Posted on September 13, 2007

• I got the distinct impression, from both reading the comments and looking at the ratings, that “The Shrouded Desert” was not a favorite. Ok, they can’t all be winners I guess. Still, I didn’t want to leave it as is so I went back and changed it up a little and rendered a new version. The camera angle has changed, as has the atmosphere. I’ve removed a lot of the extra peaks and I’ve added some vegetation to help with the sense of scale. All in all, I like this one better than the original (which will go to the Pickle Jar). I hope you agree!
• Thanks for all the kind birthday wishes! My Mom watched the kids so Jessie and I could go into Chicago and spend the day. It was a great birthday!

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Posted on September 10, 2007

• I mentioned last week that I was working on a new project and I wanted to have it ready to go before my birthday. It’s up now with four hours to spare. The new wallpaper is called “The Shrouded Desert” and you will find it on the New Images page. This project was another exercise for me to learn more about using Zbrush to create different landforms. Hopefully I am getting better at it.

  I’m going to spend tomorrow enjoying my birthday (my 36th) and get busy on a multi-screen version ASAP.

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Posted on September 6, 2007

• It’s been a while since I posted so I thought you all might like a status report. Last week I decided to take a few days off to work on some non-art related projects and rest my brain a little. I started back in on another project this week but it’s not quite ready yet (I have a render completed but it’s not gallery-worthy yet). I’m going to be working on it through the weekend though and hope to have it early next week (hopefully before my birthday Tuesday) if not sooner.

• A couple of months ago I was looking for some new music to listen to while working and I came upon a band called “State Radio”. The more songs I listened to the more I liked them and now they rank as one of my favorite bands around.

  Why am I telling you this? I was just looking at their website and it looks like they are giving away free downloads of all their previous albums (to celebrate their upcoming release). Wish I had known they were going to do this before I bought them on iTunes. Oh well. If you only download one, I recommend “Us Against The Crown”. Enjoy!

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Posted on August 27, 2007

• A number of folks mentioned that the dual-monitor version of “Dispersion” posted yesterday did not split well across two screens (one of the bottles was cut down the middle). I’ve rendered a new version of the dualscreen which fixes this problem. Thanks for the feedback!

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Posted on August 26, 2007

• I’ve added dual and triple-screen versions of “Dispersion” to the gallery this morning. There’s been some wonderful suggestions for improving the image in the comments, but I think I’m happy with it as is. Thanks for the feedback though!

• I mentioned last time that I was at a loss as to why my abstracts are rated lower than the scenery images. I’ve been thinking about it though and I’ve come to the conclusion that scenery images, even though they are art, are more likely to be judged objectively than abstracts. In other words, there is a “right answer” with sceneries and the ratings will tend to be on one side of the scale or the other depending on the merits of the image. Abstracts, however, are judged subjectively. Some people are going to like them and some people aren’t. There’s no “right answer”. Thus the ratings are more spread out and the average is always going to be lower.

  I don’t think this means that abstracts are worse than the sceneries, just that less people agree on what makes a good abstract.

  That’s my two cents any way. What do you think?

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