Sunday, May 30, 2004
 
"I'm often shocked by the lack of understanding and knowledge the general public seems to have about the natural world and their own bodies. Attempts to establish ethical standards without that knowledge -- or without valuing that knowledge -- terrify me, because we are part of the biology of this planet ..."


Thursday, May 27, 2004
 
First crack at doing a braided jacket.


 

A detail from the "cover in progress" of Courtesan Prince, has appeared on the "echo art nouveau" site! See the link above for the live page. Screen clipping included below. Courtesan Prince is the 1st book (story wise) in the 10 novel Okal Rel Universe series by Lynda Williams, and Lynda Williams and Alison Sinclair..



Screen Clipping from Echo Art Nouveau site, captured May 26, 2004. CPcoverfeatured.gif





Tuesday, May 25, 2004
That dratted dress
 
Working on foreground for the bistro: Vish (red-haired courtesan from Throne Price, whom Ditatt enlists for the Justice Ministry) and 'Tatt. I managed to modify the pattern by editing the image-map: the supplied dress is blue and flowery. I used a photograph of leaves (posterized in photoshop) to make it green and leafy and was pleasantly surprised with the effect of the repatterning. But the slits in the dress mean that when I try to pose Vish on a simple block on the way to having her seated gracefully (and reasonably modestly) on a chair, the draping algorithm hangs up, and the back of the dress just snarls on the inside of the block. I have tried blocks, balls, sloped surfaces, but because the pose and draping start from neutral, eg, with the dress inside the object, the back stays inside and snarls - local minimum. Gnch. I remember it well from solving crystal structures. Do I have to try and understand this algorithm??


Monday, May 24, 2004
People in motion
 
More goofing off, this time getting to grips with Poser's formidable "cloth room". No nearer to making my own clothes - a rather daunting procedure which requires some 3D functions I don't know that I have (maybe in Blender, when I get to grips with that). In the meantime, I have been playing around with the bits and pieces provided, can now wrap "dynamic clothing" around people, and can now see that I should be able to paint up the image-maps in Gelack-specific ways ... But not tonight.

Tonight, very quickly, I will hang up two images. I started out working once more on Luthan, but based on the picture I got, that's Ayrium, probably the Ayrium that Ameron first met in Pretenders.
Ayrium.jpg

And here is Ditatt, showing why the decorous Monatese mutter darkly about recessive genes. I rendered this one against a background image, a straightforward procedure that avoids compositing in photoshop and the ever-irritating Vue d'esprit crashes.
DitattinHall.jpg

Dunno who he's after - possibly Branstatt, who has nicked his wardrobe and left him with Erien's. And yes, it's still the broadsword.


Sunday, May 23, 2004
West Alcove Bistro
 
Goofing off on a glorious Sunday afternoon by trying to get out of my head my impression of a West Alcove Bistro. Eventually, it will acquire clients - I'm thinking of Ditatt - though I have to conquer Poser clothing yet.


Friday, May 21, 2004
Nersallian braid?
 
Playing around with The GIMP, specifically its fractal generator, followed by some messing around with filters, especially GIMPressionist (line_art and line_art_2). GIMP also has a collection of mapping filters, among them one that generates seamless tiles. These, in black and red, seemed suitably draconic for Nersal. What do you think?


Thursday, May 20, 2004
Interactive Rel Ship by Kory

Tuesday, May 18, 2004
 
If you catch it quick, you will see UNBC has mentioned the two award nominations for Throne Price, on its homepage. See http://www.unbc.ca May 18. I was so pleased my homebase institution appreciates this side of my nature, that I took a screen clipping and will add it to NEWS on the ORU site as well.


Saturday, May 01, 2004
 
I've added some pieces to the ORU website, mostly to "reference" area. Some of Alison's great pictures to the graphics gallery and one new item which I hope will be the first of a series of "jump hallucination" images. It was in the process of doing the jump hallucination picture, from my friend at UNBC Rob Lucas, that I wound up making glossary entries for "jump hallucination" and then "soul touch" and then "combat tactics, reality skimming" as well. And, of course, I had to make a "thank you" entry for Rob Lucas.


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