Delirious Ramblings

Walking Code

Navajo Code Talker, Northern Arizona University Campus, May 2012

A simple shot of the R.C. Gorman Navajo Code Talker bronze sculpture on north NAU campus.

A Sign I'd Like to See

Aspen grove information sign, October 2011

The road to Lockett Meadow was open for less than a month when I noticed that people had already started defacing the aspen trees along the Inner Basin trail again. Sad. Makes me wish I could place a few carefully worded aspen conservation signs along the trail.

Jet Intrusion

Jet Intrusion, Kachina Peaks Wilderness, October 2011

Smoke over the Valley

Smoke over the Little Colorado River Valley, July 2011

I hiked Mt. Elden this morning and the early cloud cover plus the smoke from the Bolt Fire filtering down the drainages into the Little Colorado River Valley made for some interesting photography. I kept looking over my shoulder as I climbed, watching for the clouds to part and allow a big shaft of sunlight to shine down into the haze. It never really happened, at least not like I was hoping for, but it was still a beautiful show. It was one of those things that make you glad you got out of bed. At five-fifteen a-effin'-em.

Here is another view, this time in color and from a bit higher on the trail:

 

Smoke over the Little Colorado River Valley (2), July 2011

One of these days I'm gonna get a proper camera and a tripod and maybe these pictures will sharpen up some. This softness is driving me crazy!

The Tangerine Shades of Limber Pine

The Tangerine Shades of Limber Pine, Schultz Peak, May 2011

This morning I was messing around in PhotoShop with one of the photographs I took of a fire-killed Limber Pine up on Schultz Peak. You know, just doodling around, replacing colors, tweaking contrast, trying to create a mood. I thought the result was kind of neat, interesting enough to share on the blog, anyway.

Tecolote - Great Horned Owls Lying in State

In the main stairwell of the Cline Library on NAU campus there is a site-specific art display entitled Tecolote by student artist Eugene Brosseau. According to the the artist's information placard it is for an upper level art class here at the University and is meant to invoke questions about the impact of the Arizona/Mexico border issues on the people and animals living in the area. The positions of the little owl-coffins on a large topographic map of the border region (one north of the border, the other south) was intended to clue the viewer into that theme, I guess.

Tecolote, by Eugene Brosseau

But for me, as a birder, the first time I saw the piece the blank stares of the stuffed owls trapped my attention and I struggled to break contact with their hideous non-eyes. Finally they let let me go, leaving me profoundly sad for what had happened to the two birds. I just couldn't fit my memories of the live, vibrant Great Horned Owl I photographed at the Desert Museum with these flattened and lifeless husks. 

Tecolote - Great Horned Owl Under Glass

Somehow, I felt that the birds had been desecrated, their spirits imprisoned inside the little wooden coffins, the preserved bodies unable to pass through the stages of decomposition into flurries of windblown feathers, scattered bones, and ultimately dust as birds are meant to. It always saddens me when I see animals -- plants, too -- not being allowed to engage in their natural behaviors and life journeys. This reaction would seem to tie in with the piece's stated theme, namely natural processes being interrupted by human actions and desires. So I arrived at the artist's intended outcome but through a totally unexpected route.

Tecolote - Blank Gaze

I think this is what art is supposed to do: invoke strong gut-level emotional reactions, even if it isn't exactly what the artist originally intended.

Tecolote - Owl in Wood Coffin

So good job, Eugene. But those stuffed birds still creep me out!

Pursuit

For a while I got into modeling military vehicles - Panzer tanks, bombers, jet fighters, etc. The above scene, a science fiction themed image, is probably the best of the lot. By this point I'd learned how to use "image world" in LightWave so the reflections in the cockpits are more realistic. I'm really quite proud of this scene because I was able to combine several techniques to increase the realism: photographic background (monsoon clouds building above Flagstaff, AZ), motion blur to give impression of high speed, UV mapping for the camouflage patterns, and particles (the engine exhaust).

Vicky

One of the coolest things about the 3D scene is that even if you can't make complex human models yourself there's a ton of pre-built stuff available that you can use. One of the more popular models at the time I made these images was called "Vicky", from DAZ 3D. People on the 3D sites were (and still are) making some truly amazing erotic art with her. Before I tired of it I made these scenes:

3D Pots

This started out as a simple exercise in modifying primitive shapes in LightWave but grew into an interesting scene. The ground is a bump-mapped flat poly with an image of some dirt from my former backyard applied to it. The pots are textured using procedurals and the grass is just a few polys stretched into a blade shape and bent. Later, in another scene I tried to make fully modeled grass using a much higher polygon count and it didn't look nearly as nice as the low-poly grass here. It's funny how sometimes the simplest techniques yield the best results.

Star Trek Hand Phasers in 3D

A while back (okay, a long while back) when I was heavy into LightWave one of my projects was to recreate in 3D the hand phasers from the original Star Trek series. I really like the look of these weapons, especially the Type 2. I had some really good reference material to work with from the Star Trek Star Fleet Technical Manual so I thought it would be easy. Wrong! The two objects ended up taking me many hours of modeling and texturing. Still, it was a fun project.

First I made the Type I phaser, the smaller weapon that the original crew carried with them on most missions:

and then, using that model, I went on to make the Type II, the larger "pistol"-like weapon:

Note how the Type I basically just fits into Type II's body.

Making the formica backdrop for the Type II scene got me thinking about compositing so I tried to composite the Type II into a photo of my desk. The result didn't turn out quite as well as I'd hoped because I didn't know about the "image world" LightWave plug-in at that time. Making the attempt gave me new appreciation for the compositors working with green-screens in movies, though.