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Each month the Renderosity community votes on The
Renderosity Artist Of The Month [AOM]
The March AOM artist is from the Bryce Gallery. We congratulate
Flak [David Lloyd], for his outstanding collection of Bryce
images.
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Who is 'Flak'? Flak is a person who at the moment is very
surprised. Firstly at having been nominated, as there's so many
great brycers here and he doesn't have the most active of
galleries, and secondly that he was chosen from among such a strong
field. So, a big thanks to everyone who voted in the AOM poll, no
matter who you voted for. It was an honour just to be nominated. In
real life I'm 38 (old enough to know better, but young enough to
try it anyway), married, and live in South East Qeensland,
Australia. The Australian weather has meant I've played (and still
am playing) a fair bit of sport all through life and have the
scars, sore knees, and stiff ankles to prove it. Jobs in the past
have included being an MRI lab technician and a researcher
investigating detection of landmines using radar. These days I'm
currently working as a biomedical engineer doing research support
in a lab full neurosurgical equipment, and EEG systems, while
desperately trying to crowbar up the "make art" button to see if I
can find a "make interview" button. It's been a ride. My musical
tastes tend to be mainly from the 80s and consist of Iron Maiden,
Queensryche, Doro, Warloch, Black Sabbath, Dio, Van Halen ... if it
had long hair, tight pants, and screaming guitar solos in the 80s,
then it's probably gone through my stereo at some time. How long
have you been rendering/doing computer graphics? My computer
graphic hobby originally started with trying to make pictures of
roleplaying characters and places for my own home use. As I
couldn't draw, I tried to go about it using photo manipulation, but
alas this was severely limited to what was more or less already
about. After my wife had shown me several of Don Tatro's creepy the
clown pictures that had been posted to the bryce newsgroup, I
figured that 3d programs may provide me with a greater opportunity
to get the images and places that existed in my mind into a more
viewable format. I think that was sometime in 2001. Do you have
traditional art experience? None whatsoever. Until I found 3d
and cg art, my greatest claim to "artistic" fame was having managed
to fail both art and music at school. More recently, the closest
I've come to tradional art experience has been exchanging the odd
IM with racin-jacin and gerda (an impressive ceramicist) a while
back and chatting with jadedjane when she's in one of her painting
phases.
What are you currently working on? The last year saw my own
projects just about stop as life became very busy - a day job that
went into extreme overdrive chewed up most of it, though I did
manage to do some artwork for a game called "Battleground: Fantasy
Warfare" with some other talented Rosity artists (Woodhurst,
Forevernyt, calum5, rob_wes19). I also offered what was hopefully
reasonable advice to SeekerGamingSystems when they were originally
thinking of getting into the 3D-verse. Luckily however, things have
slowed a bit, temporarily at least, and so I'm currently working on
my own projects (generating masses of models and trying to start a
new image series)... at the moment. BTW, Kees -> 1-0, so move
your pixels ;) What software/equipment do you use and why?
Equipment... perhaps museum piece is a better way to describe
things - most of my early stuff including the entire Siege series
was done on a PIII 450Mhz, though about 10 months ago I got a much
faster, bigger, stronger PC. But fear not for the future of the
loyal PIII - I believe it will be secretly swapped in for ICM's new
PC when he's not looking, right Ariannah? Honest, he won't notice
the difference. ;) Software... I tend to use a pretty wide variety
of bits and pieces. Bryce is my main scene building weapon of
choice with poser and Daz Studio operating as very handy people
plugins - I can't put together anything in poser, so my hat is off
to those that can. I see Bryce's main strengths as its stability,
the ability to import a large number of formats pretty easily, the
ability to merge scene files, its stability, and its ease of use.
Couple this with its ability to handle a large amount of stuff in a
scene without going belly up, the vast amount of freestuff
available for it, the huge amount of information and tutorials
freely available for it, and its stability and you've got a pretty
versatile package. Just have a look at the galleries of the other
AOM nominees for proof. Take note, software developers, stability
really matters, even to hobbyists. Bryce's renderer is a *bit* on
the slow side, but that's never really bothered me too much as
that's what the night hours and the work hours are for...
rendering, as long as Flakette is around to save the render and
unplug the PC from the wall when the storms roll in. Recently I've
been spending a bit of time in Lightwave's modeller making
untextured models by the bucket load, most of which will be used
later in the new image series. (Edit - there would have been a
mention about another bit of software that came as a freebie with
LightWave, but I wished to not get tarred and feathered by
TheBryster).
