Pete Nichols

Medici Web Platform

Cultural Media Inc is a Museum magazine publisher based in Chicago. I was brought on board to design and program their web platform Medici. I went with a CMYK theme because of the companies foundation in print design and use these colors through out the site for categorization. The front-end is built on top of a RoR framework integrated with stripe. and a adminstrative back end for keeping track of ticket sales.

The Plug-in studio

The Plug-in Studio is a collaborative non-profit that uses social issue video games as a platform for community dialogue. They work with Chicago Public Schools to offer courses in underserved commuinities around the city. I'm currently teaching a game design fundementals class for them and have worked some really interesting projects like the one shown here where I built five arcade interfaces for a block party/outdoor gallery called "the street arcade." Photos by Hayward Suggs.

CMI Mobile App

A Mobile app mock up I made for Cultural Media INC. I'm working on rebranding for them as well so I wanted to make the diagram as neutral as possible. Medici is a museum discovery tool geared towards Chicago natives. One of the pain points they identified is the innability to search for exhibits in a uniform way. My solution is an exhibit feed where user's can scroll endlessly and find exhibits that match their taste. The feed can be narrowed down with tags and features.


#Usage: select the desired control curve then the desired bone(s)
#Creates a control group then 
#parents snaps, orients, zeroes out a selected curve.
# by g-kak teaches typing
import maya.cmds as cmds
def orient_controls(ctrl_crv_src, bone):
    transform = cmds.xform(bone, q = True,ws = True, t = True)
    ctrl_grp = cmds.group(em = True, n = str(bone) + "_ctrl_grp")
    cmds.move(transform[0],transform[1],transform[2], ctrl_grp)
    constraint = cmds.orientConstraint(bone, ctrl_grp)
    cmds.delete(constraint)
    ctrl_crv = cmds.duplicate(ctrl_crv_src)
    cmds.parent(ctrl_crv,ctrl_grp)
    cmds.rotate(0,0,0,ctrl_crv)
    cmds.move(0,0,0,ctrl_crv, os = True)
    control_constraint = cmds.orientConstraint(ctrl_crv, bone)
    cmds.rename(ctrl_crv, str(bone) + "_ctrl")

objects = cmds.ls(selection = True)
for s in range(1,len(objects)):
       orient_controls(objects[0], objects[s])

Python Orient Tool

A super simple tool for orienting and renaming 3D animation controllers. Setting up FK chains can be pretty tedious especially in the hands and spine. A common method involves creating an empty group, orient constraining to the joint, deleting the constraint and parenting a control curve. This script automates that process.

Modular Design for Classroom Education

Last summer I got to teach 32 incredibly brilliant kids at Duke University's talent Identification program. I created 100 consecutive hours of course material involving 3D modeling, fabrication and some simple scripting demos. The image of the rattle snake is our final class project. While I modeled the head, each student was responsible for creating a a piece of the body using parametric tools and radial arrays. Each portion fallows the exact same technical specifications but the radial patterns were left to the students to design. The point of this excercise was to show my students how STEM excercises can provide a framework for artwork and that both disciplines are equally important. The link below is our student run blog where you can see their individual projects. special thanks to Chloe for setting it up and taking the photos! Student Blog

Bio Mechanics