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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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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Lace Nebula

This is one of the first pieces that I tried using the blur effect on. I only used a tiny, tiny speck of it, but it was enough to soften some of the lines. There was a good deal of fiddling around with it to see how much was too much and how much was not enough. I wanted to add enough blur that it created a sort of out of focus effect that got more pronounced as it moved outwards from the center, but not so much as would make it really blatant.

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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Anemone 2

It might be just a tad spiky for your average anemone, but I couldn't think of anything else that came in that color with that many tentacles. Are they tentacles because it's an anemone, or is it an anemone because they're tentacles? If it were a flower, I'd say they were petals. If it were a bacterium, I'd say they were cilia. So I guess it's the first one.

It's a little tough to pick out in the preview image, but the shape of this flame actually comes from a repeat with the 'waves' variation. It's just squished down so tightly that the oscillations overlap each other and appear solid. It causes some interesting striations and blurring.

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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Nets 2

The original 'Nets' was virtually the same as this piece, except it had one additional repeat thrown in. I didn't care for the way that looked, so I pulled it out and rendered the flame again. This is the result. Getting rid of the added repeat enhanced the 'speed lines' effect and made the texture a lot clearer. I do wonder if I shouldn't have tried to adjust the colors while I was at it, though. That little patch of purple is a little distracting.

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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Slice the Waves

Apparently we just missed seeing some sort of high speed watercraft go by. Oh well, at least it has an interesting looking wake. Consolation prize, I guess. I really like the section at the far left of this piece, where it has that little diminishing S-curve. There are some distorted repeats of that throughout the piece. If I were working with this flame today, instead of two-and-a-half years ago, I would probably try to isolate that piece of the flame by stripping away the other pieces, and then add in some less distorted repeats 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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Portal in the Mist

For one reason and another I've always really liked this flame, even though I know it's not the greatest aesthetically. Part of it is probably the balance of colors in the piece; the colors themselves aren't a very appealing set, but the range of hues and intensities is good. The wavy shapes and textures are interesting, but the overall shape isn't that great; that pixelated patch in the bottom left really hurts the rest of the piece. Ah well. Somehow I still like this piece. I hope you do too, in spite of any failings it may have.

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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Tinted Shark

The title for this flame might be as abstract as the image is. I was really stretching to try and find a name for this one. Ah well. I'm pretty sure there's at least a shark-like fin hiding in there somewhere. Maybe even a set of teeth. I suggest you look and see for yourself. If you happen to see something completely different in the process, I'd like to hear about it. It's always fun to get different viewpoints on the really abstract pieces I do. (Most of the time. I still don't feel too happy about that one my dad was convinced looked like a microscope slide of a parasite.)

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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Alien Leaves

When I look at this piece, it looks like there's a line of plants in the background, which are reflected in a body of water, and then there's another little clump of plants in the foreground. Of course, that whole shape is fractally repeated in that spur up at the top, and it spirals down all the way into "invisibly small" territory. I don't know how you could interpret that in real world terms.

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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Eddies

No, I don't mean the plural of Eddy, that guy in the office down the hall. I mean eddies, as in the swirling reverse current created when a fluid flows past an obstacle. I'll grant you that this flame represents a strange sort of current. Maybe it's an upwelling.

This flame is rather unique on the technical side, and it was very finicky to work with. The spherical variation (which is the only one used here) tends to change shape when you try and move its position on the canvas, so placing elements in specific spots is difficult. It's composed of four repeats, but two of those are simply duplicates of the first two for coloring purposes. What you see here is probably only about 10% of the total area of the flame. The rest of it was too nebulous and faint to make for an interesting image. Zooming in like that usually leads to longer render times, but the serendipitious simplicity of 'Eddies' prevented that in this case.

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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Edge of the World

Growing up understanding that the world is a sphere (mostly) spinning around the sun, I've always felt that the 'Flat Earth' theory was a bit preposterous, especially for those sailors who were most superstitious. Couldn't they see the curvature of the earth from the top of their masts? Why would the sails of a ship show up first if the earth was flat? Nonetheless, the imagery of an ocean of water cascading over the greatest waterfall in the world is quite powerful. This flame is my take on that. It's not blue because...well, I get tired of doing things in blue. Maybe it's lit from below by an otherwordly incandescence. Maybe it's sunset. Or perhaps, that close to the precipice, light becomes twisted and strange. Take your pick.

