an intricate orange peel

By popular demand I am about to reveal the story behind my header.  I'll warn you now that intrigue and drama abound in the following story and you may be wise to take a few breaths before continuing.  You may even want to dim the lights and hold hands with someone you love.  If by the end of this story you haven't altered your perception of the world and felt compelled to adopt a child or a highway or something noble like that, then consider yourself in a state of numbnity.  Yes, numbnity.

Now that I've talked this thing up, prepare to be let down.

The idea for the design came like any other solid idea:  absolutely out of nowhere.  It was initially to fulfill an assignment for class where I had to demonstrate continuity or something like that.  So I came up with the idea of a puzzley sphere.  I started by making three stencils that all fit inside of each other in a 3d spherical sort of way.  Only one of the stencils has since survived.

Next I traced them onto card stock and painted the individual shapes.  This is the how the assignment looked that I turned in.  I probably got like a moderately low to high A for a grade.

The next step was to quickly teach my self a program called Adobe Illustrator.  I took the above photo and traced it in said software and finished it off by adding a few gradients here and there and creating a nice blue smokey atmosphere in Photoshop.
I'm pretty sure there was one point during this whole process where I thought it would be neat to peel an orange like this.  Maybe I'll do that some day when I'm old and I can only eat oranges.

And here's a quick animated video I made that illustrates how the pieces fit together.  For some reason it only lets me play it twice and then it gets all confused and disoriented.  Maybe you'll have better luck on your computers.

Well, they almost fit together.  You get the point.
So, that's all.  I hope you had fun.  I did.

unrelated fact:  saw Inception.  Nolan totally nailed it.  A fine job, Nolan.  A fine job indeed.

trees, wrinkles, and a service offering

Here are some old relics from my photoshop archives.  Just doodles really.  But since I haven't been posting as often as some people would like, I guess you'll just have to get the mediocre art from yester-year.

Here is a handful of trees.  You may ask, "Red. Why red?"  Well, chlorophyll is the substance in plants that makes them green through the process of photosynthesis, I think.  But not all chlorophyll is green.  Some types of chlorophyll are more resilient to the cold so they last right on into the fall season.  These types are usually red, or yellow.  Of course, none of that had anything to do with why I made the trees red.  I just thought it looked neat.

Next here we have a wrinkled cloth of sorts.  I've never been too great at drawing drapery, so this was kind of a practice study in wrinkled linen.  You might say I tried to give it a spooky kind of feel by having some sort of creature pushing his way into the cloth.  And of course you might not say that.  Either way, I don't really expect you to say anything.  But that doesn't mean I don't encourage comments/ovations when you're done viewing.

To conclude, I've decided with some trepidation (but with a gentle nudge from family) to put more confidence in my art and try to make some money.  With the rising cost of diapers (because of the energy crisis, I think), my wife and I realized we're not that well off.  So, since some of you have inquired about soliciting my services for portrait paintings and such, I am pleased to announce that I'm now open for business.
Also, if any of you need illustrations or animations to help market your own business, I do that as well.  And furthermore, If anyone knows of a growing company that's looking for a full-time illustrator/beginning animator that doesn't involve being bitten, sworn at, and hated (my current job) I am ALL EARS!!!
Happy Independence Day!