Spider-Man and His Amazing Mural in Johnstown, Pennsylvania


I'm used to seeing public acts of nerdity at stores, conventions, and theme parks. That said, it still makes me smile to see a small town recognize and celebrate its connection to nerd culture.

Steve Ditko (1927 - 2018) was a comic book artist who is mostly known for co-creating popular superhero characters such as Spider-Man and Doctor Strange. He was born in Johnstown, Pennsylvania; last year, the local Bottle Works Ethnic Arts Center honored Ditko in Johnstown through a commemorative mural painting which consists of 50 panels that were combined to form a Marvel Comics-approved 49-foot by 28-foot mural that hangs on the exterior of the Stone Bridge Brewery. This mural even has its own Facebook page.


I visited Johnstown a few weeks ago to see this mural for myself, and it is very impressive. Not only does it show local pride around Ditko's accomplishments, but it also celebrates the more abstract and psychedelic aspects of his art that he put in the pages of the Doctor Strange comics (art that is alluded to frequently in the recent live-action Doctor Strange movies). 

An example of Ditko's psychedelic art style in Doctor Strange.

Being a fan of 3D and VR, I couldn't just limit myself to taking a few pictures of this tribute--I also tried to create a 3D scan of it for fans who cannot make it Johnstown themselves to see this tribute. It's one thing to see this mural in a small picture; it's another to see it in its original (or close to original) size. It changes the experience completely. I used the photogrammetry capability of Polycam to take a series of photos of the mural to generate a 3D model. While Polycam did a great job at capturing the textures of the mural's surface on the bottom, the mural model warped towards the top. 


To compensate for the warping, I cropped the 3D model and then used Blender to attach part of a photograph of the mural to replace the top half. While the two halves don't line up perfectly, they are close enough to recapture the look and feel of the mural as it stands in Johnstown. I shot a brief video of the 3D model in augmented reality (AR) so you can see what the end result looks like:


I created a QR code for my Steve Ditko mural 3D model that you can use to see and experience the mural for yourself. Just download Adobe Aero onto your smartphone or tablet, and then find a solid horizontal surface where you can place the model. Be sure to find a large space with good lighting to see the 3D model, because I made the model as large as I could to match the actual mural. 






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