Obsidian Fire's Graphic Art

[Obsidian Fire]

I usually don't go back and change work retroactively, but sometimes I do. Molog Bal was this way...

 

[Ghost X]

^Very nice. Is there some kind of algorithm to the composition, or did you do it manually?

 

[Obsidian Fire]

^Very nice. Is there some kind of algorithm to the composition, or did you do it manually?

What do you mean by algorithm? or better yet, what do you mean by manually? Because pretty much all fractals contain both. By nature, fractals depend on an algorithm to create the shapes that they make. IE: the variation called Julia(n) creates the same type of shape every single time it's used. The manual part comes in deciding how different shapes "talk" (pass data) to each other as well as what shapes/patterns to use in the first place.

A fractal (or most art fractals anyway) is really a graph of one big math problem, which each point corresponding to a valid solution to the math problem. Essentially, when I make a fractal, I'm making my computer solve a math problem tens of thousands of times, with each variable chosen randomly.

Fortunately, none of this really requires that I know the actual math going on in order to play with it (although knowing math like trigonometry has been really helpful at times). Most variations are named after the shapes they make (or whoever discovered them), so a lot of making art with fractals is knowing how different shapes effect each other. One of the fun things about looking at other people's fractal artwork is guessing what shapes they used to make it.

IE: Here's how I "built" the Molog Bal fractal...

The main "structure" is built with two variations "julian" and "spherical" feeding data to each other.

Then I made gaps that follow the structure by introducing a third varriation "stripes" into the mix.

After that I filled in the gaps with a variation called "cylinder". This is the variation that makes all the "piping" in the fractal. If it wasn't for the "stripes" variation, "cylinder" would look like it's intersecting itself instead of lying on top of itself.

Finally, I used what's called a final transform (it doesn't feed it's data into any of the other variations) with a variation called "rectangles" to split it up into misplaced tiles.

If I didn't control how all these variations fed data into each other (or what variations were visible) it would look like a bunch of different images were stacked on top of each other and it would look much more chaotic.

If you're looking for more info on the history of the math behind all this, I highly recommend this Nova Episode:

 

[Ghost X]

My bad for being vague. Thanks for explaining the process.

 

[Obsidian Fire]

Peryite is the deadric prince associated with making sure things don't get out of balance and is the one who keeps track of the lesser deadra's roles. In the mortal world, he's associated with plagues because they keep populations from getting too large.

"Peryite, whose sphere is the ordering of the lowest orders of Oblivion, known as the Taskmaster."
--The Book of Daedra

 

[Obsidian Fire]

Two different versions of the same fractal. The first one is the normal render, the second is a manipulation made to look like the fractal was inked on paper.

 

[trash panda]

Oh WOW! I really like that. The colorful one is quite mesmerizing. 8]

 

[Flare]

Whoa that fractal is beautiful! <3 I love the design and the colors, makes me think of a glowing, bio-luminescent evergreen forest at night.

 

[Mayo Master]

Ah, fractal art, good old times

A friend and I had to make a fractal generator as part of a computer science project way back (holy crap, I realize that was exactly when FF VIII was released I'm getting so old). We even released some home made fractals which looked pretty badass, a shame that I don't have a trace of that project (I don't remember the equations of these home-made fractals). The stuff had to be entirely coded in old fortran

 

[RedFFWolf]

These are amazing! I had a look through every page.
I'd love to save a load of these and use as my desktop backgrounds (with a slideshow setting changing every 10 minutes or something - that's the stuff!). That cool with you?

 

[Obsidian Fire]

Whoa that fractal is beautiful! <3 I love the design and the colors, makes me think of a glowing, bio-luminescent evergreen forest at night.

Coloring fractals is one of my favorite parts of the process because by then I'm done with the layout of the fractal. It's also amazing how much different the same layouts can look with different coloring jobs.

These are amazing! I had a look through every page.
I'd love to save a load of these and use as my desktop backgrounds (with a slideshow setting changing every 10 minutes or something - that's the stuff!). That cool with you?

