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DigitalArtLIVE.com

SCIENCE FICTION ARTIST IN-DEPTH INTERVIEWS

THE ‘ECOFUTURES’ ISSUE

HAL TENNY

FRANK LITTLE

HERA OF STOCKHOLM

ISSUE TWENTY-ONE AUGUST 2017

VUE ● TERRAGEN ● POSER ● DAZ STUDIO ● REAL-TIME 3D ● 2D DIGITAL PAINTING ● 2D/3D COMBINATIONS

https://digitalartlive.com/events/ 2

NEXT GENERATION TEXTURING IN SUBSTANCE PAINTER For POSER and DAZ STUDIO

By Martin Gehrke HD Recordings Included In Registration and sent within 48 hours of webinar broadcast

In this webinar you'll learn:Comprehensive “how to” steps in preparing your content Essential workflow actions to use in Substance Painter Substance Painter and Workflow with Poser Substance Painter and Workflow with DAZ Studio Six Top tips and tricks in Substance Painter Adjusting appearance of individual materials

Webinar Date, Time and Duration Saturday September 16th - 20:00 BST (London)/12:00 PDT (Los Angeles)/15:00 EDT (New York)

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https://digitalartlive.com/events/ 4

PLANT FACTORY

By Daniel Seebacher FREE REGISTRATION Can’t make the live sessions? Register and we’ll send you the HD recordings About PlantFactory PlantFactory is a ground-breaking 3D vegetation modeling, animation and rendering software, with application to the CG, SFX, Architecture and Gaming communities.

With PlantFactory you can Create any kind of vegetation, from simple grass to elaborate trees.

Create your vegetation by painting it, assembling simple building blocks, or completely graphing all plant properties.

Generate procedural geometry and materials of unlimited detail Animate all plant aspects using precise wind and breeze algorithms Export your 3D vegetation to your preferred application as standard .OBJ, .3DS, .C4D, .LWO, .ABC (alembic) or animated .FBX Go back and forth between PlantFactory and ZBrush using the GoZ bridge Render stills and animations for your compositing jobs or for use as billboards Expand your plant library through the TPF Nursery

The first session will focus on the basics of the software: the interface, manual painting and editing with an introductory example to procedural plant creation. We’ll cover export, integration with Vue PLUS integration with game engines such as the Unreal Engine 4.

The second session will focus on slightly more advanced concepts by showing a project-based walkthrough. You will learn how to create dependencies between different plant parts with or without custom interfaces and how to animate your plants. We will also talk about the different meshing options and the creation of multiple levels of detail in TPF.

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SHARE YOUR EXPERIENCE SHARE YOUR CREATIVE STORY

We are actively looking for artists or content creators that would enjoy the opportunity of teaching other artists in a live setting.

Would you like to work with Digital Art Live as a partner in presenting some of our live webinars? We’re particularly looking for artists and content creators with DAZ Studio and/or Poser in mind.

Use the link below to submit your application and we’ll get in touch!

https://digitalartlive.com/presenters

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Front Cover: "Fantasy Tree Cottage” (detail)

by Hal Tenny.

THE ‘ECOFUTURES’ ISSUE

CONTENTS OUR LIVE WEBINARS! ―― 03

EDITORIAL ―― 09

BACK ISSUES INDEX ―― 32

CONTESTS ―― 36

ORGANICS IN PULP SCI-FI ART ―― 52

GALLERY ―― 66

IMAGINARIUM ―― 90

INTERVIEWS

―― 10

―― 38

―― 54

HAL TENNY

FRANK LITTLE

LINDA GRANQVIST

Hal is a Mandelbulb 3D expert and was recently tapped by Marvel as a key designer for their major new science-fiction movie.

Frank creates fabulous Vue science-fiction pictures, developing worlds to showcase his organic plant designs.

Linda is a keen user of DAZ Studio for science fiction, and has created a lengthy ‘picture novella’ with her renders.

MANDELBULB 3D | PS

VUE | MAYA

DAZ STUDIO | PS

“It was a great experience to work with Marvel on

“I’m most interested in insects because they seem the least like us. I also love tide pools. I used to take photos of those on the coast here in California, and try and imagine them on a grander scale.”

“A lot happens during the initial development process, things can become something entirely different, and one planned picture might become several or several might be blended into one.”

Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 2, and I was honoured to be asked. […] the biggest visual effect ever made was based in part on the style of the fractal designs I had sent them.”

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PODCAST

MAGAZINE Join our mailing list to get a free magazine speeding to your inbox.

Our regular fresh inspiration for sci-fi artists, available on iTunes.

Subscribe at digitalartlivecom

Subscribe to the Podcast feed

LIVE Join our live webinar-based workshops for digital artists. digitalartlive.com Credits for pictures, from top left: detail from “What Remains of Sjunsjiere” by Frank Little; detail from “The Great King Surveys His Realm” by Frank Little; “In Search of The Lost Gods” by Linda Granqvist.

Paul Bussey

Dave Haden

Seaghn Hancoxs

Editor, Conference Director paul@digitalartlive.com

Assistant Editor and layout dave@digitalartlive.com

Webinar and podcasts seaghan@digitalartlive.com

Copyright © 2017 Digital Art LIVE. Published in the United Kingdom. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the prior written permission of the publisher. No copyright claim is made by the publisher regarding any artworks made by the artists featured in this magazine.

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EDITOR’S LETTER

WELCOME...

“

In Science Fiction, there’s a tendency to gravitate towards Dystopias rather than Utopias. A dystopian environment provides more grit, more angst and more interesting stories to write. There’s going to be an urban sprawl and the inhabitants are isolated from all contact with the natural world. High levels of pollution that destroys nature is a common theme in many dystopian films, such as WALL-E, The Matrix and RoboCop. A utopia is what we may strive towards, yet we’d probably miss some of the adversity once that level of civilisation is attained.

include original design work from his sketchbook in planning the flora and fauna of his worlds. In relation to this - look out for our free webinar PlantFactory mini course that shows the capabilities of this software and it’s use with companion software VUE. Read our interview with Swedish artist Linda Granqvist as she talks about the influences of the Roman and Greek myths and the similarities between them and our more modern sci-fi and super hero stories. DAZ Studio is her application of choice for representing her dreams.

But in this issue we’re going to celebrate utopias. Our Eco-future themed issue is about a more successful integration and balance with nature for our future habitations and this is shown in a wonderful way by Mandelbuld 3D artist Hal Tenny.

Natural fractal shapes incorporated into architectural designs work extremely well.

Explore his artwork and discover his primary influence on a recent Marvel movie release “Guardians of the Galaxy 2”.

VUE allows for the exploration of natural landscapes and it’s popular use to create science fiction scenes is demonstrated superbly by Frank Little . We’re pleased to

PAUL BUSSEY Editor and LIVE Webinar Director paul@digitalartlive.com

FACEBOOK: www.facebook.com/3DArtDirect

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RSS: https://digitalartlive.com/feed/

Digital Art Live talks with Hal Tenny about exploring the worlds of Mandelbulb 3D, Photoshop compositing, and working with Marvel on their big new science–fiction film.

DAL: Hal, welcome to this ‘ecofuture’ themed issue of Digital Art Live. Many thanks for taking time out to give us this in-depth interview. You’re one of the most accomplished Mandelbulb artists, and you’ve taken this a step further by integrating additional elements into your art using both the Mandelbulb software’s advanced capabilities and also Adobe Photoshop.

HT: Well, thank you for inviting me. I appreciate it!

Fractal software has come a long way over the years and it's good to see that fractals and fractal related art are gaining more attention. The Mandelbulb 3D software I use can create images that go way beyond the kaleidoscopic, snowflake shaped and swirling rainbow coloured fractals of the past, and I think that has helped fractal art to grow in popularity while still co-existing with old school traditional fractals.

DAL: Yes, fractal based art is certainly developing in all sorts of interesting ways. I had a degree student come to me wanting to write his dissertation on fractal art, circa 2004. I was quite wary of it, didn’t think it was a good choice for him, but eventually I let him do it. He was very keen. I’d be much more positive about it today. Anyway… how did you first encounter fractal-based software?

HT: I've always been interested in 3D art. Many of the good 3D programs are quite expensive, and while trying out free trials and looking around on the Internet, one day I came across the Apophysis 10

Picture: “Porcupine Den”.

HAL TENNY USA MANDELBULB 3D | PHOTOSHOP | VFX

WEB

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fractal software, which was a free 2D program. At the time there were many Apophysis resources on an artist site called DeviantArt, so I joined in posting art there as well. A short time later Jesse Dierks created the Mandelbulb 3D software, with the help and input of a bunch of people at fractalforums.com — where there had been a long, ongoing discussion on creating the first 3D mandelbulb. Eventually I switched from Apophysis to almost exclusively using Mandelbulb 3D. DAL: I see. Yes, I’ve tried it a few times myself, and made a couple of pictures with it. It’s still fun to use, and quite refreshing to ‘navigate into the fractals’, but I can see it would take time to master. You’re now a Mandelbulb master and write excellent and detailed tutorials for others. But what were your first experiences with Mandelbulb like?

And what were your first ‘breakthrough’ pictures made with it?

HT: My first couple of tries with Mandelbulb 3D were not that successful. I was never one to ask a bunch of questions or ask for help. And in the early stages of its development, learning resources were pretty scarce so that made it more difficult to learn too. I kept at it though, and other program users started sharing a bit of knowledge that helped. I think my first 'breakout' piece was “Porcupine Den” [which opens this interview, Ed.] and also “Probably Broken”.

They were both based on the formulas used in a new style at the time that a friend of mine had discovered.

DAL: And at that time you also made some nice models using the Groboto software, such as “Groboto Sentinel” and “Rocket Man”. Was that the start of you thinking: I can add these into the Mandelbulb pictures, or did that sort of idea come later?

