Posted on April 11, 2012

Just a heads up for everyone who has been waiting for a good Zazzle coupon to pick up a poster or two. All posters are 50% off today if you use the code “SPRINGPOSTER” at checkout. I picked up a 48″ copy of “Portals” this morning…

T-shirts and mugs are 25% off with the same coupon.

My new render is taking a bit longer to process than had hoped but it is making progress. I would love to be making final revisions on “Windflower” in the meantime but unfortunately since my “Hydra” workstation went down in January I haven’t had a machine capable of handling some of the denser scenes that I’ve created on Bucephalus.

Here’s a look at my hardware wishlist that you can keep in mind when you are deciding whether to purchase or renew your Membership.

If I could build Bucephalus II (need to come up with a better name) plus add a decent mobile workstation then I could work on 2 or 3 “HD” projects at a time. I would also like to add another couple of 30″ monitors to Bucephalus so I can finally test rive my multiscreen renders before posting them.

I know a lot of folks would suggest that I outsource my rendering the cloud somehow. That might work if I wasn’t stuck on a slow rural DSL connection. I can barely upload PNGs to my web server so it would take days to upload my 2GB scenes files. Someday though…

If you do decide to join, please check out the little boxes provided for adding a small amount to my general hardware fund. Every little bit helps!

Posted on April 9, 2012

I’ve added a dual and triple-screen version of “Windflower” to the Members gallery this morning but I can’t say I am 100% happy with them.

I had a great deal of trouble trying to fit the entire flower into the wider frame. In the end I decided it was better to crop out a bit than add extraneous geometry on the side. What do you think?

Posted on April 2, 2012

You may have noticed that things were a bit quiet around DB last week as I stepped away from the computer to rest and recharge my batteries with a little family vacation. We’ve had a pretty rough year so far and this trip (which we’d been planning since last year) really helped.

It’s also nice that spring has completely spring in central Illinois. Coming back to The Brown would have been depressing.

First order of business: I wasn’t able to finish the “Windflower” multiscreen before leaving so I am working on putting that together now. Thanks for being patient multiscreen Members!

After that I am completely open as to what to render next (though I am leaning towards something tropical).

Any requests Members?

Posted on March 22, 2012

Added “Windflower” to the Members Gallery today. It’s a floral experiment (modeled using Xfrog and rendered using Lightwave 11) that I started after seeing a photo online of a Blue Anemone Windflower. The end result didn’t turn out a whole lot like the original flower, but I kept the name.

Still a few issues to work out with this one, but I think it looks nice enough to share as is. I’ve also added a red version in the Pickle Jar.

Your thoughts?

Posted on March 16, 2012

Added “Portals” to the Members Gallery this afternoon. A number of folks have mentioned to me that I should update my ” Login” wallpaper. This piece is in the same spirit as “Login” but also continues an idea I started in “Portal“.

The images I used here, from left to right, are “Extrasolar” (flipped horizontally), “The Beginning of the End“, “The Fisherman“, “Planitia“, “Tropical Moon of Thetis“, and “Phraxis Moon“.

This is my first render using the release version of Lightwave 11. I had to do a special render for the 2048 x 2048 (and 1024 x 1024) versions so all 6 windows would fit on the screen. Dual and triple-screen versions are available.

The idea came to me during a recent long stretch of solo driving. The base inspiration for this piece was the Star Trek original series episode “All Our Yesterdays“.

I honestly didn’t know if I was going to have enough related images to create a “spectrum” effect so that working out was a happy little accident.

Retina iPad Free Sample!

Anyone using the new iPad this morning? I’ve added a free sample from my new “Retina” collection of wallpapers as well as a version for the iPad 1 & 2.

Members have access to over 125 wallpapers for the new iPad and over 340 for the iPad 1 & 2.

Enjoy!