Please do (that's what I do with them)! Most of my later fractals are at 1920x1080. Pretty much all of my fractals can be found here on my deviantART: http://0bsidianfire.deviantart.com/gallery/41651565/Fractals and you can download the full-size images there.

 

[Obsidian Fire]

Nocturnal is the Deadric Prince associated with night, darkness, stealth, shadows, thieves and secrets. She's more of an amoral Deadric Prince rather then an evil one and tends not to bother mortals... unless they (try to) steal from her. She's most famous (in-universe and in the player base) for her artifact called the Skeleton Key which is an unbreakable lockpick.

So I feel competently justified in stealing my own fractal design for her...

"Nocturnal, whose sphere is the night and darkness; who is known as the Night Mistress."
--The Book of Daedra

"The Gray Cowl of Nocturnal shrouds the wearer's face in shadow. No light or magic of detection can penetrate its depths. To look upon Nocturnal's face without the cowl is to view the depths of the void. A man would lose his mind to see it."
--Office of the Unseeing Eye, Instructions: The Gray Cowl

 

[Jason Tandro]

I am ashamed that I never dipped into this thread before because this artwork is astoundingly beautiful. Fractals are awesome, abstract is awesome and these are awesome awesome.

I can really feel the character in the artwork, particularly Nocturnal, Mehrunes Dagon and Mephala. Hermaeus Mora is probably the best at that.

Seriously these are awesome. Do you sell prints of these? We need art in our house and this is the kind of thing I'd be interested in procuring for a decent price.

 

[Obsidian Fire]

Seriously these are awesome. Do you sell prints of these? We need art in our house and this is the kind of thing I'd be interested in procuring for a decent price.

I don't... which I really need to fix. It's also really lazy of me not to as I'm on deviantART and they've got a whole printing house attached to them...

 

[Jason Tandro]

Well if you ever do, you have a customer waiting. I'd def buy at least one of these. :-)

 

[Obsidian Fire]

This diptych is inspired by In the Land of the Dead, Stepping on the Tail of a Rainbow by Takashi Murakami, an 82-foot-long painting on display at The Broad, a relatively new modern art museum in Los Angeles.

 

[Obsidian Fire]

It's been a while since I've posted stuff here.

This one was done back in November when I moved for the first time in my whole life. The closest so I could get to describing how I felt though the whole process was "when I'm designing a tile fractal and parts of it aren't lining up and if I just knew the correct math everything would line up correctly". It ended up being easier to make a picture of how the inside of my head looked like at the time then actually explaining to people how I felt. In a lot of ways, this is the inverse of Threaded Dragons, which I often use as a profile pic on other websites.

Title: Holding On To Alignment

 

[Obsidian Fire]

Vaernima is the deadric prince of dreams and nightmares, which are often prophetic/inspiring in nature.

"Vaernima, whose sphere is the realm of dreams and nightmares, and from whose realm issues forth evil omens."
--The Book of Daedra

"Vaernima, Prince of Omen and Dream, shares a special mageographic connection with the Mundus, since mortal sleepers often slip into her realm without any help at all."
--Imperial Census of Daedra Lords

 

[Obsidian Fire]

Namira is the deadric prince of repulsive stuff. This includes the mundane creepy crawlies of life, but also includes physically nasty diseases and things like cannibalism. Viscera was definetly an inspiration for this one...

"I am Namira, the Lady of Decay. Your consumption of the blood and bile of Arkay’s own is pleasing to me."
--Namira, The Taste of Death, Skyrim

"Namira, whose sphere is the ancient Darkness; known as the Spirit Daedra, ruler of sundry dark and shadowy spirits; associated with spiders, insects, slugs, and other repulsive creatures which inspire mortals with an instinctive revulsion."
--The Book of Daedra

 

[Obsidian Fire]

What my works looks like when it's printed. As far as how big this is... in pixels it's 10,800 x 10,800 px. Which takes my computer around 4 days to render one of them. In feet, they're 2x3 feet wide. The computer files I give my printer are around 1.75 GB. Let's just say you could look at them with a magnifying glass and not see any artifacts.

 

[Tennyo]

Wow, those look awesome! I especially love how the one on the left turned out.