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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Streams of Consciousness

When I named this flame I was thinking "Hmm. It's kind of stereotypically brain-colored. And it's got elements that can be loosely described as 'streams'...Aha! Brilliant!" except that I didn't really think it was brilliant. I wasn't terribly happy with the piece overall, and I just wanted to hurry up and render it so I could stop working. I do like the textures quite a bit, though. I think my main problem with this piece is the colors, although it's not any great shakes compositionally. If the colors were a little less jumbled up I think it would be a big improvement.

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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Luminous Eyespot

With all the spine-like protrusions and swishy bits, this flame looked to me like a deep sea fish. Bioluminescent, only half seen, swirling away from your tiny and cramped submersible...

I freely admit to using strange colors for this flame, but I really like that phosphorescent blue-green in contrast to the muddy olive shade and the purple. On its own it would be obnoxious and glaring, but when it's set against duller colors it works quite well.

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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Landing Signals

It's an unfortunate truth that I am occasionally stricken by fits of whimsy when I'm working on a flame. In this case, it was during the coloring phase of the process. Hopefully nobody's violently allergic to neon purple. I'm almost tempted to call that a neon brown as well, but I think that's just the blur effect messing with my perceptions.

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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Blocks and Nebula

Do the same sorts of accidental geometric patterns that show up in Earth's clouds appear in nebular dust clouds floating in space? It's amusing to think that they do, but I suspect the answer is no. Those fascinating patterns in our atmosphere are usually the result of winds, and the only winds in space are solar. They might push out a bubble of clear space around a star, but they wouldn't leave ripples and wakes.

Now that I think about it, this piece is really done in the same style as 'Orthogonal Cloudscape.' I believe this is a case of accidental style-convergence. 'Blocks and Nebula' came first, and I don't recall referencing back to it when I was making 'Cloudscape'. Of course, accidental duplication is easy to achieve with the 'popcorn' variation, which some of you may remember is what makes those offset square patterns. This piece uses the popcorn variation a little less heavily, so it has a slightly softer look to 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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Transdimensional Shellfish

I seem to end up with a lot of shell-themed titles. This is probably because shellfish grow in fractal shapes. Some species even have Sierpinski triangle patterns on their shells (imperfect ones, but the basic structure is there). When I finished working on this flame, that spiral pattern looked like something I'd find on a seashell. But the overall shape seemed unnaturally gnarled and twisted, like something that doesn't quite fit in three dimensions.

One of the really interesting things about this piece is the way the central spiral pattern is repeated in the arms. The distortions involved make it difficult to pin down where exactly the repeats are, but they're definitely there. You may notice other flames that have a similar color scheme to this one; the palette that it uses is one I draw on fairly frequently.

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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It should be fairly apparent which title goes with which piece here. This pair of flames was created as a pair, and in fact they only differ by one repeat and a slight adjustment in canvas placement. It's often startling to me how very slight alterations can cause such fundamental changes to a flame. That's part of why I enjoy this medium so much.

Bog Lights

It's just swamp gas. Really. Nothing to see here folks, move along...

The shapes in this flame make it one of those "Must...post...now..." pieces, which I then put off because I don't want to use up all the good ones first. I'm also quite enamored of the little threads of purple in the foreground area (Do these things even have foregrounds? This one seems to, but I don't really know). They really make the color scheme work; if it was just that flat teal color all over it would be pretty ugly.

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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Pages of the Sky

I'm not really sure what to say about this piece. It's a cool image, but it's always seemed just a little off. I'm not sure if the texture is too dense, or if the contrast between the heavily textured area and the edges is too too extreme, or if the shape is wrong, or if the color is wrong...there are a lot of things that I could probably improve, but I think I would rather spend my time on new flames, or improving flames that have a better base to them in the first place. Still, this piece is interesting to look at, at least for a little while. Hopefully it will be entertaining to some of you.

