Trip to the seventies.

Listening to Dream Weaver on the iPod, there's a moment of time travel
to my life. Those who know San Francisco history may remember the
famously infamous Toad Hall.

It lives again, thanks to the movie about Harvey Milk that's shooting
in the hood.

Ah, how I miss the 70's.

Space Art

Just prior to Christmas I went through a frenzy of creativity, making a number of new space-art images. This is one of them.

You're standing on (floating in?) Saturn, looking up through the hydrogen, helium, amonia and methane gasses of the atmosphere that give the planet its characteristic yellow color. Through a break in the clouds you can see part of the inner rings and one of the shepherd moons that orbits along the inner edge of the ring system.

I made this image primarily with two tools -- Carrara and Photoshop (a little in Elements and a little in CS1). The clouds are volumetric objects created in Carrara, and the ring system is an extrueded spline with a procedural shader applied to create the bands. Once I rendered the image in Carrara, I took it into Photoshop and played with the color and levels, mixing a couple versions together, playing with the transfer modes and such. A peach-colored gradient adds some color to the sky.

All in all, it was a fairly simple project, but one that resulted in an image I'm happy with. This appeals to me as a "Space Art" image because it flies in the face of what I think most people expect of space art -- lots of dark space with stars. Of course, a fair number of my space art projects also involve dark space and stars, but it's nice to shake things up every so often....

Long Time No Blog

So, it's been a long while since I blogged. A month, or so, I guess.... But it's been a busy month.

There was Christmas.

There was that trip to London.

There was New Year's Eve.

There was work on Applesauce.

And there was me, in person, next to a real TARDIS.

OK, not so much a real TARDIS as a reall Police Call Box, but, still, it was crazy awesome! I mean, look at it! During our trip to London, we found it. It's just sitting there next to the Earl's Court Underground entrance. It was the only TARDIS I saw while in London, though I didn't see the Doctor anywhere nearby. (I think I did see the guy who played Mickey in Series 1 and 2, but I'm not completely sure, and I didn't get a picture.)

Paul and I also got to see the Doctor Who Christmas Special: Voyage of the Damned, on Christmas Day. We were in a bar with a bunch of other gay Doctor Who fans, all of whom were excited to watch. It was made even more fabulous by the fact that Kylie MInogue -- the diva behind gay club hits like "Can't Get You out of My Head" -- had a guest role. She was awesome.

More blogging will follow. Here's a hint of what's to come.

• We're making major progress on Applesauce.
• Some recent Space Art of mine will be available for purchase as posters and prints on my site soon.
• I'm doing music for some new Star Trek fan projects.

Lots afoot this year. Hope you're along for the ride.

:D