Key Largo

Posted on October 11, 2021

Inspired by the towering clouds I would see billowing from below the horizon over the Gulf of Mexico during our brief Florida getaway in August. I wanted to see how the VDB clouds (which are a different type than I usually employ in VUE) handle lighting effects and I like what I see. This scene rendered in under 2 hours rather than the 24+ it normally would have taken.

NFT Schedule

Posted on October 4, 2021

My first month selling NFTs on Foundation was amazing. It was fun, crazy, chaotic and profitable. It was also sort of unsustainable so I’ve gone ahead and created a schedule of (less frequent) upcoming drops. I will be minting something from my recent renders on Mondays, something from the “classic” collection on Wednesday, and something “big” on Fridays. No minting on the weekends 🙂

My son Ian gave me the idea for the schedule because he saw how much of my bandwidth all this was consuming. “It will let you be an artist too” he said, which was probably the most mature thing I’ve ever heard him say. I love that kid 🙂

Fun as it is, I don’t want the NFT thing to consume my life. I want it to strengthen DB. Rather I am using some of the funds to finally bring on a developer, Cris Henderson, who’s been helping me put together the DB of the future. I just may let him run the backend stuff going forward so I can concentrate on rendering and chatting with you guys about my 20+ years in digital art. I also intend to expand my free offerings so folks who don’t feel like spending money yet can still enjoy my work.

My favorite part of this NFT experience has been taking some of the ETH I’ve earned from my sales and purchasing artwork from lesser known, but highly talented artists who could use some exposure. The folks that collect my work have made bids on some of theirs and I like to gift the artwork I buy to my top collectors as a reward for their support. It’s made for some interesting exchanges on Twitter (where most NFT discussion seems to take place) 🙂

And if all that’s not exciting enough, all of this has rekindled Ian’s interest in digital art <3

I see some really interesting times ahead. Hope you will stick with me for them as you always have 🙂

Pharos (2021) (Night)

Posted on September 20, 2021

The real trick with a good night scene is to make it dark but also have details in the right places so it isn’t just too flat. Sometimes I have to rely on moonlight if the scene is uninhabited, but this time I have a little help.

I hope you enjoy it!!

Pharos (2021)

Posted on September 17, 2021

Sorry I got a bit distracted launching my NFT line last week. Back to business!

VUE comes with some great plants, but it also has a pretty nice object library including a set of amazing lighthouses. The last time I tried to model a lighthouse a lot of folks thought it looked a bit more ribald than I had intended (:-D) but the render was otherwise popular. This new model shouldn’t have that problem (whew!). For this version I chose to turn the camera around and feature the landscape rather than the ocean.

I hope you enjoy it!!

My First NFT

Posted on September 4, 2021

I know this probably won’t interest the majority of you, but after months of consideration I’ve minted my first NFT on Foundation.

Important: NFT sales will not effect the availability of my images in the Members Gallery. I retain all copyrights!

Folks have been asking me to jump into this for a long time and I simply can no longer ignore the market. It wasn’t easy picking a render to lead off with but I think I found a nice one. “Dispersion” is of my favorites actually 🙂

I don’t intend to send out emails or make a lot of constant noise on DB about these so I hope you will follow me on Foundation if you are interested futher. Whether or not I add more NFTs will depend on if how well this one does. It cost me quite a bit just to list it so I am hoping for the best!!

I know NFTs are a bit controversial and I hope I don’t anger too many of you by getting to this field. If hundreds of people were signing up as Members every day I probably wouldn’t try it but selling wallpapers online has always been a difficult (but fun) business model. If you guys want DB to stick around another 20 years then NFTs are part of the equation. Thanks for understanding!

I honestly wasn’t sure how to price this so I aimed low to test the waters. LMK if you have any questions!