Yes as I’ve been honing my web skillz I realized how very important a faq or a faw (frequently asked worm) or a fab (frequently asked block) is, but because I’m so very lame in Illustrator, I opened Bryce and tried to remember how to use the darn program.

Then there were my excursions into logo making:

I wonder if I’ll ever get good at that? I took Illustrator classes but I open that program and I can’t remember how to do anything in there. I even had a hard time in Bryce and I used that for years! This post will probably be too huge to load.

Oh and Akismet has officially blocked over 20,000 spam now. I have under 1000 comments, how sad is that? But my penis is ginornmous!!

😀 😀 😀 😀

I’ve been very uninspired these last few months artistically. Then I saw the photography of John Dwyer. Well I can’t take photos like that and I can’t even create art like that, but I gave it a whirl to recreate his lighthouse photo. Not an exact re-creation, I didn’t want it to be. His work is stunningly gorgeous. Those fantastic pictures have given me a few other ideas to try. I wonder if I can create a timed exposure on running water in Bryce? 😉

For those that don’t know Bryce, it basically started out as a landscape program. The objects are 3 dimensional. You can model some things in Bryce. I made the lighthouse for instance. The ship I bought and birds were freebies that were modeled with a modeling program (there are limits to what Bryce can do model-wise). Thought you might want to see the wireframe view:

And here’s my trusty lighthouse minus all the atmosphere and postwork.

I think I’ll add it to the freebies on my site.

Several months ago I decided April 1st was my quit smoking day. Obama has just given me even more incentive to succeed this time. I know April first seemed like a strange day to choose but I liked the irony of it. I must not be the only one who believes in irony. 😀

Here’s hoping for fine weather and clear sailing through the spring and summer. By fall I’ll have it kicked! You’ve had your warning, expect an even more grumpy me than normal for a few weeks.

I joined 3DCommune shortly before I had brain surgery in 2003. In fact I was taking a Bryce class at LVS Online that got rudely interrupted for a lil trip to Duke Brain Tumor Center :p Anyway, the place used to be a lot funnier and livelier than it is these days. Folks left for various reasons, new interests, no computer, so it’s pretty quiet there now. I think a lot of people just prefer talking privately instead of in a forum. Well, I don’t do that well at keeping in touch privately so heh…here I am. Anyway, two of the coolest people have popped back up again so I gotta share. They are both incredibly talented.

First I saw Mel3d post a new work. She uses Painter and her latest image Sweety Cat shows that she has been busy while she was gone. She was good back then but this one is just ..wow 😉

Then my friend Roy popped in, we used to be Bryce moderators together and he is a great guy. My funny pic a couple posts down? He’s the one in the plaid with the purse. lol. He started painting with oils so he pretty well disappeared too. He send me a mail a couple days ago and I sent him here to my blog so he could see what I’ve been up to, and he started a blog with images of his oils. He used to fix up his Bryce images in Painter too and is so much more talented than me with that program. But now he’s into oils and he’s come a long way. So go check it out at Royc8’s Blog. I love that guy, he was always my friend even when I didn’t know how to like myself 😉

I am still a moderator in the Bryce gallery at 3DC but I’m not there much. I tried to bring it back to life but it takes more than one person. They are going to be moving to new software any day, I wonder if that’ll help or hinder.

I have to show you an image of mine I made in Bryce a while back. I called it ‘Lost my horse, I knew I shoulda folded.’ lol Then Roy performed magic on it 😉 I just can’t do that. I am not being negative because I’m sure if I applied myself I’d at least get better with Painter, I just need to persevere like I did in Bryce. Does he not do awesome work?

Here’s my Painter masterpiece! lol, okay I was entirely too fascinated with that furry brush 😉

I can do landscapes too but oh, it’s hard to make a good one. This is my masterpiece 😉 The trees and much of the grass is made with this nifty little program called Context Free. Other than that it’s pure Bryce.

This is what the grass looks like, you can add it as a 2d image or put it on a terrain or lattice so it’s 3d, just add texture and you are done! You should check out their gallery of the many cool shapes this program can generate.

Here’s one of several versions of trees.

With the discussion of Bean’s Blog Carnival, I at first was rather stumped and thought that I must be the most uninspired one of the bunch. But then I was going through my Bryce art today and I can name four areas that have given me my muse over the years. Probably foremost is music. I mean very specifically, like trying to create what is in my minds eye. Some are sad, some are serious, and some are just silly, rather like The Sweater Song.

Secondly would be my depression, and those took a lot of courage to display. I’ve been told ‘Swan Song’ was brilliant, I’m sure from a person who understood exactly.

I actually did a surreal one once but I’m not very good at surreal.

And then ‘To Suffer’ where I first used the saying in my tag line.  There are others that I can’t bring myself to list here but nevertheless are a huge part of who I am.

Then there is hope, which fits into this spectrum of feelings as well I think.

Thirdly would be just plain old experiences in my life, like Psycho Kitty. Which wasn’t really the least bit funny at the time 😉

Fourth, and probably the one I had the most absolute fun with was poking fun at people. Back when 3DCommune was a much livelier place, we used to get very silly in the forums. So I tended to take that information and use it against people, in the nicest possible way of course. 😀 I’m pretty sure all these guys loved the 3DCommune male fashion show. I know all the ladies did!

It’s not the best art, sometimes the subject isn’t pleasant, but it gives me a way to let those feelings out and I think that’s important. At least I can more or less get the feeling across now. When I was new to 3d art I had more frustration than success. Still, it has helped me to cope over the years. I’m not that articulate verbally or in writing but hopefully I’m becoming better at it with my art.