I don’t think an About section would really work here, though it probably needs one.
I had one back in the day (now buried under mostly inaccessible layers of long ago murdered .swf’s) and it really had the details; system specs of the machine(s) and hardware I was using, lists of all the software and versions, location, times/dates, stuff like that.
So. Instead of that, we’ll do this.
I’m just going to post this right now and hope that it forces me to change and edit it throughout the day instead of just not doing it. As much as I crave detailed information (and do feel oddly impelled to share it for whatever reason; posterity, ego, I dunno) I hate reading my own words about as much as I hate hearing my own stupid voice.
So.
It’s 1996 and I’m using Windows95. I’m tweaking scripts, installing .exe’s, bludgeoning .html, and what I’m doing is creating a live link between selected things happening on my computer and a web page. The web page displays all kinds of real-time stuff; imagery and stills from animations that I’m working on, a clock with time and date, info about my computer, a text area where I can post messages, my current IP address, if my pirated software FTP server is online, then some bookmarks and links.
It didn’t, but I remember I wanted it to look like the bridge console screens from Star Trek. I have a few Zip disks that likely have the archives, screenshots, etc., but the Zip drive is long since dead.
This was all on Geocities. Or it may have only worked on Tripod. Or Angelfire. I can’t remember, but I do remember being pissed that I couldn’t get it to work on my artic.edu/~sfoyle space because of their IT security polices then. My point is, it was basically a “web log”. The term was actually coined a few years later. A blog. For the whole world. It was incredibly novel and thrilling.
While the web continues to grow more amazing by the minute, it also becomes more difficult for an amateur to publish or broadcast. I mean, on their own terms. For better or worse, without being prisoner to the whims of corporate winds.
At some point in the past several years WordPress became integrated into Dreamhost and while I saw the WP stuff I wasn’t impressed. This was around the time I’d just finished the long and tedious process of scanning and uploading my dad’s sketchbook pages to WordPress.com (eventually, I’ll start linking them here) and while it did occur to me that I could potentially install it on Getofthisplanet.com, the software seemed way too wonky and not really meant for what/how I wanted to use it. Flash forward a few years, though, and here we are.
During the inevitable rush to capitalize the Internet of Pixels it was transformed away from a sharp-electronic, dream-garden of staggering artistic originality and newness that seemingly erupted simultaneously simply from the overflowing digital-eye-candy-design-orgy produced by what at the time felt like the unleashed creative fury of millions of plugged in eyestronauts. Its freeform space and limitless potential stunted, assaulted, then was deliberately transformed into templatization, to Artstation to Behance to Twitter to YouTube to Twitch to Facebook to Instagram to technologies that were designed to wrest full control away from the user by facilitating unnecessary burdens.
Yeah yeah. Ok. So, why a blog, why now?
A bunch of things, if I’m honest; an invocation and maybe a promised response to a muse or a ghost or long lost soul, posterity, advances in software, advances in hardware, available time, awareness of mortality, hatred of a small man and a $5 “I’m paying for it I better use it” increase in my monthly webhosting fee are all mentionable reasons.
Basically, it’s this:
Technology, right now, has nicely dovetailed with my artistic goals.
On the software side of things the Dreamhost/Wordpress combo has made the simple goal of posting a 5 second animation to the web a much more enjoyable, reliable, tweakable and accessible process.
The renderer inside 3ds Max, Arnold, has matured into a increasingly versatile and fast engine.
On the hardware side, the 30 series of Nvidia of GPU’s are several times faster than current gen CPU’s for 3D rendering. It’s a shocking speed jump.
Speed, simplicity and motivation. Right now the process from thought to creation to planet-wide accessibility with as little corporate entanglement as possible and, I hate to say it, maybe some artistic integrity intact is as easy as it is seductive.
So far I’ve settled into a working rhythm of posting daily, mostly 5 second long .gif animations. For most of 2022 I’ve tried to keep their size below 30 MB. Sadly, .mp4’s ubiquity just isn’t there: I need the animations to, by themselves, play, always, forever. Shamefully, that’s still impossible for anything other than the animated .gif. It’s become part of the challenge, though. 256 colors, indeed.
Technical wise, in order to get something worth posting I need the renders take less than 1 hour for 300 frames. This seems to be a good amount for visual interest, speed, and tweakability considering a constantly looming daily posting goal. Everything is rendered out of 3ds Max to 800×450 .png’s @ 30 fps then either tweaked in After Effects and re-rendered for Photoshop or just brought straight into Photoshop to use its legacy .gif animation exporter. Thinking about inserting a comprehensive software list here. (*added list 12/17/2022 see below)
Content wise, a lot of the work is purely experimentation. Some work is deeply personal and those who know, will know. Meanings are often assigned when I title the things. Titles are references to stuff I’m thinking about or stuff that I read or stuff that hear when working. Sometimes there are messages. Sometimes there are hidden things. Sometimes there are codes. Sometimes there are no codes. A consistency is the desire to create something worth spending at least 10 seconds of time looking at. Something beautiful.
And I like to post the music that I’m currently listening to because it’s an integral part of the creation engine.
