If there were such a terribly unscientific thing as an 'ether' in the first place (And you never know, physicists come up with any number of crazy ideas that they claim to be able to fit to mathematical models. They probably can, but nobody but the other physicists would be able to tell if they were full of nonsense.), I think it would have various ethereal beasties living in it. Beasties that leave footprints. Some of these footprints would be very large. Some would be very small. The beasties that leave large footprints would eat the beasties that leave small footprints. It's only natural, after all. I submit for your consideration the image at left, wherein we see footprints marking the passage of a Very Large Beastie chasing after various smaller beasties. The remarkable resemblance in color to rainbow sherbet is purely an artifact of our Etherscope, which must use false color to present interpretable images.

This flame achieved completion in a rather roundabout fashion. I started out with another flame, which got a distorting final transform applied to it. Then it got mutated while the final transform was in place. That got rendered (I'll probably post it sometime in the next month), and while I was waiting for it to finish I decided to get rid of the distortion and see what happened to the piece. That gave me the very interesting basic shape seen here, and with a few additional iterations and tweaks, it turned into this flame. I'm very glad I decided to keep messing around with it instead of going and playing minesweeper or something while I waited for the render to finish. This piece is much more interesting than the one I was working on initially.

Download links: Right click and hit 'Save Link As' to download. If you just want to look at a larger version of the image, simply follow the link.

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Layered Progression

This flame from last week uses the same sort of trick as the 'marble' flames do: A final transform that maps the image onto a different shape. In this case, instead of using the bubble variation to make it a round shape, I used the 'rings' variation, which produced nifty concentric circles. I think it probably shuffled the order around just a little bit too, so that parts of the flame that used to be nearer the center are now at the outside edges.

Download links: Right click and hit 'Save Link As' to download. If you just want to look at a larger version of the image, simply follow the link.

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Winds, Waves, ,and Cable Stays

This flame has a slightly more evocative title than I usually go for, because I could make it both rhyme and alliterate. It's probably just a near rhyme, but I'm not a poetry nerd, so I don't know or care if it is or not.

I'm not entirely sure if this flame is supposed to represent a specific structure, or even broad class of structures. I assume it is a structure, since it has cable stays. If it is, it's a poorly lit, only dimly visible object. I kind of like it that way. Knowing exactly what it was would take some of the fun out of it.

Download links: Right click and hit 'Save Link As' to download. If you just want to look at a larger version of the image, simply follow the link.

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Decorative Fountains

Right after I got my shiny new computer monitor I decided I needed some shiny new fractals to put on it, and this was one of them. It's not my best work, and it's not my worst, but it is shiny. The widescreen version is the one I 'intended' when I made the thing. It lacks the negative space at the top and bottom which you can see in the preview image and the 1280x1024 version. I'm torn as to which one I like better; the widescreen fills the canvas better, but it's also more cluttered.

Download links: Right click and hit 'Save Link As' to download. If you just want to look at a larger version of the image, simply follow the link.

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Flower's Pearl

When I make a flame like this, I start thinking I don't know nearly enough about the possible tricks and techniques of this art form to say I have anything resembling a 'style' yet. There are so many wildly divergent possibilities, and I've only scratched the surface. Maybe that's a good thing; if this stopped being a learning process, it wouldn't be as much fun.

When I re-rendered this piece in the 16:10 ratio, something surprising popped up: A line spiraling outwards from the center of the pearl. It's repeated elsewhere in the piece, although the distortions make it difficult to pick out. I have no idea where it came from, or why it doesn't show up in the only-slightly-smaller 5:4 render. It doesn't mar the piece any, but I'd very much like to know why it's there.

Download links: Right click and hit 'Save Link As' to download. If you just want to look at a larger version of the image, simply follow the link.

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Fireworks Bombardment

This piece is hot off the processor, to use a horribly trite metaphor. I did it this afternoon, and I'm pretty happy with it. My brother pointed out to me that it's got a similar spiral pattern to what you'd see in the seeds on a sunflower--fractal shapes are everywhere, folks.

On the technical side, this flame is pretty tame. That's probably why it's more obviously fractal. No truly distorting variations are used; the least fractal element in here is probably the 'radial blur' variation that produces those lovely starburst effects. I generally don't like flames that have this little deviation from the perfect geometric shapes, but I think the colors and the starbursts are enough for me to make an exception.

Download links: Right click and hit 'Save Link As' to download. If you just want to look at a larger version of the image, simply follow the link.

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Descending Hues

I like the range of colors in this flame. It has that nice deep purple that I love so much, and it has some pretty good green shades. There are enough shades mixed together to prevent making any one of them the focal point (although the purple tries to steal some attention, I think it's just dark enough to work).

This piece is one I did last Monday, and it's really meant for a widescreen format. Since I now have a widescreen monitor, I've been doing 16:9 aspect ratio flames instead of 5:4. I don't particularly care for the 5:4 version of this flame (such as seen at left), although I can't say exactly why. I know it's something to do with the change in composition. If anybody really wants me to I'd be willing to fiddle around with it to make the 5:4 version work. I suppose I'll need to figure it out eventually anyway if I ever want to get it printed.

Download links: Right click and hit 'Save Link As' to download. If you just want to look at a larger version of the image, simply follow the link.

