Animated Fractal #2

I have created another animated fractal, but this one is over 12 megabytes in size and therefore cannot be uploaded to Blogger.  To see the animation, click on the link below. It could take a while to load. Chances are, it will be choppy at first until it's loaded all the way, then it should run smoothly on modern computers.

http://srwhaley.home.insightbb.com/FractalMovie2.gif

March of Dimes

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On May 12th I will be walking for the March of Dimes.  I have set a personal goal of raising $100 in donations.  If you're interested in sponsoring me, click this link and you will be taken to the March of Dimes website that has my name on it.  http://www.walkamerica.org/walkstaceywalk
They accept international donations, too.  The March of Dimes is putting on "Walk America" in order to raise money to help save babies' lives.  Premature births are the number one cause of infant death.  I'm doing this to get in better shape myself and to help raise money for those babies that need help!  Thanks.

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I have stayed up until 4:30am making fractals.
Time to go to bed.

Cosmic Lotus

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Sending out a great big "hello" to the world!!

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Depths of Light

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There's something magical about staying up until 3:00am working on fractals.

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The Inside of an Eye

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Spiral Visions

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Animated Fractal

This is the first time I've animated one of my fractals.  I've saved it as an animated gif file.  Please allow the page time to load so that the animation
 runs smoothly and not jumpy.  Chances are, if you have a dial-up connection, you can't see it as it's over five megabytes in size.  I just hope the rest of the page can load for you.  For the rest of you, if you can't see the animation above, please let me know, either in the comments here on the blog, or by sending me an email to fractal_rock@yahoo.com  For those of you with dial-up, can you let me know if the rest of the page loads up for you?  Thank you!

I Don't "Embelish"!

Thank you to everyone for coming to my blog to view my fractal art. I hope you enjoy your time here.

I am writing because someone sent me a link to a site where my fractal art was shown and I read one of the comments there. A man was complaining because I supposedly use Adobe Photoshop on my fractals. I want everyone to know, that I have created hundreds of fractals since I first started, and in all of those hundreds of fractals, I have only used Adobe Photoshop on three or four of my fractals. I do not think of this as embelishing my art in any way. In fact, the man that complained about Photoshop said that his fractals could look "prettier" if he had chosen to use Adobe Photoshop. My question to him was, if you know your fractals could look even better with Photoshop, why hesitate to use the software? Still, I just want to say that I've only used Photoshop on three or four fractals. The rest are pure flames. You can easily tell which fractals I have sharpened by reading the text below the fractal. I very clearly state when and where I've used Photoshop!

I believe I've come a long way with Apophysis.  If you would like to see some of my earlier creations, visit my old blogs at http://fractalrock.blogspot.com and also http://fractalrock.deviantart.com

I haven't created any fractals since February of this year, but I have plans to begin creating again, so I hope you will return soon. If you have any questions, feel free to email me at fractal_rock@yahoo.com I would love to hear from you!

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I am still experimenting with the Julia variation. This time, I added a bit of the rays variation to a transform. Then, I put it off-center for some variety, just like the sun doesn't always have to be in the middle of the picture.

Thank you to everyone for your comments. I am sorry that I haven't responded the past few days. I have been busy.

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Tonight I have been experimenting with the Julia variation.

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This is one I made back in June, but never posted. I rendered with a low quality setting to preserve the grain. Quality = 25, and I normally use 1000 for images that I post online. In the rare event that I print a fractal, I normally use 2000. Not that there's much visible difference between 1000 and 2000. I also went back to using flam3 to render. I had been using the internal renderer.

One thing I'd like to see in the not-too-distant future, is all the various versions of Apophysis put into one program, and that flam3 be updated to support all the variations in all the versions. However, I don't want to be pushy. The developers of both flam3 and Apophysis have done a wonderful job, and have put a lot of work into getting these pieces of software out to us.

Swizzle

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Here's an idea for the Apophysis users out there. If you're having a difficult time creating a new fractal, take an old flame and change some of the variations.

Bubble Worlds

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I couldn't decide which one I liked the best, so I rendered them both.

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First of all, this isn't my style. I applied a trick I learned from looking at some of Exper's parameters. This is really his style. I applied swirl and polar to a transform, and wah-lah. I had no idea the combination of those two variations could produce these nice little swirlies.

