Happy 50th Anniversary Tovarich!

Yuri Gagarin, the first man in space.

Radiosity Room: 3D modeling-rendering project.

I was going for a hi-tech room with a video screen on the right and instrument panels along the walls. (Done in Blender 2.49 using radiosity settings, mirror reflections, transparency and discombobulation script for wall panels)

Yellow Blobs - Soft Body Physics Simulation.

Done in Blender 2.5 with a rendering time of approximately 7 hours.  Collision setting included wind force simulation.  Ray transparency settings used on blobs and ray mirror settings on plane. 

 

Transparent Radiosity Cube w/ Fluid Simulation

Done in Blender 2.49 - Cube was UV textured with Ray Transparency then rendered with radiosity settings onto ray mirrored mesh plane.  Fluid simulation was done separately then placed inside cube.  Total render time @ 1.5 hours. (Enlarge video in lower right corner for better view)

House Wins.

Done in Blender 2.49 - UV textured meshes with radiosity and ray mirror reflections.

Merry Christmas!

Illustration: Discovery.

Discovery.  Done in Vue Esprit 6.0.  Ship and statue imported into scene as alpha planes.  Optimized in Photoshop CS3.

Johathan Williamson - Topology Presentation

Jonathan Williamson - Topology Presentation from Andrew Price on Vimeo.

Richard Dawkins at his best.

 Listen to Richard Dawkins debunk a knuckle dragging Creationist claim about the true age of dinosaur fossils.  

Funny.pho.to - Great for Facebook....or whatever.

Funny.pho.to  - Great for Facebook....or whatever.

The Man of Steel Gets a Makeover - Photoshop Jollies.

Filling Joe Stalin's shoes is not for the faint of heart.  If I had a gulag, I'd gulag in the morning.....

Who needs the Cover of Rolling Stone when you've made it to the Berlin Wall?

CG Art Critiques from Blender Guru Andrew Price

Focused Critique: Episode 1 from Andrew Price on Vimeo.

Graphic Design (Macromedia Freehand MX)

Just messing around with some old school software from Macromedia.  Adobe has since bought out Macromedia's suite of applications, and Freehand is no longer in the lineup.  Given it's limitations, Freehand was still a popular vector graphics application, despite Adobe Illustrator's long and undisputed lead as the industry standard vector art program.
( Taking orders for t-shirts )

Inspired by the cave paintings of Lascaux.

Inspired by ancient Greek shield emblems.

Jack of clubs for a card deck I'm designing.

Graphic Design ( Adobe Photoshop & Illustrator CS3)

Feast or Famine.  Love them Viking True-type fonts.

Alien Glyph.

Bamboo Forest Triptych.

Alchemy.

Photoshop planet & moons.

Pop Art Woman.

Who doesn't love neon?

Pixel art is making a comeback.

The Brand.

Halloween Pinball table (work in progress).

Perspective in Photoshop CS3.

Altered script used as mask.  Great movie too.

Yet another Matrix computer screen.  They are everywhere.

My Windows 7 / Core i3 computer build.

Just finished building my third computer.   Came in at a reasonable price with parts rebates and special sales.  This should fend off obsolescence for quite a few years by allowing me to upgrade to higher end Intel processors, faster graphics cards and RAM as prices drop.  Windows 7 should prove to be a significant step up from the aging Windows XP operating system.  Here are the specs:


Case - NZXT Tempest ATX mid-tower w/ six 120mm blue LED cooling fans.

Motherboard - Biostar T-Series TH55 XE LGA socket 1156 Micro ATX.

CPU - Core i3 540 Clarkdale 3.06GHz LGA 1156 73W Dual Core. 

Memory - Kingston ValueRAM 2GB 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1333 (PC3 10600) x 4 (Total 8 Gigabytes).

PSU - OCZ StealthXStream OCZ600SXS 600W ATX12V / EPS12V SLI Ready Active PFC Power Supply. 

GPU - XFX GT240XZNFC GeForce GT 240 1GB 128-bit DDR3 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready Video Card. 

Hard Drives -  Two Western Digital Caviar Blue WD5000AAKS 500GB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive -Bare Drive x 2 plus one 500GB 7200 RPM IDE cable drive for a total of three hard drives.  Plenty of file backup storage.

Optical drive - Liteon 24X half-height internal DVD+R/DVD+RW/DVD-R/DVD-RW/DVD+R9/DVD-R9 /DVD-RAM/DVD-ROM/CD-R/CD-RW/CD-ROM combination drive. 

