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June 21, 2006
Another portrait... Eternal Loneliness
Here's another portrait I did, though I suppose it's more what we would call a "mood piece". Over at my main gallery at Renderosity, it got better than average feedback, so I thought I'd share it here as well.
The inspiration for both piece and title is that when you're feeling lonely, the wait seems to last forever. (No, I'm not feeling particularly devastated or lonely right now, but I am familiar with the feeling.)
BTW, I did knock out a couple of pin-ups as well, so it's not like I've given up on that genre. Rather, I'm just starting to take all the lighting and material skills I honed on them and bringing them back over to do some other work.
Render by Dan | Permalink | Comments (0)
June 19, 2006
Cookie Condoms
I don't think I'll ever be able to watch Sesame Street again the same way...
Tinfoil Beanie by Dan | Permalink | Comments (2)
June 15, 2006
Gore's movie gored?
I found this article (ganked from Slashdot) where a climatologist rips Al Gore's recent movie a new exhaust vent.
A little googling turned up this article as well, though not as on target to the movie itself.
Personally, I've been on the fence. I know that CO2 greehouse effects have been observed on Venus and in the laboratory. However, on the global scale, the relation between atmospheric CO2 and global temperatures don't provide much of a match. That is, the 20th century warming patterns did not match the C02 emissions in any recognizable way.
The temperature trend did, however, match sunspot data very closely. I believe you are familiar with our neighborhood fusion furnace, yes? When it burns hotter, temperatures here seem to rise, and the data seems to be a pretty good match, much closer than the CO2 data. However, this is not conclusive.
Fortunately, both theories make certain predictions. The CO2 theory predicts that temperatures will spiral out of control, melt the ice caps, and end civilization as we know it. The sunspot theory predicts that it's cyclical and will probably fluctuate back and forth over the coming century. We're all looking for hints one way or another.
- Against the sunspot theory are some deep ocean temperature measurements that apparently aren't in keeping with the predictions of the sunspot model. Alas, I don't have the details for that study, so I can't say much about that.
- In favor of the sunspot model is that we are apparently seeing some global warming on Mars. That is, our brother planet's ice caps seem to be in retreat, and presumably this is not a result of the Martian's appetite for fossil fuels.
- Against the CO2 model is the fact that temperatures seem to have stabilized since 1998, and we've continued to pump out loads of CO2 in those 8 years.
Mostly, though, I'm still leaning towards the sunspot model, and I'm ashamed to say that one of my bigger motivations for this is not science based. Rather, it's that a lot of public figures are telling me to believe the CO2 model and crushing any dissenters as crackpots, and frankly, I don't trust the motivations of those public figures.
In the meantime, I continue to sit on the fence waiting for more conclusive science that isn't coming from a political platform.
Politics by Dan | Permalink | Comments (4)
The Butterfly Effect DJ
I just ran across this neat little video where a DJ can move time forwards and backwards via his turntable deck and uses it to navigate through a chaotic Butterfly Effect series of events.
Very cool.
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June 14, 2006
When Fetishes Collide
I just ran across an odd collection of photos from flickrbabes. I can only presume this resulted from the collision of an asian fetishist, a mud-wrestling fan, and someone trying to convince Americans that soccer is exciting.
Thus, I present: Asian girls playing soccer, in the mud, in their underwear.
Apart from the sheer strangeness of it, they're actually pretty good photos.
Blog by Dan | Permalink | Comments (1)
Another portrait... Silence
I enjoyed doing the last portrait so much, I had to try another one:
MAW looked at this and said it was "interesting". When I pressed for details, she said there was almost something political about it. I confess that I had considered taking this on a political bent, but the image I would have ended up with would have been too depressing for me to make right now. (You see, the plight of women's rights under Islamic rule is very disturbing to me, but that's another post entirely.) So I decided to stick with the exotic sensuality of the mysterious and hidden.
Render by Dan | Permalink | Comments (0)
June 11, 2006
A portrait
I felt like a change of pace, so I did a little portrait this weekend.
Render by Dan | Permalink | Comments (1)
June 10, 2006
Animal Magnetism...
I just ran across this collection of little one-panel comics that are done with the same rendering software I use.
Check out this one on Animal Magnetism.
Though I think MAW is really going to appreciate these Great Tits.
Meanwhile, my own comic project continues to wallow in the cave of "no time".
Render /Tinfoil Beanie by Dan | Permalink | Comments (0)
An old look at New Coke
I just ran across a long, but fascinating article on the market research that led the Coca-Cola company to ditch the 99-year-old foruma of Coke and bring us New Coke, a decision often called "the Edsel of the 80's".
(Red Tanya should like this -- it has plenty of footnotes.)
Blog by Dan | Permalink | Comments (1)
June 08, 2006
Overheard at the pizza joint...
So, I was on the way out of my local pizza joint, and I passed by a woman and two men outside on a smoke break.
Woman: ... but I only do that when I've been drinking.
Man: Well, maybe you need to be drinking more.
Woman: Yeah, now that you mention it, I probably do.
How I would have loved to have come into that conversation thirty seconds earlier.
Did I mention this was in uber-conservative Williamson County?
Tinfoil Beanie by Dan | Permalink | Comments (0)
Yet Another Boring Pin-up #8
Here's another one of my perhaps-not-quite-so-boring pin-ups.
I think this one came out rather well, and it had an unusual interaction. MAW stopped by to see me doing some of the work, mostly as I was adjusting the lights to get the right look of the fire. It was a rare chance to demonstrate just what goes into making one of these images.
The hardest part of this one, though, was getting the model's thong to hang just right. It kept getting caught on her left knee and stretching to the point that she would have surely toppled over in a tangled mess. It must have taken five or six different cloth simulations (at about 30 minutes each) before I finally got it to drop where I wanted it to.
Render by Dan | Permalink | Comments (0)