*This is a pretty complete list of the software that’s been used over the past year in the production of the contents of this website, updated if/as needed:
Software 2021-2022:
Windows 10
3ds Max 2021
3ds Max Additional Tools:
clone.dll
Gtools_Ivy.mse
ImagePlane154.ms
Radial Symmetry.dlm
TetraLine
tyFlow_2020
looping _vornois.osl
RayFireTool.mse
buildingGen_v07_36_noheap.mse
infodisplay.mse
SoulburnScripts
TetraM.mcg
TorusM.mcg
Transform MCG.mcg
Tubo_1_1.mcg
Turtle Spline.mcg
Twist MCG.mcg
Vu_AutoRings.mcg
Vu_Bifolds_Free.mcg
Vu_Blobs.mcg
Vu_CloneOnVerts.mcg
Vu_ConnVerts.mcg
Vu_DisplayPointCloud.mcg
Vu_FlatpackSpline_2018.mcg
Vu_IBreakaYouFace.mcg
Vu_MagneticFilaments.mcg
Vu_MagnetsAdv.mcg
Vu_mcgLoft_1.00.00.mcg
Vu_MultiSlicerRot.mcg
Vu_Parse_Quads.mcg
Vu_PixelizeSpline.mcg
Vu_RenderablePoints.mcg
Vu_STFU.mcg
Vu_Stitches.mcg
Vu_TextOnPath.mcg
Vu_Voxelizer.mcg
Vu_Zoolinderrr.mcg
Wave MCG.mcg
ArrowFieldM.mcg
ArrowM.mcg
Axis Tripod.mcg
Bend MCG.mcg
BoxM.mcg
Cell Noise.mcg
CircleSectorM.mcg
Clone MCG.mcg
Cloner from Surface MCG.mcg
Cloner from Vertices MCG.mcg
Cloner Mesher MCG.mcg
Cloner Transform MCG.mcg
Color Polygons.mcg
Color Vertices from Spline.mcg
Combine MCG.mcg
Composer.mcg
Conform MCG.mcg
Conform Spline.mcg
Cube Grid.mcg
CylinderM.mcg
Deform MCG.mcg
Delete Vertices MCG.mcg
Explode Polygons.mcg
Extrude Polygons.mcg
Fence.mcg
GridClonerM.mcg
HyperClone_v2.0.495.mcg
IcosaM.mcg
Invert MCG.mcg
Limit MCG.mcg
Loft Splines.mcg
loopMeshAnimation.mcg
Map Grid.mcg
Mesh Mixer.mcg
Morph Simple MCG.mcg
Multiframe.mcg
Noise MCG.mcg
Noise Perlin MCG.mcg
Noisy Poly Color.mcg
Normal Splines.mcg
OrthoPlaneM.mcg
Panelizer_v1.0.0.mcg
PathClonerM.mcg
Physics Spline.mcg
PlaneM.mcg
PyramidM.mcg
Ray Splines.mcg
Relax MCG.mcg
Reset Origin MCG.mcg
Ripple MCG.mcg
Scatter by Color.mcg
Select Poly by Pattern.mcg
Show Normals MCG.mcg
Shuffle Swap.mcg
Simple Scatter.mcg
Skew MCG.mcg
Smart Scale MCG.mcg
Soft Extrude.mcg
SphereClone.mcg
SphereM.mcg
Spherify MCG.mcg
Spline History.mcg
Spline Mixer.mcg
Spline Scatter.mcg
Spline Twister.mcg
Stacker MCG.mcg
Stairs.mcg
Stamper.mcg
Stretch MCG.mcg
Studio.mcg
SuperPivot.mcg
Support Splines.mcg
Symmetry MCG.mcg
Taper MCG.mcg
TurboSplines
Arnold Renderer
After Effects 22
After Effects Additional Tools:
Deep Glow.aex
LoopFlow.aex
TimeBend.aex
VRColorGradient.aex
VRConverter.aex
VRDenoise.aex
VRDigitalGlitch.aex
VRFractalNoise.aex
VRGaussianBlur.aex
VRGlow.aex
VRPlaneToSphere.aex
VRRotateSphere.aex
VRSharpen.aex
VRSphereToPlane.aex
VideoLimiter.aex
VRChromaticAberration.aex
Form.aex
Horizon.aex
Lux.aex
Mir.aex
Particular.aex
SoundKeys.aex
Tao.aex
Echospace.aex
NeatVideo
Photoshop 23
Illustrator
Media Encoder
SpeedTree
Handbrake
XnViewMP
WinSCP
Notepad ++
NetObjects Fusion
Firefox
Chrome
Word
WinDirStat
WinRar
SysinternalsSuite
Nirsoft Package
K-Lite Codec Pack
qBittorrent
MPC-HC
Web Based Tools:
https://greenwichmeantime.com/
https://coderstoolbox.net/
https://www.timeanddate.com/
https://www.dcode.fr/
https://www.boxentriq.com/
https://onlinegiftools.com/
https://ezgif.com/
https://online.rapidresizer.com/
https://onlinetexttools.com/