What do you think your best piece of work is and why? "Bryce
5.5.01001001 - Evolution" was the most fun to make - it was an
image that really got loose and ran amok on my HDD (thanks for the
robot, Drac). It was sort of a homage to the life of brycers
including what we've collectively gone through in recent times and
what we're looking forward to in the future. "Dragonbreath Chasm"
is the image I consider to be my best so far although "Siege" was
reasonably popular at the time. Hopefully this choice will change
in the near future as I try and make each image an improvement on
the last. Why do you like to work with 3D software? I'm more
of an engineer than an artist (I see my creations as more eye candy
than art), so 3d really lets me indulge my making and building
desires. I can make things or places of any size and shape, real or
not, and if I don't like them, I can just pull them apart and start
again. Gotta love multiple guilt free undo.
Who/what inspires you? I think inspiration comes from
everywhere though I mainly get it from looking at medieval
architecture books and reading about events, fictional or not, and
working out the possible stories behind them. Cruising the
galleries can be good for inspiration as well, even if the images
are of a different genre to what I normally create, and it can be
thought provoking at times. Flakette has also volunteered that if I
ever run out of ideas, she has a lot that she'd like to see done,
including one she first mentioned to me a couple of years ago.
How has this online community (Renderosity) enhanced your work,
relationships, and learning? Renderosity has had a big effect
on my 3d life since joining in 2002. After initially being drawn
here by the freebies, I decided to venture into the galleries for
the first time and that sure served as a bit of a reality check. At
that time I'd just made my first bryce pics and felt pretty good
about them. I had what I thought was a really good poser figure on
a wharf... then I saw one of Hobbit's bryce pics... then I thought
of throwing bryce away... and what was even worse is that he wasn't
the only one making some really mind blowing bryce images (rochr,
roobol, sbleci, etc etc). Then I wandered off in a stunned daze and
stumbled over a ToxicAngel pic in the poser gallery, and realized
just how plastic and lifeless my poor poser figure was and how far
behind the eight ball I sat. So while that first visit was a bit
confronting at the time, it also served as a great eye opener as to
what could be done with those programs and it really drove me to
want to learn and improve my skills. It wasn't too long after that
that I found my way into the Rosity chat and met some great people,
and frogs, and jeweldragons, and Moe-de-rators, and ex-gothgirls,
and bonerboyz, and Fillingims, and kiwimasons, and 'renderers, and
Lurgie-throwers, and swiss-misses and..... Over the years, some
interesting ideas were brought up in that chat - "but I want to see
the army from more of top down view and swarming over something".
Yeah, righto, thanks a lot for that one Moebius87 - it took about 3
months to sort *that* idea out. ;) At about the same time, I
started lurking in the bryce forum and saw that some of its members
(read names like clay, AgentSmith, humorix, pidjy, Ornlu... et al)
were creating some very innovative effects that I hadn't even
considered trying. These new effects and techniques, combined with
the ideas people were throwing up both in the rosity chat and more
recently in the rendergods.com chat, administered by some prominent
brycers from here, have really made the creative process a lot more
fun and have driven it in directions it probably would never have
gone in on its own. I've made a lot of online friends from all over
the world through this place, some of which I may not see about for
a while, but I know that when we do meet again, we can pick up the
conversation as though it hadn't stopped. Parting Comments /
Advice to other Artists? For the one or two people who are
still reading ... I think my advice is pretty simple - work out
what you want to do, then take your best shot at it, even if it may
seem beyond what you think your abilities are at the time. Always
look around and see what else is happening around you. See what
other people are doing and see what you can learn from what they
do. If you see something that you really want to know more about,
then ask the person about it. Most people I've dealt with here are
more than willing to talk about how they achieved an effect or a
particular feel in their image. And lastly, enjoy what you do,
whether it's stunning landscapes, swirly colourful fractals on
spheres, nice simple crisp images that people want to hang on their
walls, twisted abstracts from 12 dimensional space, or hiding your
inadequacies at making a good looking closeup face behind a swarm
of skeletons. They're all forms of art after all.
Be sure to check out Flak's gallery! Click on 'AOM 2006' on the sidebar to learn more about Artist of
the Month and to view our past winners.
All supporting images are copyright, and
cannot be
copied, printed, or reproduced in any manner without written
permission from the artist.
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