Sep 2
This is what this site is not. As mentioned in another post, it’s easy to post 100 or more images every single day with a few clicks. And a constant rate of new images keeps the visitors coming, this is what the trackers show me. A few days without any new image and the ranks everywhere drop like flies despite the 1000 unique visitors so far in a few weeks of the new format. But I’d rather have a low rank than to make mass-produced art. This is not a factory.
Jul 28
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:
Inbetween days - from Tim Pope's site
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…
Pretty isn’t it? But guess what was my involvement in all this? A few clicks. To be precise, just 3. One to open Apophysis, other in the menu to select “Scripts”, and the last one to select a script. (OK, there was another one, to run the script, it’s 4 clicks actually, sorry!). There were a few more clicks required to render the images, but these aren’t related to the actual creation of the images. And these images look quite similar not only to each other but to most of these so-popular “amazing-whatever” batches of fractal “art” spread all over the internet. So sad.
Jul 11
As mentioned, i’ll try to pick some images I like from the galleries and talk a bit about them (it will not be a tutorial on how to do something similar!). I’ll try to follow the order of the galleries, just to avoid forgetting something. This will not be some sort of “my best images” series, I’ll be picking images that are between my favourites not only for their appearance, but sometimes due to another reason.
Galleries 1 & 2 don’t really have any special images. Gallery 3 has one that is worth mentioning, “Oh so pretty”.
It was originally made in Fractint, and imported into UltraFractal for rendering, rendering in 256 colours only wouldn’t make it look as smooth as it is. The original colours were different I think.
This kind of image is always a favourite. Whenever I get some repetitive pattern, be it with a full “theme” being repeated (in this case, the spiral) or lots of different things (re)appearing here and there, it always gets my attention. Add a bit of symmetry to this repetition, and there you go.
I have noticed that it’s a bit more “easy” (faster?) to get this kind of image in Fractint, when you are like me and haven’t memorized what every formula or parameter does by heart. Serendipity at its best. If you’re just exploring with some new stuff without any planning, sometimes these lovely images appear unpexpectedly. I have since learned ways to get something more specific if I need too – I’ve learned that the “Barnsley” formulas for example are good for symmetrical stuff (this image probably is one of them) – but sometimes a bit of pure luck while in unknown territories is still the best part of this game.
Jul 1
If you’ve got bored with my long rant about how I was tired of fractals, how disappointed with the new stuff I was making then, disappointed with the new stuff other people were making… I think I can make a short resume on all that.
I just found about 25 images that were kind of lost in my notebook, stuff that I did a bit recently (mid-2009, actually) and comparing them to the stuff I did – most of them at least, and I have seen them all again to make these new galleries – I must say that these new ones seem to have been made by a different person. And they look much better even when they are “simple” or “common” images, let alone when they look a bit more “complicated” than usual. They are not using any of the “what’s-cool-today” techniques, they are still recognizable by me as mine, I haven’t spent years mastering anything, it’s all the same, done with the same tools and skills I ever had.
All I can say about it is… if you seem to feel like I was when I quit making fractals (and this applies for any kind of creative stuff) – take a break. Let it be as longer as you need. Get some fresh air. Try to keep away from that stuff, yours and by others. You’ll see how you will come back very refreshed and much more “talented” than usual. No I’m kidding, the talent has been there all the time, it was just tired of being mistreated.
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