Tag Archive: image names


Fractal Gallery 36

Again it’s mostly the old-school images. Most of them where done with the Orgform formula collection, some were done with the fract_ml (I guess) collection which is a collection of formulas used in images submitted to the Fractint mailing list from what I could get.

I refused to try any enhancements on them using UltraFractal this time (but it doesn’t mean I won’t rework some of these images), and I’ve used UF just to render them in bigger sizes and to make them smoother because of the colour number limitations of Fractint, as usual.

There are some images that just don’t work, or it’s because of a certain parameter used in Fractint isn’t available in UF (like the “one” and some others like “cosxx”, usually replacing them with “cos” works) or because some of Fractint’s native colouring methods don’t work that well in UF (like the epsiloncross, and sometimes just replacing the outside/inside with the UF equivalent doesn’t work). Sometimes it’s just a matter of a small tweak, sometimes it doesn’t work at all no matter what you do.

Some images are entirely different when rendered in UF and are missing most of its main”theme” parts when they really don’t work, so I’ve decided to render these that can’t be fixed at all using Fractint. They had to be rendered in GIF, 256 colours, using disk render and 1600 x 1200 resolutions and later converted to JPEG. Unfortunately, if the original image had some imperfections like bandings, these can’t be fixed, but I guess most of them look fine as they are. Some of these imperfections even make them look more authentic and “vintage”.

I’ve named them using sort of a template, something like “OF-XX” where “OF” means “Orgform” and XX is the number of the image, or “OS-XX”, “OS” meaning “old school”. In specific images, I’ve used the “regular” naming, if they were really asking for a name. But as they are mostly abstract images, the template method works.

Enough talking, here we go:

PS. I didn’t edit the tags and details of these images yet, will do that later.

Related Images:

The chosen ones, part IV

From Fractal Gallery 10, “Inbetween days”:

Fractint and quite simple, using one of these odd colour maps (maybe it’s even its default map, not sure). But it ended up being extremely similar to the theme of the face painting used in the video for the song of the same name by The Cure. Again, seems like a tribute, but it was an accident, one of these that only happens with Fractint. Here’s some screen caps of the video:

A screen cap of the video by The Cure

Inbetween days - from Tim Pope's site

Inbetween Days

Inbetween Days video

It’s funny that some of these accidental images are related to The Cure (some of course were kind of inspired by or made while listening to their music as it’s one of my favourite bands), as it seems that Robert Smith himself was kind of the person that actually made me (or… forced me to!) put up a webpage to display my fractals.

When I started making my first images, it was about the same time that they were experimenting with a relatively new technology at the time (1997/98), video broadcastings and video chats. They set up a camera in the studio while recording their latest single at the time, Wrong Number (every other band does this nowadays… so it might not sound as exciting as it was back then), and we used to hang out there and chat with some of them almost every day, and even Robert Smith himself used to appear after the sessions were finished for a brief chat. It was a lot of fun, even with the poor connection I had these days (try a video chat using a 14.4 modem…), it was worth it every minute.

At this same time they had a fractal theme full of Mandelbrots in their official website (unfortunately the Web Archive doesn’t have it saved, it was very nice… maybe some fansite still have it), so I figured Robert was a bit interested in fractals… or at least knew what they were as there is even a song in the Wild Mood Swings album (their last one at that time) that is called “Strange attractions”, that says “strange attractions spread its wings/it varies but the smallest things/you’ll never know how anything will change”… makes all sense if you know fractals, doesn’t it?

