Guest Appearances

Justin Cross is an Art Bully Productions 3D character artist. You may be familiar with Art Bully Productions from games such as Fortnite and Amnesia. Cross will discuss 3D character design and give a brief demo on some 3D art pieces he has been working on. Ask him what it’s like to work in the video game industry!

Margaret Oakes is professor of English at Furman University. Her area of focus is 16th- and 17th-century British poetry, and she currently teaches Early Modern Literature and Humanities. In her talk “Flying Cars, Floo Powder, and Flaming Torches: The Hi-Tech, Low-Tech World of Harry Potter,” Oakes discusses the creation of J.K. Rowling’s fictional universe as a world parallel to our own in many ways. We share some technological achievements such as the wheel, optics, and basic engineering principles. With the added ability to control their world through magic, however, Rowling’s wizards have opted out of advancing through science. Their powers over natural forces outstrip ours in many areas, yet they have chosen in others to retain the old ways. Why do they prefer this combination of the antiquated and the advanced? How might Harry Potter’s world help us reflect on the “magic” of our own technology?