New Lifetime Memberships

Posted on October 18, 2021

With the emminent approach of DB 2.0 and my recent entry into the NFT market, I’ve been thinking of other ways to change things up in take DB into the 20s and beyond. I’ve always tried to have options available for folks at all levels and I know the most popular has always been my Lifetime Membership. I get it. It’s great to pay once and forget about.

EDIT: 11:20pm — I have removed the option from my signup pages now that the migration link to DB 2.0 is now live. I hope you will log-in and migrate your data to the new site (scroll to the bottom of the account page for the link. Look around and share your thoughts with Cris on my Discord server.

Unfortunately I didn’t really forsee still making art 20 years later and still needing support to keep it all going. I love my Lifetime Members. Most of them paid a premium for it and I don’t begrudge them their foresight. I will always honor my Lifetime Memberships!

That said, I’ve decided I can no longer offer new ones as freely as I have been. Once DB 2.0 debuts, which is very soon (subscribe to my Discord for more info), I will remove that option from the signup and renewal page.

I’ve decided that the only way to purchase a new Lifetime Membership going forward will be to collect one of my 1/1 NFTs. I want as many collectors as possible so this is a reasonable perk that I can offer. I’m only planning on minting a few hundred of my work (tops) so that will put a final hard limit on how many Lifetime Members I will have.

I don’t want to sound ungrateful to the folks who signed up as Lifetime Members (some for only $50) years and years ago. I really needed the money at the time and you guys stepped up. You will always have a home here. If you would like to pitch in and give a little extra though at any time I have a Tip Jar and a special class of yearly Member called a “Lifetime Supporter” which grants you access to my Lossless Masters.

If you aren’t yet a Member and want to sign up for a Lifetime Membership before the deadline please keep in mind that you will need a Lifetime Plus Membership to have access to those Masters. If you are current Member you can still log in and purchase a Lifetime renewal here.

I will continue to offer my affordable Membership options and I hope to add more and more free wallpapers to the gallery in the future. Thank you all for your amazing support these past 20+ years and I hope you will stick with me for the next 20!!

(Not into NFTs? Want something you can hold? My entire Zazzle collection is 30% off today)

Key Largo

Posted on October 11, 2021

Inspired by the towering clouds I would see billowing from below the horizon over the Gulf of Mexico during our brief Florida getaway in August. I wanted to see how the VDB clouds (which are a different type than I usually employ in VUE) handle lighting effects and I like what I see. This scene rendered in under 2 hours rather than the 24+ it normally would have taken.

NFT Schedule

Posted on October 4, 2021

My first month selling NFTs on Foundation was amazing. It was fun, crazy, chaotic and profitable. It was also sort of unsustainable so I’ve gone ahead and created a schedule of (less frequent) upcoming drops. I will be minting something from my recent renders on Mondays, something from the “classic” collection on Wednesday, and something “big” on Fridays. No minting on the weekends 🙂

My son Ian gave me the idea for the schedule because he saw how much of my bandwidth all this was consuming. “It will let you be an artist too” he said, which was probably the most mature thing I’ve ever heard him say. I love that kid 🙂

Fun as it is, I don’t want the NFT thing to consume my life. I want it to strengthen DB. Rather I am using some of the funds to finally bring on a developer, Cris Henderson, who’s been helping me put together the DB of the future. I just may let him run the backend stuff going forward so I can concentrate on rendering and chatting with you guys about my 20+ years in digital art. I also intend to expand my free offerings so folks who don’t feel like spending money yet can still enjoy my work.

My favorite part of this NFT experience has been taking some of the ETH I’ve earned from my sales and purchasing artwork from lesser known, but highly talented artists who could use some exposure. The folks that collect my work have made bids on some of theirs and I like to gift the artwork I buy to my top collectors as a reward for their support. It’s made for some interesting exchanges on Twitter (where most NFT discussion seems to take place) 🙂

And if all that’s not exciting enough, all of this has rekindled Ian’s interest in digital art <3

I see some really interesting times ahead. Hope you will stick with me for them as you always have 🙂

Pharos (2021) (Night)

Posted on September 20, 2021

The real trick with a good night scene is to make it dark but also have details in the right places so it isn’t just too flat. Sometimes I have to rely on moonlight if the scene is uninhabited, but this time I have a little help.

I hope you enjoy it!!

Pharos (2021)

Posted on September 17, 2021

Sorry I got a bit distracted launching my NFT line last week. Back to business!

VUE comes with some great plants, but it also has a pretty nice object library including a set of amazing lighthouses. The last time I tried to model a lighthouse a lot of folks thought it looked a bit more ribald than I had intended (:-D) but the render was otherwise popular. This new model shouldn’t have that problem (whew!). For this version I chose to turn the camera around and feature the landscape rather than the ocean.

I hope you enjoy it!!