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Painted Conch

My mother owns a little seashell that has had the outer layers polished off of it in spots, exposing the mother of pearl underneath. (A little bit of googling leads me to believe it may be the shell of a Turbo Sarmaticus) It gives it a very unusual coloration; not quite like the flame at left, but pretty close. The real object has less blue. I wasn't really thinking of that seashell when I created and named this piece, but I was reminded strongly of it when I looked at this flame again. It's odd how stuff like that happens.

Download links: Right click and hit 'Save Link As' to download. If you just want to look at a larger version of the image, simply follow the link.

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Flash Flood

I figure this is a pretty good representation of a wall of water crashing down a ravine. The lighting must be pretty odd though, because the other option is the water being purple, and that just isn't right. Maybe there was a paint factory upstream.

Download links: Right click and hit 'Save Link As' to download. If you just want to look at a larger version of the image, simply follow the link.

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Iris

As in the flower, not the part of the eye. I'm not certain this piece actually looks anything like an iris, but it has a similar color scheme to some of the ones that grow in my backyard. Of course, those irises are some weird cultivar with lots and lots of ruffles, so my idea of what an iris looks like and your idea of whan an iris looks like might not mesh.

Download links: Right click and hit 'Save Link As' to download. If you just want to look at a larger version of the image, simply follow the link.

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Download links: Right click and hit 'Save Link As' to download. If you just want to look at a larger version of the image, simply follow the link.

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Amber Inset

This flame may look familiar; that's because it's a zoomed in chunk of this flame that I posted way back when. I think the inset version of the piece eliminates some of the worst compositional errors and least interesting parts of the flame. I'm informed that this flame is 'gelatinous' but I'm not sure I see it. I was thinking it looked like...you know...amber. That might just be the colors, though.

Download links: Right click and hit 'Save Link As' to download. If you just want to look at a larger version of the image, simply follow the link.

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Lithic Photovores (recolor)

Sorry this is late; my computer monitor decided to go kaput last Friday, so I didn't have access to the computer with all of my fractal flame stuff on it. Anyway, moving on...

Those of you who are well versed in word roots can probably guess what this flame's title means: Rocky plants. I suppose it's rather similar to 'Silicon Autotrophs' for meaning, but that's okay. I just like the idea of rocks that eat light. Too much science fiction, most likely.

This flame started out purple, and I probably would have kept it that way if I could have gotten the light and dark patches where I wanted them to be. Unfortunately they were just about the opposite of what you see in this version, and it rather badly unbalanced things. I like the blue better anyway; I think the more muted colors work better with the overall feel of the piece.

Download links: Right click and hit 'Save Link As' to download. If you just want to look at a larger version of the image, simply follow the link.

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Green Tide

The color and texture of this flame are my favorite things about it. The green shades go all the way from almost-blue to almost-yellow (although there are really only three gradations present), counterbalanced by the slight purplish tint of the brighter areas. The elongated lines that make up the flame remind me of a photograph with an over-long exposure time; blurred and static, but still conveying motion.

I had a really hard time positioning this piece on the canvas. The dark green section on the right-hand side continues a lot farther than I'd have liked it too, and it started looking fuzzy and grainy, just as the smaller repeats of it do. I generally don't like to cut off just a small piece of a flame the way I've done here, but it turned out to be the best solution without altering the shape of the flame.

Download links: Right click and hit 'Save Link As' to download. If you just want to look at a larger version of the image, simply follow the link.

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Orbital Diagrams

This flame reminds me of the old low-tech special effects holographic-display things that used to get drawn into old sci-fi movies. I'm not sure if the colors match one that I'm remembering, or what, but that's what it makes me think of. It also has this compass rose thing happening too, with the little striated lines coming off of it. I really like the combination of those two elements.

This piece is one of my favorites. I made it about two months ago, and I didn't want to make anything else for a while because I was still having fun looking at this one. It's very much a 'hand made' flame; I didn't introduce any random elements when I was constructing it. I take an obscure sort of pride in that, even though flames that do have random elements are often better than ones that don't. I think part of my attachement to it is that it is hand made--and that I spent quite a bit of time doing so. Longer to fix it in my memory, I suppose.

Download links: Right click and hit 'Save Link As' to download. If you just want to look at a larger version of the image, simply follow the link.

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Khaki Coral

This piece has a little bit of blur effect on it, but I'm not sure I like the way I turned out. It didn't work without the blur--the lines were too thin and hard. But I couldn't figure out how to make it blur evenly across the whole piece. I suspect that now I could make it work, but this piece is from about two years ago. As much as I talk about going back and fixing old pieces, I'd rather spend the time making something new. The creative energy required is the same, and it seems to be in finite supply.

Download links: Right click and hit 'Save Link As' to download. If you just want to look at a larger version of the image, simply follow the link.

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Rotary Hummingbird

The unnatural merging of a hummingbird and a helicopter, the rotary hummingbird was created by a deranged geneticist. I really have to wonder why he bothered. I mean, after all...hummingbirds can already hover. And the poor thing must get terribly dizzy what with all that spinning.

Download links: Right click and hit 'Save Link As' to download. If you just want to look at a larger version of the image, simply follow the link.

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Static Electricity

Bzzzzck! It's been a little while since I've posted a flame that requires sound effects. But this one certainly does. Probably something along the lines of those musical tesla coils. It probably doesn't play star wars music, though.

This flame uses the popcorn variation, which is nothing new by this point. But I really like the way the fractal pattern visible in the center of the flame gets distorted and wonky-shaped at the edges by it.

Download links: Right click and hit 'Save Link As' to download. If you just want to look at a larger version of the image, simply follow the link.

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