Posted on January 5, 2003

• Added my first wallpaper of the new year this morning. “Cradle 2003” is up on the new images page. The original was created using Bryce and a program called “Universe“. Just was with the original “Blue Christmas”, I first rendered the background and then added the stars later. The results looked nice, but they weren’t true “3D” (to me anyway).

  The new version comes to you straight out of Lightwave. I still want to try a few more things, but I thought it looked nice enough to share in its current form. I hope you agree. If you have any thoughts please be sure to send them my way.

  UPDATE: I’ve posted a very minor revision to “Cradle 03” which fixes a rendering error I had missed last night.

• Thanks to everyone who wrote in last week with suggestions for 2003 images. I really enjoyed reading your letters and I’ll be glad to have them handy when I’m staring at my blank screen wondering what to do next.

Posted on January 1, 2003

• Jessie and I want to wish you all a wonderful new year! 2002 was a pretty memorable year for the two of us, but something tells me 2003 will be even more interesting (see post from 12/12). If you have any requests for images you would like to see this year, please feel free to send them my way. Happy 2003!
• My apologies to those of you who recife an update notification email this morning. The list apparently misfired for some reason. I’ve contacted Rus (the list admin) about it and hopefully we’ll get it straightened out so that emails are only sent when new images await your perusal.
• I guess I shouldn’t say that nothing is new around here. I’ve added a few extra versions of “Confluence” to the Pickle Jar which illustrate its development.

Posted on December 30, 2002

• Added “Confluence” to the gallery today. I’m not sure many of you will want to use it as a wallpaper (Jessie greeted it with a “Ewwww”), but it’s what I’ve been working on for the past couple of days so I felt I should post it.

  One might think that I’ve been reading too many pregnancy books lately, and that would be correct assumption. This image, however, was inspired by a different book that Jessie gave me for Christmas called ” Heaven & Earth: Unseen by the Naked Eye“. Anyway, I hope you enjoy looking at it (even if it doesn’t make it onto your desktop).

  As a technical note I want to mention that “Confluence” was created completely using Lightwave “Hypervoxels” (with transparency and full refraction). I wanted to test out my new system’s rendering speed (this verdict: fast).

Posted on December 28, 2002

• I’ve added a dual-monitor version of “Aquamarine” to the 2X gallery (due to many requests).

Posted on December 27, 2002

• I finally finished “moving in” to my new workstation yesterday so today I spent doing some Lightwave work. I started some new projects, but it remains to be seen whether they will be keepers or not. I also went through all of the comments I received regarding “Polaris” and made a few changes. You’ll find a new, blue, version on the New Images page (the original green version is in the Pickle Jar). I hope you approve of the changes.

• My Dad, Thurman, recently got back together with his old college band, “The Fratiers”, and cut a CD. A few months ago they played a reunion show at their alma mater, Illinois Wesleyan, and brought down the house (or so I hear). He’s been playing in rock bands for as long as I can remember (my favorite was called “Thurmo-Nuclear and the Fallouts”) and his guitar skills are still pretty sharp.

  Don’t believe me? Check out this link my brother sent me the other day. It’s an interview with one of the band members done for the school magazine. That’s my Dad on the far left of the photo. Scroll to the bottom of the page and you can hear their rendition of “Louie, Louie” with my Dad on lead guitar. He’s going to be 58 this year, but he still rocks!