HT: Actually at that point I was still quite interested in learning some traditional 3D modelling. So the model making was more of a side trip I think. Groboto was a very reasonably priced 3D modeling program that created fantastic meshes for further production in Zbrush, Modo or whatever you wished to use.

DAL: Yes, I looked a video of it recently, and it seems that Zbrush is still playing catch-up with its amazing Boolean operation — shape intersection in plain English — capabilities. And I read that it had beautifully clean remeshed .OBJ output. Did you start with Groboto or were their earlier tries with other software?

HT: I had gained a little 3D modelling experience a few years previously, with a free copy of TruSpace on a cover CD that came in the back of a popular PC magazine. With Groboto I actually tried to recreate some of the 3D fractals I was making at the time in a 3D model form.

DAL: Wow. HT: Indeed. I found that to be a lesson in futility for me, as I just didn't have the 3D modelling talent equal to the task. But I had fun and gained experience anyway. I don't think I've actually ‘fused’ any Groboto work with my Mandelbulb 3D images yet… but you never know.

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Picture: “Fantasy Tree Cottage”.

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DAL: What did you like about Groboto 3, which I think finished development about five years ago now? As I said, it still looks like a very tasty bit of software.

HT: The work of Darrel Anderson, the creator of Groboto, is what inspired me to give Groboto a closer look. I liked the user interface and as I said previously the amazing meshes it could create. It was probably not quite as intuitive of an interface as a lot of 3D modeling programs, but Darrel posted many video tutorials that were pretty easy to follow and very helpful in getting you up to speed. The Boolean operations were unique, as you say, in that the primitives used for cutting and shaping are always editable throughout the whole process. If I remember correctly, in TruSpace for instance, once you

used a primitive to shape or cut another primitive, then you were done.

Picture: Groboto modelling by Hal.

As you continue to work on and shape your model, you can't go back and change the original Boolean operation. In Groboto, you would simply reactivate the Boolean operatives,

Pictures: “New Settlement” and “Above The Waterline”.

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and make any changes you want at any point without disturbing the forward progress you've made on your model. I hope I explained that right because I'm no expert with 3D modeling!

DAL: Yes, that says it well. I was amazed that modelling software could do that, and then I remembered that some of brand new features in Zbrush do something a little similar. Is it still worth learning, perhaps in combination with Modo — I think there was a Modo plugin from the Groboto which did something similar inside Modo — or is Zbrush the way to go these days?

HT: I still enjoy using Groboto from time to time, but I believe Darrel has run into some health problems and I don't think a Groboto update is coming. And there were some stability problems with Groboto for Windows as well that never got

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taken care of. So unfortunately I don't believe Groboto is a good 3D modeling path to follow at this time, unless something changes.

DAL: Ah well. Back to Mandelbulb. In your early work I especially like “Another Place Another Time”, and the steampunk-ish “Porcupine Den” which opens this interview. Could you tell us about those and how they were made, please?

For instance, I see mention of a ‘slice and rotate’ method for creating a cross-section of a Mandelbulb scene? Was that technique used?

HT: “Porcupine Den” is where my interest in Mandelbulb 3D really took off. And that image does use a cutting method. The program creates actual 3D structures, and we have the ability to cut them at any point along the X, Y, and Z planes. It's like cutting an apple in half, you can

then see what a cross section of what the fractal looks like at any given point. “Porcupine Den” also shows the repetitive nature of fractals as you can see sphere shapes inside of spheres, and inside are more sphere shapes. With the programs 3D navigator, we can fly all through

the fractal just like you were flying an airplane.

It's like composing a model of a bunch of separate models but you can always change it in real time, at any point zoom in or out, rotate and pan, and also change formula variables to change shapes. And thus be able to see your

Picture: “Dome Village”.

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changes almost instantly without having to export it for rendering. “Another Place Another Time� uses cutting too, but it's not nearly as obvious because of the finer details and the nature of the image. When I

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created this image I was just starting to use a post-process water effect occasionally to enhance my fractal images. It's such a simple thing but really changes the feel and adds impact and a certain sort of realism that might be otherwise missing.

DAL: And then you began your nature + fractals series, which we think fits very well with this issue’s theme. It mixes Mandelbulb and Photoshop compositing work with stock photography. You did you first make a start on that series, and what was the inspiration?

HT: I had been using water, and sometimes lightning or waterfall brushes in my work for a few years, before I went for the more robust post processing. Late last year was when I first added some real-life stock plant photos to an image. It seemed to be well liked, so I continued on with the concept. My goal is usually to create a fractal that looks like something real or could actually exist somewhere. Whether that would be in the future or the past, or on an alien planet. Some of the styles I create images in are organic looking and can easily be complimented with real plant life. Scenes with structures I've created are much improved with the addition of trees, rocks and plant life too. So it was the goal of creating more realistic images that was the inspiration. It's hard to imagine a photo-realistic fractal, but that's what I was trying to do.

DAL: These pictures are a beautiful, but slightly eerie, evocation of a future-fantasy. Half sci-fi and half faerie, in a very attractive way. Have you been tempted to compile them in some way? Illustrations for a story, or a calendar?

HT: I have considered both of those ideas. I think almost all of the print on demand websites have easy to make calendars. It's something on the back burner. I created a science-fiction calendar a few years back that didn't do too well, so that kind of discouraged me. Fractal artwork may still be too much of a niche market at this point. I hope that changes. I would be more interested in creating a fractal photo type book, but for large formats they can be prohibitively expensive and probably a harder sale than wall prints are. I've had a small measure of success selling fine art wall prints, and licensing work for CD’s and book covers though.

DAL: That’s good to hear. And talking of stories, you have several books available: Standard Affair; Waves In Time; and Nightland Tales: Finder's Keepers. Are those inspired by your art, or does the art inspire the stories?

HT: It's really a separate process between the writing and creating images. I do imagine some of my images going with certain parts of the stories, but I don't actively connect them that way. I do consider the majority of my writing and imagery to be science fiction oriented, so really that would be the main connection between the two. I'm an avid science fiction reader and as far as I'm concerned, a bad science fiction movie has never been made. So I like it all, even the B-grade stuff. I created all my own book covers from my fractal work too.

DAL: From among these nature + fractals pictures, what would you say is your favourite picture and why?

HT: It's hard to pick favorites, but one of my personal favorites is "Above The Water Line". I really like how the massive unknown structure placed in a natural setting. So you have the known and unknown mixed together and coexisting rather well without any need for an explanation. The viewer can imagine whatever they please. The structure could be an abandoned piece of machinery or could just as well be a functioning integral part of the ecosystem for all we know. I try not to over think things, but I feel the structure is something very alien that served an important purpose in the past. Many of my images lean toward an abandoned or dystopian feel. The more mysterious, the better. Sometimes I explain my thoughts on an image and other times I leave it to the viewers. That way the image can be whatever they can imagine on their own.

DAL: How much time goes into post-production of a render, if you aren’t adding elements such as backdrops, plants, and suchlike?

HT: There's little to no post production if I don't add elements. I may adjust contrast or exposure some, but mainly I have to change the dpi because Mandelbulb only renders at 72 dpi. The raw image might print at 100 inches, so I change the resolution to 200 dpi for a good 36 inch print image, and 300 dpi will give a very nice 24 inch print. I set up almost my all my images at DeviantArt for prints at 200 dpi or better.

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Picture: “Organic Entanglement”.

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Picture: “Summer Getaway”.

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Pictures: A press still showing the fractal throne room on planet Ego, plus early promotional concept art released to the press, in which Hal-flavoured fractals are seen at the right-hand back. Press pictures, courtesy of Marvel.

“In September of 2015, the supervising art director for Guardians of The Galaxy 2, Ramsey Avery, contacted me to ask if I would be interested in working on the film as a visual consultant. [...]

Ramsey said, all along, I would be surprised how much of my work would make it to the big screen, and I was certainly not disappointed. […] I ended up getting screen credit as a concept artist for my work.” — Hal Tenny.

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Picture: “Another place, another time� by Hal Tenny.

DAL: Have you ever tried taking a huge fractal OBJ to another software like Vue, and rendering it there with the full benefit of the Vue atmospheres? I’m not sure that’s even possible, but I thought I’d ask.

HT: Newer versions of Mandelbulb can create meshes directly from the fractal image. Older versions can export voxel slices that can then be combined in other software and made into a mesh. I have made a few OBJs from fractals and experimented a little in Zbrush, but I've never gone so far as trying to incorporate a fractal model into a scene of any kind. I get on these kicks sometimes where I experiment a little, but in general, the learning curve to produce something nice in other programs is more time than I'm willing to spend on a whim. I would have to be really motivated. It can be pretty time consuming just composting in Photoshop, and learning how to use Photoshop is a chore all by itself.

element. “New Settlement” is kind of like an abandoned ‘Borg’ structure being explored by settlers.

DAL: Yes, I think the combination of organic and technological is perhaps the most interesting way to combine fantasy and science-fiction, something which can also slip over into an ‘ecofuture’ look. I hear you also do concept work for big-budget movies? On your Deviantart profile you recently added a mention of: "my recent work as a concept artist on the Marvel film, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 2. That sounds incredible. Are you able to talk about that, or is there a studio non-disclosure agreement in place?

HT: Sure, I can tell you a good bit about that now. For those that haven't seen Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 2, be warned that there may be a few spoilers following!

DAL: Yes, that’s true. I love it now, but it takes a few years to learn.

HT: It's nice finding video tutorials that help with that, and has been key in self learning the ins and outs. I don't actually have any formal art training or further education other than high school a long time ago.

DAL: If you could mash together a concept from sci-fi and a concept from fantasy, to make a new ‘fanta-sci’ or ‘ecofuture’ thing, what would it be?