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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Architecture

This flame may seem fairly abstract at first, but if you look at it and think about the title for a bit, it may go 'click' in your mind. If it doesn't: Imagine you're pointing a light up at the ceiling of a cathedral or some other ornate building, with a domed roof and perhpas some pillars. That's how I like to picture this flame. Being able to interpret it like that makes this one of my favorite pieces, even though from a purely visual viewpoint (heh, visual viewpoint) it's not really that spectacular. Flames that really look like something get bumped up several notches on the list automatically.

I'm pretty sure this piece uses the same gradient as 'Purple Fountains' did. You can pick out each of the shades involved in that flame in this one; they're just not grouped together in quite the same way. The really scattered, un-coordinated color scheme that some flames have is caused by how the color palette was applied, not the palette itself. It's really hard to explain, and I don't understand the mechanism very well myself (not well enough to make it do what I want every time, certainly).

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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Negative Space

This flame looks to me like it might have some sort of oddly shaped event horizon in the middle there, or possibly an infestation of pixelivorous virii. If you look at it the other way, the black space is being covered by an oddly delineated mist spewing from that slightly brighter section. Much longer and there wouldn't be any left...

'Negative Space' uses a final transform, the same way pieces like the marbles I did over Christmas do. But in this case, instead of mapping the flame onto a sphere, it kind of stretched and pulled the edges of the flame around that area of black space. It's a little hard to describe exactly how it works. This piece uses the popcorn variation, which is what makes those little lines and jinks (They're most visible around the periphery of the black space). That's not one I use very often of late, although some of my best works have utilized 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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Purple Quartzite

I feel terrible about this title. Just terrible. Quartzite is an actual rock, and it is nothing like the flame at right. Metamorphic sandstone, feh. If you're of the geologic persuasion, just imagine I named it Purple Generic Crystalline Structures instead.

The repeats on this flame are a little different than usual. Most of the time if I'm adding multiple repeats I'll add them one at a time in different spots. In this piece I added sets of two repeats at the same vertices, but with different rotations. I think that's what created the dense branching structures, as well as the two lobed purple shapes. I might have to play around with that technique again sometime soon, as I appear to have forgotten all about it in the two years since I made this 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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Explosive Chrysanthemum

Whose idea was it to make 'chrysanthemum' so hard to spell? I had to look up the spelling when I named this flame. It doesn't look particularly like a chrysanthemum anyway, but I couldn't think of a kind of flower with lots of spiky petals. Perhaps the petals are spiky because the Explosive Chrysanthemum is a rare variety. (Bred by the same people who brought you the Detonating Daisy, Blast Buttercup, and Incendiary Iris! Buy yours today!)

Since I'm starting to make up fake infomercial segments I'd better cut this short. I'm not entirely satisfied with the composition of this piece. I suspect it needs either a square frame or a skinny rectangular frame with lots of dead space. This flame shares a color palette with 'Prismatic Splash,' among others. I tend to slap this gradient onto flames a lot to see if it will work. It usually doesn't.

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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Purple Fountains

In an odd coincidence, I think this flame uses the same color palette as yesterday's. They weren't done at the same time, so I don't know if it's entirely by chance or if I decided to reuse it on purpose. It's probably one of the preset gradients that come bundled with Apophysis, so it's quite possible that the randomizer selected it twice.

I'm really not sure what to say about this piece. It seems to be just abstract enough that it's hard to compare it to an object, or any kind of 'real' thing. I'm writing this at 2 AM though, so I don't really trust my brain for this artistic stuff. If you don't really want to think about it too hard either, just go with the title: It's fountains, and they are purple. It doesn't fit perfectly, but it's the closest I can come.

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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Speed Lines

I'm not exactly sure what left these speed lines behind in its wake, but I suspect it may have been some manner of futuristic car. The glowing blue patches are probably skid-marks, or possibly patches of pavement heated to searing intensity.

This flame was really just a 'sketch' piece. It's a mutation and recolor of a flame I spent a considerable amount of time on ('Troubled Waters', although I don't know when it will find its way up here). I have quite a few pieces like this kicking around. When I finish editing a flame I usually render it right away at desktop resolution, which takes about 10-15 minutes on average. I don't like to go do other stuff while that's going on, because I'm impatient to see how it turns out. So I'll spend the time fiddling with the flame some more; mutating it, messing with the colors, fine tuning this and that. Sometimes this leads to a superior version of the original flame. But more often it leads to a second flame that shares elements with the first, but is its own entity.

