3D Metropolis

Now:

It seems strange to me how an image made so simply can still captivate the eye, if briefly.

This image definitely falls under the category of “happy accidents”; some people think that term applied to digital art is akin to stating an oxymoron as everything in digital art is precise and controlled. In fact, that’s not always the case.

For one, any time you allow the computer software to manipulate some aspect of the image for you, as in applying effects for example, you’re transforming the image to a different state. Even if you happen to have a low-level understanding of the mathematical transforms being applied to individual pixels (often not the case, nor does it need to be for an artist), the result is accomplished and viewed at a high level.

Second, there comes a point in anyone’s development of digital art technique where they explore and combine pieces and layers and effects intuitively. Some artists stay in that stage, and continue to produce striking work. Happy accidents abound especially when one takes a naive or primarily intuitive approach (those are not the same) to the tools.

Then:

Plasm, in a couple of novels by Walter Jon Williams, is an enticing magical-electrical energy, and for me it conjured up colorful, fluid images. This wasn’t really one of them, (though plasm might be used to fashion something that looks like this) but I liked the sound of the word enough to want to use it regardless.

Some silly messing around in Photo-Paint and I came up with this image during some spare time at work, on one of my last days in Milwaukee. I liked it so much I tried to reproduce it on my computer and I couldn’t get it quite right, luckily I was able to retrieve it from work before I left.

This image was created in May of 1999.