Picture: Fractals in Marvel’s promo video for Guardians 2.

HT: I'm always trying to make a good looking fractal spaceship. I've had limited success with that so far, but have made a few ‘shuttles’. I think a nice fractal spaceship in an organic fractal scene might be interesting. To me, many of the organic fractal shapes that can be created are very much fantasy oriented. They can look like giant mushrooms or have intricate root structures and unusual protrusions. Ideally I think a space ship in a scene that has fantasylike organic structures, with futuristic building structures combined would be good ‘fanta-sci’ scene. And some water and real plants of course. I have one image that came close to that called “New Settlement”, but it's much more structural based and lacks the organic fractal

HT: Right. In September of 2015, the supervising art director for Guardians 2, Ramsey Avery, contacted me by email to ask if I would be interested in working on the film as a visual consultant. As the conversations continued, he explained that some of my fractal images that they had found posted online would be a good fit for the look and feel they were pursuing for some scenes in the film. I ended up getting screen credit as a concept artist for my work.

DAL: OK, I might snip a few out...

DAL: Wow. How long was the work?

HT: I worked on and off for five or six weeks, total, during the next few months, as an independent contractor. While I did send Marvel over 300 images and twenty or so sample OBJ 24

meshes, I didn't have much input or even knowledge about how my work was going to be used, or how much of it would even be used.

They were pretty secretive throughout the whole project, as they always are on their films.

As it turns out, my imagery would be used exclusively on a key character’s planet, and concepts of my images can be found there almost everywhere you look including the outside scenery, the palace itself and the underground passages and caverns. I was told that at the time I was hired, they were still trying to settle on a design for the palace, and my fractal imagery was key in helping them

covers were made from an image I created in a different 2D fractal program, Fractal Explorer. It amazed me how the concept artists combined fractal parts, and to a certain extent that's also what inspired me to start creating my own composed images that include mixing in stock photos.

I also sent parameter files to four different VFX companies working on the film so that they could possibly create models directly based on my imagery or use them as reference images.

Parameter files hold all the information to recreate our images, and from there you could create models from any part of the image. I believe they eventually used other techniques to create models of the fractal imagery.

“Incredibly, the intriguing Max Ernst-esque landscapes of the planet Ego required half a trillion polygons to produce, making it the biggest visual effect ever created! [in the history of the movie industry, and] the mathematically-inspired creations of artist Hal Tenny were so influential that Tenny himself was hired to work on the design.”

DAL: And they must have huge render farms. I hear they created the biggest record-breaking VFX shot ever, for the film.

HL: Ultimately, the biggest visual effect ever was based in part on the style of the fractal designs I had sent. Probably not directly from the images or parameters I submitted, but certainly based on the gasket style fractal concept.

Overall, it was a great experience to work with Marvel. Ramsey Avery and the production manager, Scott Chambliss were fantastic to work for, and the concept artists I had a more direct contact with, Sam Michlap and Craig Sellars, were helpful and supportive. I had never worked on a project of this magnitude, and was honoured to be asked.

—Into Film, on Guardians 2. settle on a design concept, so that is something that I felt very good about.

I want to be clear and say that all of the work I submitted was further processed and conceptualised by many other concept artists before it appears on screen. So while my work actually has a lot of impact on how the planet looks, I'm not sure there is much of it that is actually seen in its raw form.

For instance, the palace was constructed from pieces of many different fractal images. The floor patterns were other fractal designs. In some areas, the furniture fabric, bed and wall 25

DAL: So, if you were counting up as you watched the finished film, how much of your work made it to the screen in some finished / built / supercomputer-rendered form?

HT: Quite a bit! I'm not exactly sure what proportion of the film takes place on that planet, but from what I saw while watching the movie, there are very few shots on the planet that don't include at least a piece of fractal imagery that could be seen in the background. Ramsey said, all along, I would be surprised how much of my work would make it to the big screen, and I was certainly not disappointed.

DAL: Fantastic — and did any of that make it through to any of specific press/publicity pictures, so that we can show an authorised example here?

HT: Yes. I believe the very first official promo image that was released had a small amount of fractal work showing in the background. The concept image was made by Andy Park. You can vaguely see some of the gasket style tower fractals in the background on the right [see page 22]. I believe all of the official trailers also showed some fractal imagery [see page 24].

DAL: Thanks. A lot of your composited personal work seems quite architectural. Does that reflect some other aspect of your creative work or interest? Do you do architecture professionally? Or perhaps there’s also inspiration from your locale — I imagine that somewhere sub-tropical like South Carolina has a similar mix of water, foliage, architecture and light to some of your pictures?

HT: I've been in the construction industry all my career and have always been interested in how things were built. The more unusual and unique something is, the more I like it. I think I kind of carry that through in my structurally based fractal imagery. You can make some fairly realistic, normal looking buildings in Mandelbulb 3D, but I would rather try to create something never seen before — just like ambitious professional architects would. And a lot of what I do is ‘otherworldly’ or alien in nature, or fantastical. I think I could put some trolls, elves or a unicorn in some of those images and they would fit right in. My reading interests also inspire the science fiction and fantasy aspects of my work as well. We live very close to Hanging Rock state park in North Carolina and there are several waterfalls in different areas. So that has probably inspired the water effects I sometimes use in my work. I've always been fascinated by waterfalls anyway.

DAL: Sounds like a great place to live. What sort of view do you have from your studio window, and what sort of setup does your studio have?

HT: My studio is actually a sectioned-off area in the garage! I have heat and an air conditioner,

so it's comfortable and quiet, even with unpainted walls and concrete floor. My setup is pretty humble. I have just my computer, a large format printer and a matte board cutter for cutting my own mattes for prints. In the other half of the garage is my wood shop, where I sometimes make my own picture frames.

My desk is right next to the window, though, and from there I can look out over the back yard. I live in the country and can often see deer grazing on the side of the hill fifteen or twenty yards away. I've also built a pond and waterfall at the bottom edge of the hill. It runs about thirty feet uphill, where I have one of the feeds from the pump spill onto a real water wheel that I built in the wood shop. I can see all that from where I'm sitting, and listen to the waterfall when I have the window open in the summer.

It's pretty relaxing and sets a nice mode for creating my art.

DAL: Idyllic. So I imagine there’s going to be a few upgrades, when you get the royalties payments from Guardians ... What are you planning? Or has it already been spent … is there a small Disney-badged render farm under the desk, perhaps?

HT: I was hired as an independent contractor on a daily rate basis, so… no royalties unfortunately. I managed to catch up a few bills and some normal things like replace the refrigerator and hot water tank too. So that was good. I was able to upgrade my computer to an Intel i7 with an SSD drive though, and also stepped up to a 29-inch IPS monitor. If I ever do move on to Mandelbulb animations, I may pick up a used, multi CPU server. Mandelbulb 3D is a 32-bit program and that means it can only use 4Gb of memory, and it also only uses the CPU, not the graphics card. So a machine with multiple multi-core CPUs is the way to go.

DAL: Yes, those new Ryzen CPUs look interesting in that regard. Although I did read that Vue would maybe not work on them if they were overclocked. So that’s a bear-trap to watch out for if a 3D creative is buying a new PC soon, and it’s an overclocked gaming rig. What software — apart from the fractal software and Photoshop — do you find most useful? Plugins?

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Picture: “Not Thanos”.

“I've been in the construction industry all my career and have always been interested in how things were built. The more unusual and unique something is, the more I like it. I think I kind of carry that through in my structurally based fractal imagery. You can make some fairly realistic, normal looking buildings in Mandelbulb 3D, but I would rather try to create something never seen before — just like ambitious professional architects would.”

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HT: Other than what you've mentioned, I use a program called ImageJ to assemble the voxel stacks exported from Mandelbulb 3D, and then also use it to convert the voxel stack to an OBJ model. From there I import the OBJ into MeshLab to further optimize the mesh. MB3D creates absolutely huge meshes if you want to keep the detail. Many times the mesh is in the range of fifteen to twenty million faces and file sizes of 1.5 to 2Gb. Those obviously need a lot of optimization. I've also played a bit with Zbrush, but again the learning curve has kept me for going far.

DAL: Yes, MeshLab is usually good for polyreduction, and was recently updated to a more stable version. It’s freeware, too.

HT: The only non-native Photoshop plugins I use are from Flaming Pear. I use the original Flood plugin for water effects and Melancholytron for a sepia effect and soft blurred edges.

DAL: I see. What would be your usual workflow to make a picture, in 2017? Do you pre-plan or do you just dive in?

HT: I normally just dive in. I probably have over 50,000 parameters saved from over the years so normally I will load a saved set of parameters and rework them into an entirely new image.

The parameters consist of using one to six formulas and then adjusting the formula variables to change the shapes that the default formula settings create. It sounds complicated, but you don't actually need to know math to create images in Mandelbulb 3D. You can use background images within the program, you can use any combination of up to six positional or global lights. You can use height maps formed on a flat plane, cylinder or sphere.

You can generate volumetric lights and fog, hard shadows, transparency, reflections and depth of field effects. So it's a fairly full-featured program. A lot of times I will create my image in a grey monotone so the colours don't distract me. From there I'll either colour the image with lights, change colour palettes or use a texture map for colour effects. I may spend a few hours creating a basic image and an hour or so to

“I discovered at ArtStation that someone there had stolen almost my entire DeviantArt gallery, and posted it there as their own work.”

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Picture: One of Hal’s early Grotoboto models.

render it. Depending on what the finished image looks like, it may inspire further work in post processing by adding stock images to enhance it.

DAL: Thanks. You mentioned you enjoy all sorts of science-fiction. What science-fiction or fantasy storytelling inspires you, these days?