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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Rainbow Sherbet

I may or may not have been craving ice cream when I made this fractal. I confess to being slightly baffled by this flame; I didn't think rainbow sherbet came in a soft-serve variety.

Something has been bothering me as I've been writing all these entries. There's no specific verb for making a fractal flame. If it was a pencil sketch, I could say that I drew it. If it was a blob of clay, I could say I sculpted it. But to my knowledge there's no word for the action of creating a fractal flame. I suppose I could coin one, but it would probably turn out to be ridiculous. What word would you use?

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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Nightmare Carnival

Are those ambulatory carnivorous ferris wheels? Why yes, I think they are! This might be because of a disaffected carny who's been taking mad science correspondence courses, but I myself blame the funnel cake radiation.

The fractal flame medium seems to be good at making eyes and mouths, but I suspect this is really just a trick of the human brain. Eyes and mouths are generally the more important bits of what people look at. Things that look just a little bit like an eye get the benefit of the doubt.

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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Mystic Diadem

This flame breaks the mold a bit. I make symmetric flames only very infrequently nowadays, although I did do quite a few of them early on. I like the B-movie prop effect this piece has going for it. It looks like it could be an object, but only if it were an incredibly chintzy and cheap looking object. Clear plastic, maybe some glitter to bring out the pointy bits. And all sitting on the head of an actress who's doing her best to keep a straight face while reading terrible dialogue.

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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Surfing

I'm not too certain about the title on this one. Maybe it's an indoor wave simulator, and it's being lit with brightly colored spotlights for some sort of crazy party? Literal interpretations aside, the shape of this flame conveyed such a feeling of fluid motion to me that 'Surfing' was the only name that seemed to fit.

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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Nightmoth

This piece makes more sense if you interpret it as having lots and lots of motion blur, and maybe some speed lines. The titular 'Nightmoth' is the part at far left that's slightly lighter in color. Presumably it's dodging a bat or something.

'Nightmoth' is one of my earlier experiments with the 'many repeats' technique. I'm fairly certain it's the second flame that uses it, but to be absolutely sure I'd have to dig through the parameters of all of the earlier flames. It might actually be a sibling or descendant of 'Fairy in a Bubble.' I did the two of them on the same day, about half an hour apart. Huzzah for date-stamps on files! I suspect this flame is a mutation of 'Fairy', but it's possible I just did two from scratch using the same method.

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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Underwater Explosion

There's a funny story behind it, but I don't actually like this piece anymore. You know how windows PCs will sometimes flash to a different desktop image as their logging on or logging off? Well, somehow, this flame got stuck as the one it flashed to. So I got to see it every day, for months. Not for very long, but it was [i]annoying[/i]. So even though this is a pretty cool piece in terms of color and shape, and it's got that nifty 'fake lighting' effect going on, I don't like it anymore. Call it negative association, I guess.

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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Flowering Crystals

Ten points to anybody who gets the literary reference. This piece has some fairly obvious fractal elements, but it doesn't beat you over the head with them. The sort of...'bubble' of faint bits that traces around the edges of the flame is rather interesting, and I like the way it smoothes out the the borders. Looking at it now I'm thinking that lime green and tan with aqua and purple might be a little bit of an unorthodox color choice. But fah! I defy orthodox color choices!

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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Star Violets

Far too many of my flames seem to be "In SPACE!" I think it's because I like using black backgrounds so often. Nonetheless, the idea of delicate little flowers floating through vacuum rather tickles my sense of poetry. I'm sure there's all kinds of deeper meaning in there. On the subject of this flame, though: It's just supposed to be pretty.

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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Stellar Reef

This is a recolor that I spent maybe two minutes on. I still like it better than the original color scheme, which was pretty much the same one I used in 'Chinese Cloud' with a little bit of purple thrown in. It wasn't very attractive. I love the textures in this flame, and the new colors enhance them a lot. This is just about the only flame where I've achieved that billowy, fabric-like effect that you see over on the right. I should really see if I can duplicate that in an interesting way. All too often a technique that's interesting in one flame is ugly in another, or just doesn't work without so many elements identical to the original flame that it might as well be the same one.