Monitor - ASUS VH236H Black 23" 2ms(GTG) HDMI Widescreen Full HD 1080P LCD Monitor 300 cd/m2 20000 :1 (ASCR) Built-in Speakers.

GUI - Windows 7 Professional 64-bit version.



The only thing left to upgrade will be the CPU heatsink and cooling fan since the CPU is running at 52 C. while idle - way too hot but we are talking intel's stock heatsink and fan here.  I'm leaning towards getting this liquid cooler instead of a conventional heatsink and fan, provided it fits in my case.  Tigerdirect.com is selling it for $79.99: 

Corsair CWCH50-1 Hydro H50 CPU Liquid Cooler - 120mm Fan, Copper Cold Plate, Aluminum Radiator, LGA775, LGA1366, LGA1156, AM2/AM3

All told, this system rocks!  Much better than my old setup, especially when running the Adobe Web Design CS3 suite of applications.  Should also dramatically improve render times in Blender 2.5 Alpha and Vue Esprit 6.  Already tested Visual Pinball and Future Pinball emulators and very satisfied with the performance, especially with the new LCD 23" widescreen 1080p monitor.   Can't wait to download MAME on this monster.  The color and clarity of the display, along with the XFX graphics card, are light years beyond  my old setup.  Internet download and upload performance also received a boost.  Next I will have to test Windows 7's XP mode once I download Virtual PC.  All said, this project was money and time well spent, despite having to return one defective motherboard and shelling out money for a new compatible power supply.  RMAs,  re-stocking fees and UPS shipping charges suck, but when you're dealing with online resellers, you can only go by customer reviews, which tend to run the full spectrum of pros and cons on most products.   With the exception of the optical drive, which I bought on Amazon.com, all other components were purchased from Newegg.com.     

Tribute to Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi.

A moving tribute to Silvio Berlusconi, who's party slogan is, "Love always conquers envy and hate".  A master politician with a media mogul's talent for getting the message out.  Italian politics are a wonder to behold.

Bible Logic 101 - A Blundering Deity & A Sick Story

First Mistake - God creates Lucifer who ends up leading 1/3 of the angelic host into rebellion against him.  Instead of dealing with these sinners from the start, he gives them dominion over his Earthly creation.  Lucifer-Satan was even able to offer Jesus a bribe in the desert.

Second Mistake - God creates Adam and Eve, who end up getting tricked by Lucifer (his first mistake), into disobeying him regarding a fruit tree full of nutritious knowledge, planted by God for no good purpose if you couldn't eat the God-damned fruit to begin with.  Who's the real tempter here, God or Lucifer? 


Third Mistake - Not too long after kicking the naughty, naked newlyweds out of Eden, God decides to wipe out humanity in a global flood, except for eight very special people, who end up sinning as soon as they hit dry land - amazing insight on the part of the Creator.


Fourth Mistake - Alas, God is not happy with Noah's descendants getting into the construction business, building the world's tallest skyscraper, so he gets them speaking different languages and disperses them - along with their sinning ways - throughout the world. The Lord's machinations at Babel didn't stop humanity from building sky scrapers but it did allow them to curse God in a variety of foreign languages.

Fifth Mistake - God sends his only son as a human sacrifice so humanity can reconcile with him by the shedding of his son's BLOOD?!  Sounds like he's blaming himself over that God-damned fruit tree thing - or is it that Lucifer thing?  Of course humanity is still as rotten as ever but now even the worst rotten bastard can settle with God as long as he BELIEVES that Jesus bled to give him a get-out-of-jail-free card.  Yikes!

Epilogue: And now for something that gives gloomy Nordic mythology a run for it's money.  Jesus must return to Earth a second time in order to initiate another global blood bath and finally destroy God's first mistake - LUCIFER!  Forget for one moment that the sciences, factual history and critical reading skills refute a literal interpretation of the Bible.  Does the contrived, Pauline Christian narrative of original sin, redemption and salvation make any sense,  even metaphorically?  In terms of morality and ethics, the storyline lacks both.

Faces of Mahmoud - Photoshop series pt.2

Sodom and Gomorrah and a Sumerian Asteroid Account

 For a fascinating explanation of yet another bible fable, click below. 

Sodom and Gomorrah and a Sumerian Asteroid Account

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Faces of Mahmoud - Photoshop series pt.1