Goatman mentioned fractal music in a comment he made. Yes! There really is such a thing as fractal music. There are various software available to create fractal music, though I haven't tried it yet. Based on his comment, I may just decide to make some! There are quite a few fractal music sites on the web, and therefore, there is a large variety of fractal music software. I have no idea which one is the best, but I will research it and figure it out. I'll start here: http://www.fractalmusiclab.com/ In the meantime, if anyone comes across my blog and reads this, and knows of a good fractal music program, please let me know.

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I used the same gradient for this fractal that I did in the previous image. In the Apophysis software, the gradient is 411_040221-54.

Gradients can completely change a fractal. Some colors can bring out parts of fractals, or shadow them. Other areas of a fractal can be highlighted differently by using a different gradient. Below is the same fractal with a different gradient. The gradient used below is 423_040221-74.

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Math trivia: .999... = 1

It really does.

Seagrass in Spring

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A lot of times "hot spots" can ruin an image, but this time, I think the hot spot in the upper right corner actually adds to the image, giving it a feeling of light.

While you're in the mood to look at art, why don't you look at BeadBabe's Valentine's heart. This is not your everyday Valentine's heart. I think she has expressed herself wonderfully with this project.

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I ran into Coppercat while browsing fractal flames. He is also a fractal artist, but an artist with a twist! He also makes music, and it is the perfect type of music to sit down and create fractals with. His style is electronica and trip-hop. Click on his name above to visit his site, and listen to his music! There are free mp3 downloads there for your enjoyment.

I'd also like to give thanks to Exper, because he has helped give me some new ideas. My creativity had dried out, and I hadn't been making fractals the past week. He has helped renew my source, so, thanks Exper! Be sure to check out his work, especially his recent swirls pieces!

Also, never underestimate the power of the linear transform. Creating a linear transform and then reflecting horizontally or vertically can make copies, and this helps to fill-in the frame. (But watch out when you then move those reflections - the image blurs! This may be good for some images, but not all!)

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Spring Flowers on Saturn

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Tweak Tag

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These two images were created by "playing" a game called "Tweak Tag". The game of Tweak Tag is played like this: Someone will post parameters to a fractal in a forum or other location, and other users will tweak the paramters to come-up with their own fractal. What I mean by "tweak", is that once you have the parameters, you move/rotate/flip/add/delete transforms, change weights, change variation amounts and so forth. To see an example of Tweak Tag in action, click here. By clicking on that page, you can see the original parameters and each tweak done to them. Mine are in there somewhere. Give it a try and see what you come-up with! (Original parameters were "donated" by New2DA.)

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I think someday soon I will be trying out this piece of software - Kaleider.

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Starry Infinity

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Normally you see spirals of this sort in images created with the Ultra Fractal program. But, this is strictly an Apophysis flame. This time around, I rendered with a very low quality setting - only 25 - in order to keep the graininess, because I believe this gives the spiral a bit of texture.

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We get great enjoyment from our bird feeders. Since we became serious feeders we've been getting a nice variety of birds. My favorite is the lone red-bellied woodpecker that started showing up a few months ago. Its name is a rather curious thing, because you see, its belly is not red, at least not visibly. Its head is! Why is it not called a red-headed woodpecker? Because there already is another bird with that name. The red-headed woodpecker is quite a bit different than the red-bellied woodpecker. Its head is red, too. The difference is that its entire head is red, while the red-bellied woodpecker's head is really only red on the top. There are also differences in the body markings. See the links above for more details.

Our new friend is so very majestic. He has quite a strong presence on the birdfeeder. I had never seen one before last year, and now I see him almost every day.

We were always fending off the squirrels, because they claimed the feeders while we weren't looking. I should say my husband was the one fending them off, because I rather liked them, and felt sorry for them, because they need food, too, after all. So, this Christmas my husband got a very special gift. It was a squirrel feeder! Now, not only do we feed the birds, we feed the squirrels.

Just a few weeks ago, my husband went and bought a bird bath from the Concrete Lady. We don't keep it filled right now due to the cold weather, but I can't wait to see it in action in the spring. Today I spotted a cardinal checking it out.

I've always loved nature, but it seems the older I get, the more I appreciate slowing down and really watching it.

Calf Arts

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Do you know what calf arts are?