Here's the deal, I can always come up with a story and I have said many times I make no promises and in fact don't really care if it's interesting, informative or fulfills any other expectation somebody might have. Tonight I was going to skip the walk report and probably mention the skipping aspect tomorrow. However, I'm sitting here at the computer working on something that was part of my internal dialog during my walk today. I'm working on an image I made as a personal joke back in 2008. It turned out to be one of the most popular pieces of digital pixel pushing I've ever done--at least according to the response I've gotten from my meager here they come and there they go audience. I told the story here on this very blog back on 012612.
I'll repeat, I was pleased with the image. I spent the good part of an evening on it. I thought it conveyed my feelings quite well but probably only to me. It's been obvious that other people have their own interpretations and that's the way art SHOULD work, right? Anyway, when I went out the door for what turned out to be a really brisk 10.17 km walk, this image was in the process of rendering once again because I never had output a file which I felt was really adequate for print. The image I had was fine for a business card and it is on my business card but when I was approached for the cover of this book I felt it was going to be marginal at best... and it was. Especially since the image was "zoomed in."
The request to use my image came out of the blue. I'm still not sure where Mr. Korolog found my render. I hope it was on my website. Even when people know you, people who see you frequently--my mailman, for example--and you tell them about your stuff, give your card and say, hey check out my website. They don't. But the same people, well... I don't know about the mailman... will simply waste time on Facebook. I can say that, I do it too. FYI, the "projects" section of my site takes about 6 minutes to click through if you stop for the music and animations. So, wtf?
Back to the book, I got a very modest "donation" for the use of my image not that I would expect much but it probably would be nice to have some income. You can buy the book here. I don't get anything out of anyone buying the book. There's a credit in the book for the artwork, Eric Peterson. A lot of good that's going to do me. Last I checked there were an awful lot of Eric Petersons in the world.
OK, so that's about it. I was rendering at home while I was walking and now have a 6400 x 3600 pixel Thinking Outside of the Box image along with a Z depth and alpha image of the same. The original was done with an old version of an application called Vue, a very limited version at that. The Vue file could not be read by my current version of Vue on my current computer so this was all done on a computer I bought back in 2004. I wonder what would have happened if the software back then was on subscription. Something to think about eh, Adobe? Aside from speculating on the future of cloud computing I'm glad I made a high resolution copy.
During the walk itself the drivel above had me thinking about stuff artists do and what they perhaps REALLY think about their work. The stuff you may never hear. You know, maybe Pablo Picasso thought Three Musicians was really a piece of crap.
One other fantasy I had going on during the walk was about having money to do the work that's in my head and NOT have to worry about what people thought about it on a commercial level. Everybody is so jaded by all of the LoTRs, the Hobbit (BLEAH!), Transformers and Marvel crap, etc. The rare really good animation doesn't get proper funding, the studios don't take chances yet they will still lose their shirts on so many projects. Just another mess. Wouldn't it be great if you could have a collective consciousness, pooling creative talent from everywhere--chunks all flying in from tens of 1,000s of creative artists and thinkers to form a cohesive whole for a great idea. Even if it was only great art for a limited audience but it would stand the test of time. Or it could.
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