MICA is a digital camera concept that began life as my 2015 industrial design senior thesis project at the University of Cincinnati's DAAP program. The motivation behind it was to try to imagine the convergence point between the ever-increasing quality of smart phone camera technology, and the trend of compact mirrorless prosumer cameras becoming popular amongst hobbyist photographers and professionals.

MICA takes inspiration for it's UI/UX from the things that smart phones do well in terms of their immediacy and simplicity of use, like allowing the user to edit photos right after taking them, use touch gestures to easily manage and organize their photo library, and transfer photos wirelessly to share them. It seeks to maintain enough precision and tactile hardware-based controls to not be alienating to users who want the familiar experience of adjusting manual settings on the fly while shooting with a higher end camera.

Although MICA began as my senior thesis, it had a second life after I graduated from college and began pursuing my skills in product visualization. I used it as a launching point to learn Cinema4D, Octane, and even concepted out a product film narrative under the mentorship of Ash Thorp as part of his Main Title Design class on Learn Squared.

While I never truly finished the project in the way I wanted to (I have a tendency to leave unfinished personal projects on the shelf for years), the visuals I created represent an important point in my journey as a 3D artist, and I'm still proud of them, as well as the camera concept itself. A decade after graduating, it still feels relevant to current trends that are happening in the photography space.

Industrial Design, 3D Art, Art Direction