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This is why I should keep going

Filed Under: General, Images by Mr. Mandelbrot — 1 Comment

19/11/2010

Many thanks to the guys at Orbit Trap to have quoted my opinions, to slightly discuss them and more, to understood them perfectly. I’m more than anything learning to be honest with my own feelings (artistically and in everything else) so whatever I’ve said here about my disappointments with fractal stuff in general that was repercuted by Orbit Trap is absolutely true. Whenever I say I am hating Apophysis for example, I really do. But I’m hating the Deviant kind of Apophysis – the mass-produced, randomized thing.

I don’t have any personal or commercial links to any of these people (from the evil or the good side of the force) so I just said what happened to me and my creative process during all these years and how to following the self-similarity flock was making me a worse artist and making extremely bored. And I think I could only understand what was going on when I read these posts at Orbit trap pointing me to some obvious things that most people (comfortably) refuse to see, better still have your comment box filled with friends pats on the back than making something you’re enjoying.

I’m touching some sensitive fields now I guess trying the Mandelbulb images (and I’m starting to like them despite hating it at first), as they seem to be the latest hit of the moment, but as there isn’t much of a community or group dedicated to that (not that I have seen) except the few posts at the Fractal Forums neither too many tutorials in the common corporate fractal galleries, which I try as much as possible not to read unless i’m looking for a fix for a problem, I am a bit “isolated” from whatever kind of “style trend” in Mandelbulbs that might be en vogue (sorry for the french) so far and I’m very pleased with the images I’m making even though I can make only an image a week or something. I see a lot of posts mentioning “whipped cream”, “cathedrals” etc. etc. but I have no idea how to do that neither I want to do that kind of thing. I’m using Mandelbulb 3D just like when I first started Fractint: using my instinct. I liked what I did? OK, I’ll save and post. I didn’t like? Let’s start again.

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To be or not to be…

Filed Under: General by Mr. Mandelbrot — Comments Off

13/07/2010

… in the latest fractal trend?

It seems that the new thing is the Mandelbulb. There are some nice images, I might try it sometime (and I already have some ideas on where to go if I ever try it), if it’s nothing too complex and for mathematicians only (a.k.a. boring). Some of these fractal softwares are too time consuming before you can do anything useful – artistically – with them and I’m not willing to spend a lot of time (re)learning how to use it neither I want to use it just doing random renders like most Apophysis users/”artists” do.

I was never much a fan of these quaternion images, but now the details in this new kind of image are interesting.

Update: no, I’m not impressed. Maybe in the future. I’d never replace my Fractint for that.

Update 2: Well, Mandelbulb 3D seems better. Easier to use, slow as fuck but way more interesting.

Update 3: When I said “better” I mean that it’s better than the other Mandelbulb software I had tested, but it’s still nothing special and I’m not really interested. Unfortunately, a lot of visitors of this site are looking for Mandelbulbs. I won’t surrender.

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This is really annoying.

Filed Under: Uncategorized by Mr. Mandelbrot — Comments Off

28/06/2010

I was searching for some fractal related words in Google to check if Mundo Fractal was already being listed (it is!), and it surprised me the amount of sites, blogs, image galleries, personal sites and everything else that has the word “fractal” attached to their names and brands when their main subjects, products or goods they sell etc. have absolutely NOTHING do to with fractals. Of course most are somehow related, but there are a few sites ranked quite high at Google that are absolute garbage, but the worst is that they aren’t about fractals at all. Not Google’s fault though, it’s the same as in the past, pre-Google days, when people used to disguise a bunch of “hot keywords” in their pages (mostly using text in the same colour as the background of the page), with a huge list of porn-related words. This used to work for some time, until they started ignoring keywords and started indexing actual content instead.

Some people like to use the most modern and technical words they can find (meaning? who cares) to sound “hip” and “cool” or as their main “brands” or just to place these words here and there in their “about me” pages to look smarter, if you look or sound outdated on the interwebs you’re doomed. But calling your pet shop (or something so distant from fractals as that) “The Fractal Dog” or something like that is just stupid. It might sound nice as a band name, but as a brand or a serious magazine about something absolutely different from fractals? Not really.

Some (most) people don’t have any idea about what a fractal might be (let alone a more or less accurate description – it’s not required that everyone knows exactly what it is though), but it sounds nice and smart and “scientifical” to name my blog The Fractal Porn, so let’s use it. I just found for example about a psychology magazine in Portuguese that is called just that – Fractal. As I’ve mentioned before, you have the right to name your kids anything you want, and it applies to your creations as well – they’re your kids too, in a sense. WTF, whomever came up with that magazine name even knows how to use Apophysis, their banner has a flame fractal. Why can’t they call it Fractal? They can, that’s for sure. But it’s like calling a McDonald’s “Vegan’s Place” just because “Vegan” is a nice and healthy word.

I wouldn’t like to be diagnosed with a “fractal” personality, mostly by a shrink that is a subscriber of this Fractal magazine. I’m still not that crazy or stupid. Oh and BTW they would love to test this software at that magazine.