Posted on July 7, 2009

• If I hadn’t been laid up the past couple of weeks I probably would have stopped my workstation in the middle of its epic re-rendering of “Enshrouded”. Since I didn’t have anything better for it to be doing I let it go.

  The render finally finished this afternoon and I’ve posted it on the New Images page for your review. The clouds look more like fog to me now and that is what I was going for. Too bad my workstation isn’t fast enough to render these sorts of effects more quickly.

  I will set my other renderer going on a multi-screen render ASAP.

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• As far as the site tweaking goes I think I am done for now. I’ve taken some of the advice given and I have dramatically shortened the links on the left. Access to the gallery is now through the “gallery” link (or the “Newest Images” link above) and once there you can browse my images in a number of ways.

  I’ve removed the background image. The people who hated it really hated it a lot and the people who liked it were like “sure whatever”. I’ve also added a comment form to the top of each comments page so you can more easily add your own.

  Yes, this site is due for a majhor overhaul using the most modern technology. That will have to wait until I am on my new server though. To be honest, I’m thinking about bringing someone on to help with the web design part of the job. I would rather concentrate more on my artwork.

  Anywyay, thanks everyone for the feeback thus far. Let me know what you think of the newest layout.

  Comments (68)

Posted on July 6, 2009

• Thanks for all the feedback! From what I can gather, the background will only work if it doesn’t contain a focal point. Makes sense to me. I’ve replaced the Phraxis background with something a little more neutral. Somewhere down the line I will make it so you can choose to have a background or not (and maybe choose from a number of different styles).
  I’ve made one rather large non-cosmetic change. I’ve removed the gallery links from the left hand list. Rather than go year-to-rear, you can now just hit up the “gallery” page, see them all, and go from there. I’ve removed the “Lightbox” script so clicking the thumbnail now takes you to the larger thumbnail with download options. I may tweak the navagation options on the gallery page a little (make it so you can download the size you want without clicking to the new page for instance). I’d like to hear what you guys think of the change.
• Late Update: After hearing from a number of Members I have decided to leave the “year” links in place.

Posted on July 5, 2009

• You might notice a few cosmetic changes here and there. Sometime soon I will be migrating to a new server so I am refreshing my CSS/HTML skills by tweaking my site design. Comments welcome!

Posted on July 1, 2009

• Time for an update. As you may have noticed, things have slowed down somewhat around here during the past month. The truth is that my medical condition has flared up again and I had to have surgery last Tuesday. The surgery was a “redo” of a procedure I had done originally in December, which turned out to be unsuccessful.

  The recovery wasn’t too bad last time so I assumed the same would be true this time around. My Doctor had other ideas though and added some hardware to the procedure to give it a better chance of success. I hope it works because the last week has really been hell on Earth for me.

  I’m pretty much bedridden now (typing this on my laptop) and I don’t know how long this will last. At least I am not in the hospital I guess. I sure hope this works (and I never have to go through with it again).

  I have set my workstation rendering an “improved” version of “Enshrouded”. The clouds look a lot more like fog and are less busy.Realism comes at a price CPU-wise though. It still has a couple of days left to go and I will try to post it as soon as it is done. I will get a multi-screen render going on another machine after that so I can get busy on a new wallpaper as soon as I can stand sitting at my computer.

  I also have a few renders sitting around that I didn’t think were “gallery-quality” but that some of you might enjoy checking out. I’ll try to get those into the Pickle Jar shortly.

• One thing that has made the last week a little less terrible is that I finally got an iPhone. I’ve been exploring it the past couple of days and I can already see some DB-iPhone possibilies. My kids bought me an iTunes gift card for Father’s Day so I’ve been raiding the AppStore. If any of you can recommend some apps/games that will help me take my mind off all of this please feel free to share. I’ve already downloaded “Enigmo” and “Flight Control” am they’re both really cool.

Posted on June 25, 2009

• I started a new render of my project last night, but when I saw this morning that it had two days left before it would be complete I decided that enough was enough. I’m not completely happy with the render I have, but I’ve gone ahead and posted it for your review rather than make you all wait any longer. The wallpaper is called “Enshrouded” and you’ll find it on the new images page. I am in the process of making some changes so be sure to check back in a day or two as there may be a newer version available.

  This new image takes full advantage of the cloud rendering technology available in the newest version of Vue d’Esprit. The clouds looks great but they still take forever to render, even on my 8-core workstation. Perhaps another hardware upgrade is in order soon…

• Sort of on that subject; when I lowered the price on the Lifetime Memberships last month a lot of people asked if they could continue making donations even though they are permanent Members. I’ve added a form just for that purpose. If you look in the middle of the link column to your left you will see a “tip” box. $2 is in the field by default but you can make donations of any amount you like. The button will lead you to a form where you can enter your credit card or PayPal details. Thanks everyone!
• MaDonna Update: It looks like she has taken down the majority of her collection so I am happy. Thanks to everyone for helping out with this!
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06/18/09

• I hope to have my new wallpaper ready by tomorrow. As I mentioned on the Twitter feed and Facebook page, we took a little family trip last week to visit some friends in Austin, TX. I’ve been working on this project since Friday.

  Lately, I’ve gotten a number of emails from folks alerting me to the fact that my work is being used by another designer in the “Firefox Personas” gallery. Personas are a way to apply an image to your web browser interface, kind of like a skin. Just so everyone will know, I haven’t decided what to do about this MaDonna person. The Persona gallery doesn’t really allow you to contact the designer and she/he doesn’t have any links that I could find. Guess I will have to go through the site.

  Anyway, the experience inspired me to create a few of my own “Personas” (while waiting for renders) and you can check them out here. If the response is positive I could see making a few more.

  Look for the new render hopefully within the next couple of days. TGIF.

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06/02/09

• Added the dual and triple-screen versions of “Beginning of the End” to the gallery this evening. I would have had them up sooner, but I chose to render each version separately. I chose to split the dual-screen version down the middle because it just didn’t look right all shoved over onto one side. Hope it looks okay!
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