So in one of these chats post-recording sessions when Robert popped in for a chat I was thinking about a way to ask him something that wasn’t too much fan-related, as he was just leaving work and probably didn’t want to talk about it… so I just said something like “Robert, you seem to enjoy fractals, I am making a fractal page”… and he promptly asked me “what’s the URL?”… and there wasn’t a page ready yet! It was being prepared and would go online sometime soon, but it wasn’t ready… no need to say that I immediately gave him an URL at Geocities or something that was saved for it and told him to visit it the next day or something because it was “under construction” and the images weren’t all uploaded yet… if it wasn’t for this push, I’d probably never really have started a website with my fractals… and here I am, almost 15 years later writing about it…

Related Images:

Related images

I was in the gallery plugin settings page and I found this option to turn on “related images”. Enabled now. It seems funny, it shows images related to any post (in some sort of a post “footer”), not just posts about/with images, according to the tags of the post(s) and the images tags. The image names don’t show up (but the alt text appears when you hover), neither there is some sort of “label” to indicate that these images are somehow related to the post, but I think you can guess that the images are sort of related sometimes. I think it can be fixed with some customization of the gallery template, I’ll check that later. It’s interesting because sometimes a boring long rant can get enhanced with a couple images, it’s like a treat or a gift. So far it’s set to display 5 related images, but sometimes it doesn’t display any or just one or two images, it’s all based on the tags and the post’s subject. And sometimes it doesn’t seem to have anything at all with the post, go figure.

PS. Just found that the images are replaced with new ones every time you reload the page. I guess this happens if there are more than 5 images that are “related”.

Related Images:

You don’t need drugs to enjoy fractals

Some of these older images were made during a period in my life where I was taking a lot of strong painkillers (not for “recreational purposes” I can assure you), and people that knew that often asked me if some of these images were “drug-influenced”. I don’t know, really. I don’t think so. Maybe some were, some of these images that when I saw them 5 years later I just said “ouch, it looks like crap!”. When the “purple haze” went off, I saw the real image(s), I suppose. Not many images were like that, I should say. Those that were discarded when this new gallery format started, were discarded for a lot of different reasons, including plain old suckiness.

I never deliberately did anything “special” before making any image neither I did any image after doing something specific like finish reading a book for example and make an image inspired by that, or did drugs (alcohol also being a drug, of course) just to create a fractal. Some images were inspired by some other stuff, of course, mostly their names. But not deliberately. Neither I did any image to look “trippy” or “psychedelic” or something on purpose (this is why I’ve never used the “animation” feature of UF despite it costed me a few more bucks when I registered it). Fractals are just like that, sometimes.

I really have no idea if these images can or will enhance your drug-of-choice’s trip or if when you’re on something you will see something different than me. With a little or no effort you can see the same objects/things I did and get the same “feel” while looking at one image, and you will even understand most of the cryptic names, but as I’ve said some people will never see even the basic bits in some images.

These images weren’t made to be seen under the influence, but you can try that. But… in some cases, the results are really… weird to say the least, even without any “extras”. Like this image, done not so long ago (years after the painkillers, BTW):

Alive

It's alive!

Look at one of the spirals, either one. Noticed something? Cool, isn’t it? Now look at the text bits right above/below the image. See? No drugs required, I told you.

PS1. If you didn’t see it, I won’t tell you what happens, go find it yourself. If your mind isn’t open for new experiences, you won’t see it (OK, just kidding!). Hopefully it works in the smaller version of the image, but I’ve tested on both, the big original image and this one.

PS2.: I think that this effect depends on the combination of colours chosen for the image. I haven’t tried it with different colours, but I think I’ve seen similar images (some are quite popular) with similar effects and they all had unusual colour schemes.

PS3.: That was a lot of bullshit talk just to present a nice effect. Must be the drugs that did that.

Related Images:

Fractal Gallery 09

A very interesting batch this time.

About the “Pornography 2” image: it doesn’t have anything to do with actual pornography neither it’s a catch to attract visitors. It was named like that because of this:

The Cure Pornography

The Cure's Pornography cover art, 1982

Hopefully you can get the similarities. You’ll find a bunch of other images that are related to song titles, album names, bands, etc. I’ll be explaining some.

When editing the tags of the galleries almost a year later, I noticed that this gallery also has an image named after a Cure album, “Faith”. It was also inspired by the cover art of this album, which is a pic of Bolton Abbey.

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