HT: There are a lot of science fiction TV shows that keep me inspired. Older ones like Star Trek, Babylon Five and Firefly are a few. Movies like Blade Runner, Alien and The Matrix. And many books like the sci-fi fantasy Amber novels by Roger Zelazny and the original robot novels of Isaac Asimov. With the ever growing popularity of ebooks and a slew of reasonably priced books out there, I can safely say I read one to three books a week. So there's plenty of inspiration readily available.

DeviantArt. I've been a member there for eight years so that's one of my favourites. And there are many great digital artists there to gain insight from and be inspired by. I recently joined ArtStation where there are also many fantastic artist galleries. Unfortunately, the way I discovered ArtStation is that someone there had stolen almost my entire DeviantArt gallery and posted it there as their own work.

DAL: No! Oh, wow. One occasionally hears about people worrying about such things… but… to hear that it happened… and the whole gallery.

HT: Once I informed the admins, that user was quickly banned of course. I haven't uploaded much of my work there yet, but I plan to.

DAL: Great. What are two of your favourite online resources related to digital art? Be it a forum, on-line galleries, model sites or other resources?

DAL: You have to wonder what someone gets out of ripping off like that. Did they just want the money from print sales? To get a job-offer/visa ticket into the USA, and then abscond? Anyway… let’s talk about something more positive. What are you working on at the moment?

HT: I find a lot of free to use stock resources at

HT: Nothing special right now. I work on fractal

Picture: “It’s always Spring somewhere”.

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images every day and usually post something new at DeviantArt four or five times a week. I'm currently working through somewhat of a slump that seems to occur two or three times a year. I do a little gaming and I got side tracked with a new one. I usually buy at least one new game every year when Steam runs their summer sale.

But I'll get back on track soon enough.

DAL: Yes, big games can take a lot of time.

Even just downloading it, installing, modding it and figuring out all the tricks and tips can take a day. Then there’s mastering the controls, getting out of the training section. I thought recently… play Risen again, or Titan Quest, or even revisit the great Morrowind? But they’re so huge and take months, and there’s so much else to do that’s more productive. Movies are quicker.

Talking of movies. If the Guardians of the Galaxy team came back to you and said: “Hal, Pixar are busy — make us an awesome short film we can show in front of Guardians of the Galaxy 3” — what might you want to make?

HT: I would kind of like to do... a video of exploring some of the dystopian visions I've had in my pictures. [See the picture shown below] I'm pretty certain I could come up with a fairly entertaining story to go along with it. A good Mandelbulb 3D based animation takes a long time to create though, sometimes many months just to get the renders. Maybe some day I'll set aside the time to do that.

DAL: No online render farms for Mandelbulb 3D, to help with the load. Maybe the render farms are missing a trick there. But if someone was wowed by your pictures and wanted to get and learn Mandelbulb, what tips would you give them? Basic mistakes to avoid, and the ‘mustdo’ things…

HT: The main advice I would give is to give it a fair chance. You can make some nice things right from day one, but it will take time to learn what formulas work well together. Combining formulas is where you can discover new styles and create unique work. There is a lot of

30 Pictures: “The Only Way Out” and “Giant Mushroom Forest”.

information out there now to help learn it, and that's something that was lacking when I first started. So do the tutorials, and spend the time to learn your way around. There's also a great Facebook Group called Mandelbulb Maniacs (with nearly 10,000 members) where everyone is there to help new users learn the program. Play with other artists parameters to learn what it takes to make the different styles. Many artists freely share their parameters to help others learn. And what ever you do, always give credit to the original artist if you tweak their parameters and make your own image from their work. We're a pretty close community and watch out for each other.

DAL: Wonderful. Thanks for the tip. Great, well‌ thanks very much for taking the time to do this in-depth interview with us. We wish you well with your future projects, and hope that Marvel will come calling again for Guardians 3.

HT: Well I certainly appreciate it! Mandelbulb 3D was a good alternative for me for getting into

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creating 3D imagery without using the more popular and well known traditional 3d modelling programs or making digital paintings. Being asked to work on the big new Marvel film was totally unexpected and gratifying. And I'm happy to have had a part in bringing fractal imagery closer to where it can be appreciated and accepted as a more mainstream kind of art work. Thanks for having me on Digital Art Live!

DAL: Our pleasure. Thanks for a great interview.

Hal Tenny is online at: http://haltenny.deviantart.com/

Guardians 2 official trailer at Marvel: https://www.youtube.com/watch? v=dW1BIid8Osg

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Issue 1 Oct 2016 Designing Future Cities ● Tarik Keskin ● Christian Hecker ● Gallery: Future Cities, a huge 32 page mega-gallery! ● The Imaginarium (regular feature, in all subsequent issues)

Issue 2 Nov 2016 Alien Plants/Creatures ● Matthew Attard ● Exidium Corporation ● Gallery: Ryzom concept illustrations ● Gallery and essay: the future bodily evolution of humans in space

Issue 3 Dec 2016 ‘A Galaxy Far Away…’ ● Neil Thacker ● Jean-Francois Liesenborghs ● Gallery: "These are not the planets you're looking for..." ● Gallery: SpaceX manned Mars mission 32

Issue 4 Jan 2016 Poser 11: special issue ● Charles Taylor (on the new Poser 11) ● Ariano di Pierro ● Paulo Ciccone (on the Reality plugin) ● Our in-depth 8,000word review of the new Poser 11 Pro

Issue 5 Feb 2016 Cosmos (space art)

Issue 6 March 2016 Cyber-humans + VR

Issue 7 April 2016 Future Female Heroes

● Dave Hardy ● Ali Ries ● Tobais Roersch ● Oyshan Green (Terragen 4) ● Gallery: The art of the cosmic.

● Tara de Vries (Second Life) ● Ludovic Celle ● Elaine Neck ● Anders Plassgard ● Gallery: Future cyber-humans

● Leandra Dawn ● Aaron Griffin ● Paul Frances ● Troy Menke ● Bob May’s collages ● Gallery and essay: Female future heroes

Issue 9 June 2016 Blender: special issue

Issue 10 July 2016 Steampunk

Issue 11 August 2016 Future Landscapes

● Colin Masson ● Thomas Piemontese ● Shane Bevin ● Tutorial: How to export a clean .OBJ from Blender ● Index of past issues ● Gallery: Blender art

● Renderosity ● Suzi Amberson (‘Kachinadoll’) ● Bob May ● Sci-fi in PC pinball ● Steampunk gallery ● Imaginarium

● ‘Artifex’ ● Lewis Moorcroft ● Rob Wildenberg ● ‘Tigaer’: ‘making of’ ● Gallery: Future Oceans and Craft ● Imaginarium

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Issue 8 May 2016 Our Future Frontier ● The Mars Society ● Ludovic Celle ● Gallery: Orbiting Cities in Space ● Gallery: Space Colonies and Outposts ● Gallery: Mars in the 1950s pulps

Issue 12 Sept 2016 Second Skin ● ‘Pixeluna’ ● Paolo Ciccone ● Deane Whitmore ● HiveWire: their new Big Cat for Poser ● Gallery: Second Skin ● Imaginarium

YOUR ART HERE?

Issue 13 Oct 2016 Spacewrecks (TTA) ● Vikram Mulligan ● Xistenceimaginations ● Craig Farham ● TTA series tribute ● NASA’s rescue-bot ● Index of past issues ● Gallery: Space hulks wrecks, and crashes

Issue 14 Nov/Dec 2016 Cybertronic ● ‘CG Artiste’ ● ‘Keplianzar’ ● Jacques Pena ● TTA series tribute ● Ugee 1910b pen tablet—in-depth review ● Gallery: Neon and ‘cyberglow’ artists

Issue 15 Jan 2017 Mistworlds ● Chuck Carter (Myst) ● Cynthia Decker ● Cathrine Langwagen ● Ulco Glimmerveen ● Evolo competition ● Index of past issues ● Gallery: Myst-like digital art

Issue 16 Feb 2017 Future vehicles ● Syd Mead interview ● Vadim Motiv ● Adam Connolly ● Mark Roosien ● The UK’s Bloodhound supersonic rocket-car ● Index of past issues ● Gallery: “Vrooom!!”

EVERY MONTH

Issue 17 March 2017 Movie magic ● Greg Teegarden ● Tobias Richter ● Phil Dragash ● ESA’s Moon Temple ● Scott Richard ● Index of past issues ● Gallery: the Spirit of the Cinema

YOUR

YOUR

ART

ART

HERE?

HERE?

Issue 18 April 2017 Vue 2016 special issue

Issue 19 May/Jun 2017 Sci-fi comics

● Barry Marshall ● Vue 2016 R2 review ● Anaor Karim ● NASA’s tunnels ● W.P. Taub ● Index of past issues ● Gallery: Nature Grows on You!

● Patrick Gyger ● Georges Peters ● Arne Cooper ● RoboSimian ● Index of past issues ● Gallery: comic-book style characters

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Issue 20 July 2017 Digital clothing ● Kim Schneider (‘Arki’) ● Melissa Moraitis (‘BlackTalonArts’) ● Marvelous Designer 6.5—in-depth review ● Jepe ● Index of past issues ● Gallery: Future Fashion

Issue 21 August 2017 Ecofutures ● ● ● ● ● ●

Hal Tenny Frank Little Organics in pulp art Linda Granqvist Index of past issues Gallery: visions of the ‘ecofuture’ ● Imaginarium

YOUR

YOUR

YOUR

ART

ART

ART

HERE?

HERE?

HERE?

Issue 22 Sept 2017 Lighting for effect

Issue 23 Oct 2017 Arthur C. Clarke tribute

Issue 24 Nov 2017 Abstracts in sci-fi

Interested in being interviewed in a future issue? Please send us the Web address of your gallery, and we’ll visit! paul@digitalartlive.com

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Terragen 4.1.1 has been released. This important upgrade is free for Terragen 4 users, and offers improvements such as faster/cleaner cloud renders and shaders, optimisations to Ray-Traced Preview and Global Illumination, and more.

