Hello people,

How's it? I'd like to say a big thank you to all the new people that have been checking out my art. Your comments and critiques are much appreciated and always read. As the people that have been watching my art for a while will tell you (hopefully) - it takes me ages to get something finished, but it usually turns out ok in the end.

The last few months have been a bit of a blur. Slammy died. [link]

And I learned to trick Premiere Elements into doing a cool flame thing made out of 20 different static .psd flames I made that I added a 'wave' effect in Premiere Elements and many, many slightly overlapping layers.

It reminded me of my time as an apprentice typographer at a newspaper in New Plymouth. In my break times I would often sit and plot massively intricate geometric shapes using only vertical and horizontal lines and various curved corner codes on paper purely as numbers and code on an x and y co-ordinate plot.

Then, during work time (LOL) I would transpose the code onto a computer screen using no mouse (20 years ago - pre-mouse), a black 12 inch wide screen and green type.
You then sent the file to the typesetter. It basically did its balls and let out a bit of smoke. Hopefully if it worked you ended up with a crazy pyramid or box or something, if it didn't you ended up with 60 feet of wasted bromide paper and co-ordinates that exponentially seemed to get worse. That pissed off the lazy bastard who had to watch the typesetters (like that was hard). It meant he had to go to the darkroom and reload the film cannister. Taking up five minutes of his otherwise boring life.

Hey, I was only 18. It was all about me! LOL.

Gordon was his name. He'd been me (the apprentice) 30 years before. Had had about four wives, everything was morbid, chased after everything over 40, loved the nags and Scotch and damned near had a heart attack when we gave him joke golf balls filled with talcum powder for his 25th anniversay at work. He actually tried to hit one. It exploded and he had a flashback of some sort. He had to go to hospital and everything.

The whole basic reason for the shapes was to twist your mind. I loved optical illusions and remember a Victorian-era book I had read that had moire pattern films you moved over the top of each other and make propellors move and birds fly and stuff. Wicked. My ones seemed to work best on drunks and the stoned. Ahh, good times.

I would also like to say a HUGE thank you and hugs to the group of people I have been communicating and sharing with over the past year (just realised - just about exactly a year too!). To show my appreciation to everybody and celebrate getting over 1000 hits on the piccies, I would like to post to any of my watchers that want one a DVD of about an hour and a bit long of animation and moving stuff that I put together to music. The music I've used I have paid for as a royalty free deal, and, no offence meant, it can be pretty average. But, if you would like one I suggest a MASSIVE tv, a great sound system, your favourite music and a little bit of what you fancy.

It seems I'm still doing the same old stuff: Intricate patterns and shapes in my head, designed for large format and transposed to computer - just now with colour and texture and all sorts of whizzy effects. Wicked. I'm nothing if not a creature of habit. Ahh, good times.