avidflame - May 2004 AOM!

May 20, 2004 at 12:00 am by tutone1234


Who is 'avidflame'? Avidflame is David Fleming, age 42, living in Leeds, West Yorkshire, England, and someone whose honoured to have been selected as May's Artist of the Month 2004. Thanks to everyone who voted for me and congratulations all those nominated, there were some superb galleries of work entered. How long have you been rendering/doing computer graphics? I've been using computers for many years. Starting with a ZX Spectrum back in the 1980s. Three or four years ago I became fascinated by the stunning computer graphics artwork people were producing and its only since last year that I've begun rendering and posting CG artwork myself. I actually discovered Mojoworld 2.O back in April 2003 and started out working with the free version of Mojoworld, the Transporter. I used that for about three months before moving up to the full Generator package. So I've been rendering/doing computer graphics for about a year now. Do you have traditional art experience? I loved drawing and painting as a child, but only had the 'basic' school art education. Later in life I supplemented my income, as a student nurse, by painting peoples pets in acryllics. So I have a basic aptitude for traditional arts and can draw and paint, if I want to, but much prefer working with Computer Graphics. What are you currently working on? At present I'm putting the finishing touches to my first full website. I've also begun working on creating the outlines for some ebooks on 'direct learning' applied to CG artistic development. Professionally I have a training and development background. The ebooks are a way of distilling what I've learnt and applying it to the area of CG artistry. And finally, with a huge sigh of relief. (At not having to keep so quiet about it any more). Currently I'm part of the content development team working with the next version of MojoWorld software. Basically, I'm a kid in an (eye)candy store. Its great. I get to test out the new functionality and work on producing new content with the more advanced tool set. Some of the things I've been testing are the new animation features and also the new abilities to procedurally create trees, plants and 'placeable/moveable' rocks. I can't divulge too much as I'm bound by a Non-disclosure Agreement and there should be a full announcement from Pandromeda in the next few months. So more details will be forthcoming then. What software/equipment do you use and why? The main softwares I use are Mojoworld Generator (existing and development versions) and Photoshop 7.0. I also have Xfrog 3.02, Bryce 5, Wings 3d and recently I got Maya Personal Learning Edition. For basic rendering quality and the power to create astonishingly beautiful worlds ... not just single locations ... Mojoworld blows my socks off. Photoshop is the swiss army knife of artistic/imaging software with which I'm able to do postworking and touching up of renders. I also occassionally use Chaoscope and KPT fraxplorer to enjoy working with fractal images of a more basic kind. The hardware I use is an AMD XP 2000 with 512MB Ram and 32MB ProSavage video card and I also have a Wacom tablet (that sees very little use). What do you think your best piece of work is and why? My best piece of work is my last piece of work (sounds cliched!). But I was really pleased with the results I accomplished. I was actually tempted to say my best piece of work is my next one (sounding even more cliched). The one that currently exists purely as in-formation inside my mind. However, I haven't seen that one clearly enough, yet, so I'm not going to say it ....lol! So yeah I think my best piece of work is the last one I did 'Three Pawns and a Castle'. I really enjoyed getting to play around with an existing masterpiece Shadowatchers world by Armands Auskelis and changed a few of the elements to give it a slightly different look. Why do you like to work with 3D software? I don't like to work with 3D software! I love to work with 3D software and I love it because of the astonishing flexibility and freedom it provides me with. Mojoworld especially, I love the semi-immersive experience which comes from exploring whole worlds. The sense of wonder and adventure as I discover astonishing new vistas and pick out the most beautiful views I can find to render and the abilities to adjust the way things look using simple parametric controls. Excellent! Who/what inspires you? I find mountain-biking in the countryside where I live, inspiring. Chatting with and viewing artwork from, other Mojoworld artists. Also soaking up the creativity on sites such as Renderosity itself. Films and music often inspire me. Plus I use trance states, image-streaming and other wild and whacky stuff ..to allow my subtler non-conscious faculties to work their magic(mojo) for me. How has this online community (Renderosity) enhanced your work, relationships, and learning? I've been a member at Renderosity for almost three years. Initially I was one of the none-posting could be/might-be-an artist-someday members. So on some level I guess the online community here, as a whole, inspired me to take the plunge and get into producing my own artwork. Then, since becoming active I've rapidly grown in confidence in my own abilities as a CG artist, learned and developed new skills and made lots of great new friends globally through interactions in the forums and various gallery posts. All the best David
Be sure to check out avidflame's gallery! Click on 'AOM 2004' on the sidebar to learn more about Artist of the Month and to view our past winners.
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