Deadline: 31st July 2017

36 Learn more...

37

FRANK LITTLE USA VUE | MAYA | PRODUCT DESIGN

WEB

Picture: “Hanging Artichoke”.

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Digital Art Live hangs out with Frank Little to talk about modelling alien plants for Vue, learning Maya, and re-training to become a product designer.

DAL: Frank, welcome to Digital Art Live magazine. We recently had a Vue special issue and long review of the new Vue, so we’re pleased to have such an accomplished user of Vue accept an in-depth interview.

How did you first encounter and get into 3D? Was it straight-to-Vue — or was there some other software like Bryce?

FL: Yes, I did actually start with Bryce. My dad is a 3D hobbyist as well and one day he said, very offhand, “Hey, I think you’d like this program.” He really had no idea how that one suggestion would change my life.

DAL: Wow. And was it Bryce which got you into modelling, as well? I know that, back in the day, Bryce was thought of as a comparatively easy modelling tool?

FL: I didn’t model for quite a while after I started using Bryce. I remember getting some advice from another Bryce user, ‘Orbital’. He told me it was best that I make my own models, and from then on I tried my best to do so, first with Silo, and much later, when I started going to school at the Art Institute, with Maya.

DAL: Tell us about your experience with Silo, which may not be a familiar name to many readers.

FL: My dad also got me started with Silo. I watched some tutorials, but had a hard time really grasping the basics of 3D modelling.

Instead I played with the program and figured out what I could on my own.

DAL: And this was to build your own fabulous science fiction worldscapes? I see you recently posted some of the pages from your sketchbook at that time, showing your sketch designs for creatures and plants. Was the intention to build compete ‘living worlds’ for Vue, with creatures as well as plants?

FL: I think, like a lot of people who read Tolkien, Martin, and other fantasy authors, I — from an early age — wanted to emulate them, and so from the very beginning I wanted to create a believable world. I wrote stories, created histories, drew creatures, and then finally came to 3D, where all those ideas could coalesce.

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DAL: There’s definitely a stylistic legacy from Bryce, going into your Vue work. Do you think there was a ‘Bryce style’, and if so what was it about that software that nudged people in certain directions?

FL: Bryce was the first program where I was able to create models, though not polygon-based models.

Bryce had a plant creation system that, though it wasn’t as clean as Vue’s, was in many ways superior, at least for me, in that it had a wider range of options. And some of those early plants definitely influenced later creations. At the time I also started modelling with Xfrog, another component based modelling program, and to this day I still use it, though I often modify the models in Maya.

DAL: I see. Were there some digital artists that you first looked up to, when you started out? Who were they and what did you like about their work?

FL: Sadly I can’t remember a lot of the names of those early artists, but they were definitely there.

Some worked exclusively in Bryce, while others showed me the possibilities of what other programs could do. There was ‘Orbital’, who I mentioned earlier, and Carlo Traversi. When I saw his work I realised how much I had yet to learn.

DAL: And then you made the move to Vue, with some beautifully imaginative work like “The Bull and His Harem” and “Guardian of the Mansions”, which we show in this interview. Am I right in detecting the influence of the famous Morrowind videogame there?

I thinking of the floating Bull Netches in Morrowind.

The city of Tel Mora also.

photos of those on the coast here in California and try and imagine them on a grander scale. I’m sure there are obvious influences there as well.

DAL: Yes, I noticed recently that Vue and Poser are both deficient in really high quality tide-pools, in terms of 3D store content. I would have thought that would be the perfect Vue ‘still life’ content. Yes, the California coast must be fabulous for undersea diving.

And of course these days there’s increasing interest and buzz around ‘seasteading’, undersea living.

Creatively too. We’re hoping to have a profile soon of the Subnautica game, which has some wonderful undersea alien creatures, without the need to suit up and strap on the air tanks. But back to dry land. Tell us about “The Old King” series of pictures, which I presume was inspired by the famous crossroads scene with Sam and Frodo in The Lord of the Rings?

FL: It’s possible that was where I first encountered that, but I have drawings from much earlier of similar ideas. I’ve always loved ruins, both ancient and modern. The series of pictures I did — though really they’re more of an evolution of an idea —are supposed to represent a four sided faced pillar of an ancient king. There are several, this one just happens to be one that has since been toppled and overgrown.

DAL: Have you kept up with the newer versions of Vue? Or was there a wholesale move to Maya?

FL: I still use Vue 8, actually. When I started school at the Art Institute, though, my focus went to Maya.

FL: Yes, that image was definitely influenced by the Bull Netch from Morrowind, though stylistically I wanted something very different.

DAL: Was that the school pushing you to a ‘professional choice’, thinking that Maya skills would open up employment opportunities in games? Does Maya still fit in your current workflow?

DAL: You also like unusual dragons, insects and lizards and what might be termed “speculative evolution”. Undersea creatures too. Do you have an interest in those in real-time too? Do you go out on bug-hunts, or sea-diving, or keep a bug-arium in the corner of the studio?

FL: Maya being the industry standard at the time, I figured it was best to really focus on it. I had planned to be a 3D generalist, possibly specialising in environments, but in the last year I’ve found that I really love, of all things, product visualization, and I’ve started to get freelance work in the industry.

FL: I’m most interested in insects because they seem the least like us. I did go on bug hunts as a kid, but there was an unfortunate incident with a praying mantis — at the time I was unaware they had wings or even if they did that they had the power to use them — and as a result for a time I was a bit phobic.

I’m not sure when that ‘wore off’, or if it has entirely, since most of my exploration of the insect world is through media of one form or another, usually accompanied by David Attenborough.

DAL: Super. Yes, that’s a growing market, and then there’s a the intersection of that with VR on the one hand, and 3D printing on the other. Talking of marketplaces, I like your Maya scene “Above the Marketplace”. Some lighting hot-shot on Deviantart wrote “The texture gamma balance is off here”. But I think it’s great, it gives it that bleached ultra-bright Mediterranean look. It makes it look like a believable really sunny place, where the textures have just faded out under years of sun. Tell us about how the Marketplace series of pictures came to be, please.

I do also love tide pools. For a time, I used to take

40

Picture: “The Great King Surveys His Realm”.

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Picture: “Guardian of the mansions”.

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FL: I understand what you mean by the bleached out look, and that was definitely what I was going for, but in a general sense he was correct, and it was the first time I’d been introduced to the concept of gamma correction and linear light workflows. That series of pictures was for a 3D environment class I took. I wanted to create something with interesting architecture and strange plants, since those are two things I really love.

DAL: And you live in Long Beach, California, so I’m guessing the sunny desert-ish sort of climate there may influence your work? I’m thinking also of the succulent and bleached nature of some of the plants in many of your pictures. Do you get that kind of inspiration from your surroundings and weather?

FL: It’s funny how often someone asks me if I live in coastal California, based on my images. I didn’t realize how much influence the landscape had on my work.

DAL: Does it worry you about the whole ‘California, dropping into the ocean one day’ thing?

FL: Funnily enough, when I was young the running joke in my family was that at the dinner table, whenever the conversation had grown stale I would suggest we talk about earthquakes. I’m not nearly as worried now as I was then.

DAL: Are you still living on Long Beach, California?

FL: I actually left Long Beach five years ago. I have a five year old daughter and I wasn’t able to go to school, work, and take care of her, so I moved back home with my parents.

DAL: I see. What’s your setup these days, in terms of studio and render box and suchlike?

FL: My studio is the bedroom I share with my daughter, just a desk with some monitors. I try to work at school as much as possible.

DAL: I see. You’re also interested in unusual musical instruments, and have also modelled these.

Do you play as well?

FL: Yes, I started playing guitar in my late teens and still do, but mostly I play piano. I do have a hammered dulcimer as well, and I would love to be able to own some of the other instruments I’ve modelled.

DAL: Have you ever thought of modelling a series of alien musical instruments? Kind of like your plants, but made musical. Much as tribal peoples made musical instruments from dried gourds and so on.

That might be quite fun.

FL: I have, but I would want to know if those instruments could actually play. So for now, since I’m not knowledgeable enough, I’ve stuck to creating variations on those instruments we’re familiar with.

DAL: I’m not sure that anything’s future-proof these days, but what set of starting software would you recommend for a young beginner, making sciencefiction scenes?

FL: If they can afford it, I would suggest Vue. There are quite a few versions — one is free, I believe — so most people probably can.

DAL: Yes, the free starter version, that’s still there.

And most people have quad-core CPUs — meaning faster rendrs, as Vue is CPU-bound — and the latest version Vue 2016 R2 is a lot quicker and more stable.

There’s also the easy ability to get Poser 11 scenes to Vue without any re-texturing hassles. What’s your own personal favourite image from your portfolio and why?

FL: Oh, that’s such a hard question to answer. It’s a toss up between “The Old King has Company”, “Oasis”, and “Emperors of the East”. I feel like those are stylistically the most interesting and the best compositions, although I now see several things I could do to make them better.

DAL: “When the Music is Over” was a stylistic departure for you. Very nicely dark and glowy, compared to your light and airy other work. Was that a deliberate decision, to do something 180-degrees from your usual style? Would you recommend that approach to others, to flip around their usual style or approach, once in a while?

FL: That was an image I did for my first lighting and texturing class. It’s really the first true Maya image I think I ever made.

DAL: You also make fantasy maps, of your world, Minzaron, and back stories. How is Minzaron progressing? Has it continued to develop?

FL: Yes, all of us that is based on world-building, along with my pictures. Maps were some of my first attempts at creating that world. Actually, the ones I have posted are out-dated now and I have since changed them quite a bit, hopefully for the last time.