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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Eddy Current

This flame looked rather watery to me, so I decided to give it a watery name. Looking at it now it looks more like water draining through a small crack, but I still like the name. This piece is a fairly early one, right at the beginning of the period where I started learning that color in a flame is a good thing. Even so, I think the colors here work quite well.

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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Pipe Organ

Okay, so it has fifteen keyboards and takes twenty years to learn to play. But hey, it's purple! I like the textures in this piece, especially in the bottom half. I've used a similar technique to get the same texture in a number of different flames. Waves variation and spherical variation on the same triangle, for those of you who dabble.

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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Melting Waxworks

This flame is a fairly recent one, from about a month and a half back. If you've ever looked at fancy hardcover books, you'll notice that some of them have marbled endpapers (which, if you're too lazy to follow the link, are made by floating inks on the surface of water and then dipping the paper in it). That's what this flame made me think of, despite what I titled it. It had just a little bit too much of a third dimension to label it as something flat.

I have no idea how to reproduce this flame without looking at the save file I have for it. It's obviously another of those 'many repeats' flames I like to point out to you folks, but other than that...no clue. I figure that's a plus; this way I can stumble upon a similar flame six months down the road and feel blindingly creative instead of self-derivative.

On an unrelated note: 100, woooooh. Stick around, my friends. I think I can keep this up for at least a year before I have to slow down.

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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Purple comet

I'm not sure the big glowy spot in the middle of this one would print well, but I absolutely love this flame. The jaggedy edges of the spiral just feel right to me for some reason. I could reposition the flame so that those are all that shows, I suppose (look, a rhyme!). Yeah, I'm going to have to mess around with that and various other methods of hiding the white spot.

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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Orthogonal Cloudscape

This flame is a recent one, from the end of last month. I was really happy with it; I think it ended up staying as my desktop background for at least a week. The tesselated square pattern is very fun, even if it's not a true tesselation. What I really liked, though, ws the patterning inside the square pieces. Add in the colors and the impression of 'lighting' that the shape of this flame creates, and it's pretty high up on my list of favorite pieces.

Note: The widescreen version of this piece is matted. It just didn't fit in the wider aspect ratio correctly.

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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Snail

You can't see his shell, so I suppose it's possible he's a slug instead. There are several different ways to look at it. This is not at all a 'serious' piece. But I thought the shape was quite amusing, so here you go.

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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Boiling planet

Uh oh...looks like somebody drifted a little close to their primary sun. Bye bye, atmosphere! Aside from the astronomy analogy (which I enjoy far, far too much), this flame is the wrong shape. Or at least, for this canvas. It really ought to be centered (mostly) on a square canvas fo the best effect.

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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Bubbles and Foliage

This is the sort of thing I like to picture seeing while scuba diving on an alien world. Maybe it's seaweed, maybe it's man-eating squid roe. Maybe it's a coral reef, or a filter feeder masquerading as one.

From a technical standpoint, this flame is 95% gratuitous abuse of fractal repeats. I like the colors in this quite a lot, although I would tone down the pink a little if I were doing it again today.

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Cataclysm

Tsunami always come in neon colors, right? Right? Well, even if they don't, I like the neon in this one. It sort of freezes the sense of motion, and makes it look like it's not supposed to be moving. Which is good, because it's not. I know I'm doing a terrible job explaining it; Art and words don't live in the same parts of my brain. Nonetheless, I hope you enjoy it.

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Skylight

This is one I did three or four days ago. Sometimes I like to play around with more geometric effects than I usually use, and this was the result. The 'tile' shapes around the edges of the focal area are particularly satisfying; that's a new trick for me. I need to go back and rotate the piece about 20 degrees counter-clockwise sometime. The widescreen version of this piece is matted.

Starting today I will no longer be providing the 800x600 copies of the images on here. There didn't seem to be much point, and it cuts out a quarter of the post-processing to get rid of them.

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Augury

This is, perhaps, an unfortunate title. Augury is typically associated with looking at the guts of sacrificed animals to try and tell the future, although that's actually haruspicy. As I understand it, augury was the more general field of prophetic portents and associated mumbo jumbo. Anyway, at the time of naming I was just trying to come up with something suitably weird sounding, to go with the shape of the flame. It's kind of an odd one.

