This term our learning journey has been about the Romans and part of that journey has included the story of Pompeii. Working with my class we have been creating poems and collages on our topic of volcanos.
For some of the pupils I gave an extension task of creating a low poly volcano scene. I was inspired to create low poly art by the recent wave of games which use this aesthetic to create beautiful stylised pieces. Low poly first gained real prominence with the first wave of polygon games on the Playstation (which celebrates its 20th anniversary this year), looking at the image below you can see that the art was in it's early stages but there was a cubist beauty to its angles and contours. I've written in detail about the return of low poly art here.
One of the best examples of polygons in the Playstation era- Spyro was loved by millions.
To create the low poly art we used the software Polygen, a free app on iOS which was very simple and quick to use. The children selected picture of a volcano and then tapped the vertices, once this was done they finalised their work and these are the results
We do not have Photoshop at my school yet but there is a great guide on how to use this piece of software to make more detailed and striking low poly art. Low poly is here and it's the new wave in retro gaming inspired art.