINT

Posted by Shawn Olson on Jan 12, 2009 | Last Updated Nov 12, 2011

This is a video tutorial on how to create custom nibs in Corel PHOTO-PAINT. This example uses Corel PHOTO-PAINT X4 but applies to older versions as well.

corel, photopaint, nibs, custom nib, video, tutorial, cpt

The Barack Obama Presidency

Posted by Shawn Olson on Nov 15, 2008 | Last Updated Nov 12, 2011

Some observations on American politics and culture in the wake of the election of Barack Obama to the presidency of the United States of America.

barack obama, america, president, barrack

Wild Mercy

Posted by Shawn Olson on Sep 27, 2008 | Last Updated Nov 10, 2015

Photos of a contemporary Celtic rock musicians Wild Mercy.

Promoting Interest in the Classroom

Posted by Shawn Olson on Sep 22, 2008 | Last Updated Nov 12, 2011

An essay about the role teachers play in making subjects interesting, valuable and relevant to students. Prompted by an Open-House visit to Westland High School.

education, interest