Paul Lipsky, a resident of Plainview and an assistant professor in New York Institute of Technology's communication arts department, recently produced a new 3-D computer-animated identification package for the Discovery Kids programming block from 10 a.m. until 1 p.m. every Saturday and Sunday. This can be seen worldwide on The Discovery Channel's international channels starting in September.

As a 3-D animator, which he has been doing for over a decade, Lipsky works on a computer and uses many different software applications. "It is a cross between being an artist and being a technician," said Lipsky. "I have to bridge those two worlds." He take storyboards from his clients, which are visuals representing what the job will look like, and turns them into moving video.

With the Discovery project, Lipsky served as visual effects supervisor and senior animator from pre-production stages through final delivery and worked with his own undergraduate and graduate students and the Diecks Group, a multimedia communications company.

The Discovery project was much more difficult for Lipsky as it employed live action background. The ID package involved filming preteens along with a series of animals, including elephants, giraffes, boa constrictors and alligators, on a green screen set, which was camera tracked and replaced by a 3-D computer-generated background. The star of each shot was a 3-D flying logo that took on a personality and flew around the kids and animals. Lipsky was responsible for removing the green screen, adding the background and the logo of the Discovery Kids.

Lipsky's NYIT students worked on set as production assistants and were filmed as stand-ins during a day of testing in Manhattan. Involving students in such a project is an integral part of Lipsky's teaching philosophy.

"Being able to involve my students and having them learn from real on-air jobs made all the hard work of this large project worth the effort," said Lipsky. "One of the reasons I chose to enter academia fulltime was the opportunity to combine my computer graphics work with my love of education. I honestly feel that the best way for students to learn is to expose them to these kinds of experiences."

Through the hands-on experience, the students got to see the camera working and experience how complicated it was. According to Lipsky, it took three hours to shoot ten seconds of film. "Anything good takes a tremendous effort," said Lipsky, who earned his Masters of Fine Arts with a major in computer arts from the School of Visual Arts in New York City. "These types of experiences are the way you need to teach. In class, the students are not learning professionalism and how the real world works."

Lipsky is in the process of developing a program at NYIT - a cross between a small set of classrooms where students learn to "button-push" and also real environments where they take on projects.

Lipsky, who will begin his third year teaching at NYIT in September, is the founder of the Long Island chapter of Association for Computing Machinery/Special Interest Group in Computer Graphics (ACM SIGGRAPH). The special interest group consists of people who have an interest in computer graphics, either as a profession or as a hobby, and they spread the word about computer graphics.

Lipsky is involved in many projects and has been since he quit his job in the "real world" of computer graphics. "I am working harder than I did when I was in industry, but I am having a much better time," said Lipsky.