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Purple Peacocks (inset)

Occasionally I'll do multiple camera views of the same fractal. This was the second view of this piece, and it was zoomed in from the original, hence the (inset) label. Like yesterday's piece, 'Purple Peacocks' gives the impression of having a light shining on part of the image. I always enjoy that effect when I can produce it; it's not one I've figured out the trick to yet.

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Battleship Purple

Why is it a battleship? Why is it purple? Heck if I know. The name is almost as abstract as the flame. I'm pretty sure I was about a month post-surgery at the time I made this one, so that may have been a factor. The other possibility is that it sounded cool at the time. (And still does!) On the subject of the fractal itself I don't have much to say: The crinkly, snakey, smokelike texture is very fun, the neon purple is a little brighter than it needs to be, and it's possible that the whole thing is a very strange jellyfish or an alien derelict. As always, I leave that last part up to your imaginations.

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Starspume

Spume (noun): Frothy matter or liquids. This is spume...in space! (Warning: TVtropes link. Abandon all hope, ye who hyperlink here.) Really though, this is the kind of exhaust a really awesome spaceship should put out. 'Starspume' has a very similar color set to 'Shimmery' that I posted recently, which lends it that delightful shiny effect.

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Illuminated fountain

The title on this one is pretty obvious. But I suppose I could have called it 'Roman Candle' or something along those lines just as easily, although the color scheme isn't quite right for that. And I like these colors quite a lot; I can't remember off the top of my head whether there were actually purple shades in the color palette I used, or if the overlapping red and blue segments caused those, but either way it's a cool effect.

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Shimmery

If this were a real object, it would be rippling gently and making a 'Schwaaaaaaaaaa' sound effect. It might also be engulfing mesmerized bystanders and digesting them, but I don't like to speculate. I love the smooth texture the wavy segments around the edges have; those, in combination with the silvery-pink color, give 'Shimmery' its unique look.

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The Neon Factory

Neon is actually a bit more orange-ish than the color scheme in this piece, but it's still a good title for it. This piece is a lot more neutral in composition than most of the flames I do; there's motion present, but it's constant motion in specific directions, not a changing movement over different parts of the image. Kind of like watching one of those warp-speed screensavers.

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Aperture

This is one of those pieces where my first reaction to the finished render is 'Oooooh...shiiiiiiiny.' I'm not ashamed to admit it. This has always been one of my favorite pieces compositionally. The actual textures and shapes aren't as interesting, which is something of a pity. Still, I hope some of you can get some enjoyment out of it.

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Abstract 2, 7-27-07

Most of the fractal flames I do look better on black than they do on white. I've never been able to figure out exactly why. I suspect it has something to do with the color palettes I pick. Whatever the reason, this flame looks quite a bit better on white than it does on black. I couldn't think of a name for this one, so it just got the 'Abstract' designation and a date. The second time in one day, apparently. I must not have been feeling very creative.

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Line of Asymmetry

Another flame in the style of 'Molten Wave.' Again, you can see striations in parts of the image which are an artifact of the technique used to produce the smooth, blurred effect found in both flames. In an interesting coincidence, both images use the same color palette, although 'Line of Asymmetry' uses a larger section of it.

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Brain Coral

See the resemblance? 'Brain Coral' isn't a perfect representative of it's namesake, but the general idea's there, especially if you look at one of the purple species. This flame is from a period where I liked using really, really obnoxious purple color schemes. Some of the flames I did that way look okay, but they'd probably be better with a new paint job. I suspect 'Brain Coral' is one of those.

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Nebular

This is another one of those flames with the quilted, segmented patterning (the software calls it a 'popcorn' variation) that I mentioned yesterday. However, in the case of 'Nebular,' it produces a really cool rippling effect, especially in the upper half of the image. It rather reminds me of drifting snow. Or perhaps dust and gas drifting through space...

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Blowing Flames

This piece has some interesting textures and visual effects created as the lines on the right side fade away. These show up fairly often, but 'Blowing Flames' is an excellent example of it. I also really like the way the 'squiggly' things at the top and bottom frame the image.

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Purple Sparks

I've never quite been happy with the shape of 'Purple Sparks.' There's something just a bit off on the right hand side, and I have yet to figure out quite what. But I really like the image of sparks flying off from some pyrotechnic, and the sense of motion conveyed. The slight blurring adds to that nicely.

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