DAL: What sort of fantasy or science-fiction do you enjoy, from other creatives, in that line?

FL: I actually don’t read as much fantasy as I used to, except for George R.R. Martin. I grew up with Tolkien and Ursula K. Le Guin. I read more historical non-fiction these days.

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Picture: “Asjawan and the maiden”.

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Pictures: “The Bull and his harem”, inspired by the Bull Netch creatures in the famous videogame Morrowind by Bethesda.

“The Old King has company”.

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Detail from pages in one of Frank’s personal sketchbooks, showing ideas for alien creatures and plants, to be modelled in 3D and then rendered in Vue.

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Pictures: Detail from pages in one of Frank’s personal sketchbooks, showing ideas for alien creatures and plants, to be modelled in 3D and then rendered in Vue. Insets: “Walker” and “Hermitage”, showing one of Frank’s plant ideas realised in Vue in different ways.

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DAL: I see. I’m currently reading Erasmus Darwin’s

The Botanic Garden: The Economy of Vegetation (1791), a fascinating early work of almost protoscience fiction at times, in which he attempts to meld all the old classical motifs of naiads and fauns and gnomes and goddesses to the newly emerging world of science and industry, while also forecasting with great foresight the ways the modern world would develop. He does a fairly good job of it in the Economy half of the book, and is mostly optimistic.

It fits well with the theme of this issue, the melding of science-fiction with fantasy, usually with a good serving of ‘future greenery’. What specific things from science-fiction would you like to see ‘mashed up’ with elements from high fantasy?

FL: I don’t think I’ve ever really contemplated that, although yes… I could see interesting ideas arising from taking classical mythological ideas and melding them with sci-fi and science.

DAL: Yes, I think that general approach may be where augmented reality is headed — heralded by the Microsoft hololens, the recently Pokemon Go, and suchlike, but with much further to go — offering a sort of ‘re-haunting’ of the world with animistic ‘spirits’. But the new ones, the ones that catch on for adults, will probably be more sort of a techno-fantasy hybrid. Have you explored the possibilities of VR or AR yet?

FL: Yes, I think AR and VR are where we’re headed as a species. I think before we ever really explore other

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worlds, we’ll create them here and live in them.

That’s going to be quite a long conversation for humanity to have, though. As for my own world, I would love to live long enough to create a virtual version of it and explore it.

DAL: Ah yes, well the future comes up quick these days. Keyshot 7 was just released, with really easy VR environment authoring complete with ‘collision detection’ walkthroughs and objects. Costly, but I believe their educational version is now full-featured.

You mentioned you’re still learning. What do you have planned for the near future, both in terms of creative work and in terms of learning?

FL: I have three more quarters of learning, so when I’m finally done with that I’ll probably focus mostly on

my career in product design. But in this industry you take what you can get, and I may very well find that the work I want isn’t available, forcing me to try something new. I’ve started using Vue again, actually because of this interview, and again I’m finding I have a lot to learn, or re-learn.

DAL: Right, then you should check out our recent Vue issue’s in-depth Vue 2016 review. There are also new affordable online render farms happy to see Vue files, such as the UK’s GarageFarm.NET. Great, well thanks for your time, as you sound quite busy. We wish you all the best in your studies and for the future.

FL: Thanks so much for the consideration!

Pictures: “Above the Marketplace”; “What Remains of Sjunsjiere”; “Tausis”, a musical instrument modelled by Frank.

Frank Little is online at: http://fclittle.deviantart.com/ 51

CREATIVE IDEA: giant insects on thin metal structures.

CREATIVE IDEA: mystical blending of a river and a tiger.

ORGANICS IN SCI-FI PULP ART Amazing Stories

Weird Tales

May 1926.

January 1943.

In 1926 Hugo Gernsback had just begun this famous magazine title, and was quickly nick-named ‘the Rat’ for his miserly and late payments to accomplished authors. May 1926 was only his second issue, and Gernsback was playing it safe by reprinting names such as Wells, Poe and Verne. The cover artist Frank R. Paul (1884-1963) portrays the moth-like Martians of Wells's early story “The Crystal Egg” (1897), in which sort of 'palantir' seeing-stone mysteriously arrives from Mars and allows the unsuspecting Mr. Cave to see the creatures and landscape of the red planet. The red cliffs and the ‘canals’ of Mars are present, but the sky is blue rather than red. The curious metal wheel is nicely echoed by the ripples in the canal.

‘Angelic women intercepting doomed airships and aircraft’ has been an occasional recurring theme in science-fiction and fantastic art.

Here the idea is portrayed by A. R. Tilburne illustrating Frank Owen’s “Quest of a Noble Dragon”, a mystical war story of an American airman shot down over China, rescued by a river-spirit and taken to a curious dreamland.

Her flowing hair echoes the river-like nature of the spirit, while the pose of her limbs suggests a crouching tiger done in the Chinese manner.

A. R. Tilburne (1887-1965) served in the U.S. Navy and started selling commercial art in the depths of the Great Depression in 1935. He did many covers for Weird Tales including one for a reprint of Lovecraft's lesser Catskills’ story “The Lurking Fear” in 1947. He later painted many scenes of the Old West in America.

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CREATIVE IDEA: flowing upward mix of metal/organics.

CREATIVE IDEA: geometric design intersects characters.

Galaxy Science Fiction magazine

SF magazine (Japan)

November 1954.

#8, 1970.

This striking mid-1950s cover by Ed ‘EMSH’ Emshwiller (1925-1990) is titled “SpaceTime in One Tough Lesson” on the contents page, and it doesn't appear to illustrate any particular story in the issue.

It is a pleasing mix of space art, organics and technology, anchored by a questing woman scientist. Emshwiller began working for New York pulp magazines in 1951 and also worked on paperback covers for Galaxy’s spin-off line of news-stand books. From 1964 he took an interest in experimental film and became an early video artist, his career bridging the world of 1950s New York pulp covers and the world of Californian computer graphics in the 1970s and 80s. His work was fairly recently collected in book form in Emshwiller: Infinity x Two (2007).

SF Magazine was established in Japan in 1959 and became one of the nation’s leading science-fiction magazines, offering new translations of English works alongside original Japanese stories. This dynamic front cover by Keizo Iwabuchi (1942—) is one of a long series of covers he painted for the magazine in the 1960s and 70s, many featuring a near-symbolist blending of the organic and the technological, with touches of modern graphic design. Here he has successfully suggested outer space, alien symbiote spacesuits, portals in space, and futuristic architecture, all in the same picture.

In the 1970s he also created covers and illustrations for the Japanese translations of Edgar Rice Burroughs (Princess of Mars) and Conan Doyle (Sherlock Holmes), and worked on various local boys’ book series.

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We talk with ‘Hera of Stockholm’ (Linda Granqvist) about Star Wars, beachfront studios, DAZ Studio, and creating a lengthy ‘picture novella’ with her renders.

DAL: Linda, welcome to Digital Art Live, and to our ‘eco-future’ issue. It’s based around the idea of the melting of science-fiction and fantasy, most often by using a ‘future nature’ as ‘the glue’ between them.

When we saw your blending of genres in your large gallery, plus your recent beach pictures, we were sure you’d make for an interesting interview.

LG: Thank you! I'm honoured.

DAL: You’re obviously having a lot of fun with your art. When did you first encounter 3D art, and realise how much fun could be had in that way?

LG: It was back in the mid 1990s, I encountered a small 3D program which was a freeware, included on a disk which came strapped together with a computer magazine. Unfortunately, I don't remember its name and the CD is lost. I installed, had a lot of fun with it, within the limits available back then. You could mostly just play around with primitives like orbs, boxes, pyramids, triangles, change colours and textures on them. Naturally the only thing you could do with that application was abstract art, and a render of 250 x 200 pixel took 54 almost an hour, but it was fun nevertheless.

LINDA GRANQVIST SWEDEN DAZ STUDIO | CARRARA | PHOTOSHOP

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Picture: “Minouka's Bath” (detail).

DAL: Sounds cool. That might have been Organica, perhaps. We really need a sort of archaeological enyclopedia of old 3D software, these days!

DAL: Micrografx Simply 3D, by the sound of it. After that software, was it straight to DAZ Studio? Or were there other software choices in-between?

LG: Then I got my hands on a more advanced program, Micrograph X or something similar, and this time it included props like furniture and cars and sports items, musical instruments and suchlike. Plus a simple human 3D figure which you could ‘dial in’ settings to make a man or a woman. I became hooked instantly. I still have some of those works, some surreal pieces with post-work in Photoshop.

LG: I was also working quite a bit with Bryce and the early Terragen, but Terragen was left behind when I bought a new computer and never got around to install an update. Then, when I eventually got the new computer, the software had changed too much for me that it was impossible to just jump right into it again and start where I left off. I had to start all over again learning it, and there simply was no time.

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DAL: I see. Let’s talk about your art. I like the mix of Gods and Divine Places with science-fiction, in your art. Was that inspired by reading or viewing? Jack Kirby’s ‘superhero gods’, or a series of novels perhaps, or a TV series? Nordic mythology?

LG: Actually, it goes back to the 1980s and Star Wars and the early superhero movies at that time , and to art works by surrealists like Dali and the Swedish art group Halmstadgruppen (The Halmstad Group). And to classicists who were doing landscape work with fantasy roman ruins. Then I've always been interested in and inspired by the Graeco-Roman myths and their multitude of inspiring characters. In my mind the airy vistas of Olympus reminds a lot of the sci-fi visions of societies in the sky and surging high-rise architecture. And the heroic endeavours in many sci-fi epics reminds me of the old myths.

Nothing strange in that, really, because there's a clear line running from the ancient adventures to those we still tell And these similarities have challenged me to create a blend between those words. Like a sci-fi take on Olympus for instance. To create something Anachronic — outside of time.

