Like a toy

I was 17 years old when the spirograph was first brought out as a toy, so my introduction must have been with nieces and nephews. Nevertheless, I recall it as being an enormous source of fun and, in a similar vein, I found the cycloid drawing machine to be equally fascinating. I'm pretty sure that there is something similar going on with the fractals, but I only made the connection while working on the Royal Dragon Boat:

Royal Dragon Boat

I guess it was all those repetitive swirls and curves that brought the spirograph to mind. But a fractal does have that same repetitive, mathematical, self-similar nature as a spirograph so it shouldn't be a surprise; I just wish that Apophysis was as easy to use as a spirograph used to be. Anyway, eventually, the dragon boat appeared and after a short trip to Photoshop it was soon emerging silently from a cloud-bank into the moonlight.

Four days of fractals

We have just come through the coldest weekend of winter - which isn't saying much, in what has turned out to be a quite balmy winter this year. Anyway, it was cold enough to spend most of the time indoors stoking the fire and generating some fractals. Click on each picture to view it large - there's lots of detail.

Clock Work

Clock Work is a pure fractal - generated in Apothysis and polished in Photoshop. Red shift is a fractal with some additional elements and work in Photoshop.

Red Shift

Finally, Shelob's Lair, is a fractal combined with images of the Waimakariri Gorge and a spider.  A rather dark theme and a dark picture, again best viewed large.

Shelob's Lair

Making fractals on the new PC is a world of difference from my old machine. So much faster that I find myself actually spending longer working on a single piece simply because it's not so frustratingly slow.