DAL: And there are a lot of kings and queens as well, in your art. Is there some childhood influence on those themes, perhaps? Perhaps you had an interest in the Swedish royal family?

LG: Yes, indeed I have. Well spotted. In Sweden we've always been proud of our royal family, they're very popular here. And the monarch, in real life as in the fairy tales is an inspiring character. There's the glory of an atoined monarch and the grand coronations, there's the leader who rides in front of an army or takes responsibility for the day-to-day governing. Or there can be the tyrant, the badass who backs off on nothing in order to keep their power. But most of the time there's your solid hardworking monarch on the throne, and those are the ones who inspire me. Even in the tales for children, there are such monarchs. Like Snow White's absent father for instance. It was obvious that he loved his daughter, yet he was unable to save her from her jealous step mother.

DAL: Yes, and I think a lot of that feeds into a certain type of science-fiction. I’m thinking that Star Wars looks like quite a big influence on you?

LG: Yes, Star Wars was my first real door-opener to the world of sci-fi. I was only a kid then, when my dad brought me to see the first movie, and I was blown away. It was Star Wars. By the characters, by the environments, the technology and several other things.

DAL: What a great introduction.

LG: And still today I love to work with those simple, obvious visual symbols of good or evil — such as the colours of the light sabres. Just attach a red or blue/ green sable to a character and you can tell who's good or bad. No need for further explanation.

DAL: And you also make back-stories for your pictures. Do they all link into a unified back-story?

LG: No, they are not linking in to a universal story.

Most of the time they are tiny sketches, minimalistic short stories, told in visuals as well as in words. Often a picture tells its own story but sometimes I feel the need to add a little something too.

DAL: I see you also have a lengthy “Medusa's Eyes picture novella” on DeviantArt, with about sixty pictures? How did that come about?

LG: It started with four or five pictures of a modern Medusa, who had a desire to be able to see her lover ‘for real’. And then I added characters and side stories to that and slowly it evolved to a picture novella. Actually, there's about 50 more pictures to that one, which never made it into final cut of the story that’s now online. Mostly because I felt that they were not ‘up to par’, or that I missed some important element. Some of these became picked up and remade later, like a display of Medusa and her two sisters, others still live on a hard drive somewhere, perhaps waiting for a revival.

DAL: I see. What are three of your personal favourite images you have created? What did you learn from creating them and what inspired you to create them?

LG: The first one, “Message from Earth” is more than a decade old now work, a surreal / sci-fi story of what we Earthlings might write to another race and send to them. Inspirationally, it's a blend between the NASA Voyager space probe project, the ongoing search for life in the universe and of several art works with ‘bottled messages’. Then there’s “Stellar Driftwood” which is about the long and hard venture for love which eventually pays off. Most of the times in unexpected ways. Here I worked a lot with colours, reflections and light, I used two stock pictures as base and added 3D elements and worked with creating realistic water reflexes to match that of the sky. I also spent a lot of time with “Somewheria”, I even dreamt it in the end. I added and removed pieces and moved them around and worked with details. And I became really pleased with the outcome, because in the end it corresponded a lot with what I wished to do. It's just pure fantasy, and with the aim to convey the rare tranquillity that sometimes exists between dream and reality.

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Picture: “Laira”.

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DAL: And tell our readers about your studio please?

The setup, the environment, and the view from your window.

LG: That’s a bit hard because ‘the studio’ varies for me. I usually bring the computer, camera and other items with me. At home I work in a corner of the living room. Right now, I'm at my summer house and sitting in a small living room with a view over the sea and a low, flat shore landscape. It's very beautiful and inspiring regardless of weather. Actually, today it's grey and rainy, but usually I can see the most magnificent sunsets here.

DAL: Yes, it’s a wet summer in the UK and Europe.

Pictures: “Melina vs. the Metatron”; “Worlds Apart”.

But being by the sea sounds great. And when you get back to Stockholm, the capital of Sweden, what is the creative life like? Is there a 3D scene? Is the city still enjoyable despite its recent misfortunes?

LG: Yes, though today the Stockholm scene revolves a lot about music and photography. I enjoy going to concerts and to visit various art galleries and I get see different kings of art, both in paintings and photographic work.

DAL: And what software does your studio run these days? And render engine?

LG: I use DAZ Studio and the iRay render engine and

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then I do a lot of post work in Photoshop. I also use Lucinda Explorer, J-wildfire and Incendia for creating simple fractal patters which can work as great textures and / or objects. Sometimes I work in DAZ Carrara as well, I mostly create backgrounds there which I blend with other work.

DAL: DAZ Carrara is powerful and often overlooked, which is a pity, but at least it got its 8.5 update, and now has a Lux renderer plugin. What would you like to see in the long-awaited DAZ Studio 5 (or Studio 8 or whatever name it eventually appears under)?

LG: There are a few things, like an ability to render in layers, an easier way to work with dials and morphs,

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volumetric for iRay and suchlike. I wish there were a way to add real god rays and bokehs and similar effects directly in the render process. There are some functions for doing ‘god rays’ in DAZ, but they are very limited and hard to work with. Indirect and atmospheric light would be nice to have too. And most of all, I'd love a better way to organize items in DAZ, now my items library is in a more mess than my attic. I feel that I spend too much time searching for items and fighting a losing battle when it comes to organize and structure thing in DAZ a bit better.

DAL: Ah yes, well… we recently ran a webinar at Digital Art Live on that very topic!

Pictures: “The Unrevived”, “The Kaliphessa of Derhemen”.60

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LG: But foremost, at the present time, I'm looking forward to Michael 8. I'd also love to have a new cat and dog. There has been a while since.

DAL: Right. The flagship male character. I’m guessing it’s a November release, probably, for M8.

LG: I was actually surprised to see Victoria 8 appear before the release of the main DAZ Studio 5 software, since I'd figured they would plan for a release of her together with the DAZ 5 features and thus give that lady a real injection of improvements. I felt that, coming out now… that she felt quite rushed and I still fail to see what makes her so much better than Genesis 3 — which in some ways was even a step backwards from Genesis 2.

DAL: It’ll be interesting to see what features from the next DAZ Studio feed into and enchance V8 / Genesis 8, certainly. Do you have favourite content creators, who you buy from again and again on the stores? For instance, I see that 1971s has a lot of Poser models put to good use in your “Cloudtopia” series (three of which are shown below).

LG: There's 1971s of course, but I'm also really fond of Stonemanson, Danie-Maforno, Aeon Soul in her various incarnations, and also Nightshift, Polish, Lilflame and suchlike. I love how these makers put effort both into creativity and quality and challenge my imagination.

DAL: Yes, it’s great that we now have so much royalty-free content available, and an ongoing market which is only growing. If one wants a life-size steampunk jack-rabbit with side-whiskers and pirateleg — there it is! Plus costume! And stranded short fur, even. One just has to bash together a few bits of content. What is your standard approach to a workflow?

LG: I start with something in my head, then I sketch on paper. Simple stickmen, horizons, buildings, vehicles and similar. That’s just to get a feeling of the balance in a picture. Then I see what I have available and I start working with it. A lot happens during the process, things can become something entirely different, one picture might become several or several might be blended into one.

DAL: I see. And then at the other end of the process, how much time do you usually put into postproduction work?

LG: It depends. Sometimes there is only little things to be done, like edit out a poke-through or fix a character's hair. Other times I put in a lot of work with lighting, background, adding effects like rays of light, bokeh, blurs etc. And sometimes there are render errors to take care of, which leads to several re-renders of parts of the picture. Some errors I might discover as late as during the post work.

Pictures: three from the “Cloudtopia” series.

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DAL: I see. Do you get inspiration for your art from the city, or from elsewhere in Sweden? I see you have posted some architectural photography, for instance, at your gallery.

“... ‘the studio’ varies for me.

I usually bring the computer and camera with me. Today I'm at my summer house and in a small living room with a view over the sea and a low, flat shore landscape.”

3D forum I loved but it was overtaken by spambots for about 5 years ago and I've never found anything alike again. That was a place where you could discuss 3D art from all perspectives and people there had been around long enough to actually remember the netiquette from the early days of Internet. Thus they were helpful, respectful and nice, even to those who were beginners in a discipline or otherwise. I really miss a place like that today. But the DAZ forum is a great place for me, there you get all kind of answers connected to DAZ Studio, DAZ Carrara and more.

DAL: How do you refresh your creative energies?

LG: Yes, from Sweden and other places. I travel a lot, I always take a camera. I seldom use them directly, just as inspirations. It can be anything from a German castle to a Tibetian monk, and they become transformed into something entirely different.

DAL: Which digital artist communities do you use and recommend and how have they helped your work?

LG: These days I'm mostly on DAZ forums and on DeviantArt. I used to be on Elfwood as well, but that one disappeared about 2 years ago. There was also a

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LG: I take a few days off from it. I go out in the nature and re-charge. I go ‘powerwalking’, as I cannot run anymore because of a bad knee, and I consume culture. Just movies, books, art. Or I cook, I love cooking when I can then offer my food to others.

DAL: What new themes are emerging in your work?

LG: These days I'm working quite a bit with sci-fi robotics, which is old and favourite inspiration of mine. There’s a political edge developing, things like future environmental hazards, religion gone bad and similar. I'm also experimenting a bit with more gritty cyborgs and robots, but so far there's nothing coming out of it that has pleased me enough to may it worth finishing and publishing. They're still sitting on my hard drive and one day they might show up. Or not.

DAL: What aspect of your artwork or software would you like to improve on next?

LG: I'd love to learn to be better at working with light in the iRay engine in DAZ Studio. To create smoother passages between lights and shadows, indirect light and so on.

“In Sweden we've always been proud of our royal family, they're very popular here. And the monarch, in real life as in the fairy tales is an inspiring character.”

DAL: Right, well our next issue is on ‘Lighting for character’, so that may be useful.

LG: Interesting, I’ll keep an eye open for that.

There are also quite a few lighting functions, like bloom, that I have yet to master in DAZ Studio. When I kick in the bloom on a render for instance, it all goes ‘Monet’ on me. Then, on another note, I'd love to improve my realworld photography skills. To discover how to get better with colours and light and depth.

DAL: Finally, what three tips do you have for those who are ‘just starting out’ in model creation and/or digital artwork?

LG: Firstly, to not give in, one day they're going to cross the threshold and it all become so much easier. Secondly, to not hesitate to ask for help. Find a forum where people are actually helpful instead of calling you Noob and tell you to read the manual. And then to use that forum. To ask but also to read. To go look for tutorials. There are a lot out there. If you find someone who has done something amazing, offer your praise and ask how they did it. Personally I'm a learner-by-doing, I experiment until I get what I want, find what kind of learner you are! If you prefer to experimenting or tutorials. Or a blend between. And finally, to not forget to have fun.

DAL: Great, well that’s all good advice.

Judging by your Gallery, you’ve certainly got the “having fun” side of things sorted out.

Many thanks for doing this in-depth interview with Digital Art Live magazine. We wish you all the best in the future.

LG: Thank you!

Linda Granqvist, aka ‘Hera of Stockholm’, is online at: http://hera-ofstockholm.deviantart.com/

Picture: “Loyalty to the Queen”.

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Digital Art Live examines some ‘ecofuture’ visions which seem to illustrate the emerging idea of blending futuristic technology with genre elements more often associated with fantasy — most usually by using nature as a way to bind the two approaches together.

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Pictures: Previous page, and top strip shows The Supertree Grove, part of the Gardens by the Bay Nature Park in Singapore. Credits right: Derrick Brutel, and left, William Cho. The trunks of the supertrees can be up to 160 feet high and are covered with 160,000 living plants from tropical flowers to ferns and climbers. The structures harvest solar power and moisture to sustain the plants, and serve as cooling towers for plant conservatories below. At dusk the trees glow with the light they have harvested from the sun during the day. Below: “Mushrooms of Agememna� by Lupus Deus Art.

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Picture: “Giant Sequoia Skyscraper”, Honorable Mention in the 2017 EVOLVO Skyscraper Competition. “Giant Sequoia Skyscraper” was designed by Ko Jinhyeuk, Cheong Changwon, Cho Kyuhyung, and Choi Sunwoong of South Korea. The Giant Sequoia have enormous volume and height, but does not grow deep roots. This means that when the heartwood, or the structural backbone, starts to naturally rot away, the tree falls dead due to its own immense weight. This projects suggests that architecture quietly takes place in the empty void of rotted trunks, without encroaching on the powerful visual landscape formed by these giants. http://www.evolo.us/ 70

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Artificial bioluminescence for aesthetic purposes is likely to be one of the first widely deployed fruits of biotechnology, once the science steps beyond energy and medicine. Appearing first in fashionable ‘smart clothes’, the temptation will then be to create ‘glow in the dark’ animals as home pets.

Bioluminescent jellyfish genes have already been successfully spliced into cats for research purposes, creating cute glow-in-the-dark kittens.

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Pictures: Opposite page, “Glowy Things 2” by Arki. This page, top: “Phaser Cat” by 000fesbra000; “Making of Rudolf” by Junowski.

Our culture’s ‘digital imaginaries’ are also likely to be overlaid with visions of cyberstyled spirits and archaic ‘worker’ behemoths, as AR overlays for the realworld emerge for a grown-up audience.

Pictures: “Aesther Summoner” by KoTnoneKoT, for the Gloomhaven Kickstarter; “Troll”, also by KoTnoneKoT.

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Even in space there will be a need to introduce and overlay natural elements, if we are to live and work there permentantly and not go crazy. Will the citizens of future colony -ships to the stars humanize the cosmic void with animistic AR overlays, and be unable to imagine experiencing outer space without such aids?

Pictures: "Universe Wolf" by Dumaker; "The Nereid who Wanted To Live In The Stars", by Soniamatas.

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Will a future humanity need to have formal regard for new forms of identity and partnerships — such as a ‘marriage’ between a person and a human companion whose only embodiment is to inhabit a robot animal via telepresence?

What about a coven-like group of telepathic symbiotes made up of three people, enabled by brain implants and bio-engineering? Or will certain nations make it illegal to have a relationship with a ‘nude’ virtual interactive avatar if presented in a ‘spiritual’ form?

Pictures: “Winter Night” by Greta Heron, and the outfit is Arki’s Nightqueen Wardrobe Collection; “Covenant” by Carlos Quevedo; “Dreams” by Xxadrxx.

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For many new users around the world it may ‘feel more right’ to interact with a very advanced technology that has first been infused with organic design elements and localised overlays. For instance, a solar panel that looks like a large flower and reacts to sunlight and rain in the same manner; a nomadic off-grid self-propelled house that blends beautifully with the natural environment and topography; a visiting hospital airship that adapts and adorns itself with giant holograms of greeting and reassurance in the local idiom.

Picture: “Waiting Somebody” by Salvuky.

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Picture: “The Egg Thief� by Mutinate.

By the time we set up large nature/ zoo reserves for resurrected extinct creatures, might the bio-spliced tourists look more odd than the animals?

In some fragile ecosystems it may eventually be thought useful to entirely do away with certain recentlyintroduced destructive animals such as goats and camels. Where the animals were also used for personal transport and prestige purposes, they may be retained in the form of a few advanced robots. For cultural reasons these may take the physical form of the removed animals, such as this robot racing camel.

Picture: “D O G Days: Sand Walker by MrJB27.

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In the future we will also create new habitable spaces deep under the deserts and under the sea, perhaps quite easily making these spaces by seeding small natural gaps with fungi that naturally and rapidly ‘eat out’ the space to a larger size — we may ‘grow’ our underground spaces, rather than build them. Very probably these spaces will then hold harvests of new types of engineered edible organisms based on fungi. It seems sensible to make a sub-species of such new organisms into natural light emitters, to avoid the need for energy transmission from the surface. Will we be more comfortable with these ‘light floaters’ if we design them to look less like insects and more like fairies?

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Picture: "The Journey Begins" by Dottorfile

In the 1700s it used to be thought that certain insects might be naturally formed by plants out of their own flower-stamens and petals, the new-born insects then detatching to persue their own autonomous paths through the air, while also returning to pollinate the plant. Might we — in future — engineer new types of plants that form ‘eggs’ in this manner, and which really do produce their own autonomous symbiotic insect-like plant -creatures?

Pictures: “A gift” by Star Rik ; “Demi god: Aang Daleth”, by Ignus Dei.

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The Expanse: Season Two Syfy's hit series The Expanse is one of the most acclaimed shows on TV. Season 2 has completed and all 13 episodes are now available on download, DVD or a three-disc Bluray, complete with extras.

A third series has been green-lit by Syfy and is now being cast. Syfy is also making Heinlein's famous science-fiction novel Stranger in a Strange Land as a mini-series. http://www.syfy.com/

Our pick of the most inspirational art, science and sci-fi. Make your imagination LIVE! 90

“… takes science fiction, makes it human, and rips it all apart before reconfiguring it into something new-yet-familiar.” — Nerdist review of season 2.

Picture: Promotional picture with thanks to Syfy.

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Book: H.G. Wells in the Potteries

DVD: A Trip to the Moon — restored

This magazine’s Assistant Editor has a new book out, H. G. Wells in the Potteries:

About 25 years ago a long-lost colour version of the classic Georges Melies science-fiction film A Trip to the Moon (1902) was discovered crumbling away in Barcelona, Spain. This unique copy of the famous film was badly damaged and decayed. Several decades, 13,375 frames and $600,000 later, the Technicolor Foundation for Cinema Heritage put the finishing touches to a painstaking and difficult restoration. The world can now see the restored film — which was the 2001: A Space Odyssey of its time — on the beautiful Flicker Alley DVD Blu-ray release A Trip To The Moon & The Extraordinary Voyage. The French band Air (Moon Safari, Tron: Legacy) have composed a new original electronic soundtrack. There are also additional Melies short films on the disc, along with a documentary on the restoration.

Well worth getting along with this is ‘the complete works’ as a DVD box-set: Georges Melies: First Wizard of Cinema 1896-1913.

North Staffordshire and the genesis of The Time Machine. If you've ever wondered where large chunks of the famous science fiction novel The Time Machine (1895) came from, look no further. The book explores the origins of the Time Traveller, Weena and the Sphinx in a 35,000 word scholarly essay from a highly experienced source-hunter, with footnotes and copious illustrations. Plus a closely annotated edition of the macabre Potteries short-story “The Cone”, and more. The book has lots of well-documented new discoveries, and should please Wellsians and Stokies alike! “at Etruria my real writing began. ...

Moreover I began ... the original draft of what later became The Time Machine ” — H.G. Wells, Autobiography. http://www.lulu.com/

Available from all good video retailers.

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Picture: Derek Ramsey, an ecofuture island which 3d-prints itself from floating ocean plastics.

Videogame: Subnautica

Non-fiction book: Seasteading

Subnautica is a beautiful 'open world' single-

What will it take to design and build “a Silicon Valley of the sea”, a floating city that would be the first step-off to oceanic colonization? This carefully researched new book from The Seasteading Institute starts with existing ‘floating cities’ such as the mega-sized cruise liner ships that already exist and work well.

The author Joe Quirk then works outward through other existing technologies such as floating mining rigs, oil platforms and tankers, submarines and research vessels. He talks with marine biologists and nautical engineers about near-future materials and new technologies that will harvest metals and plastics from seawater, as well as providing cheap energy.

He also explores the build costs — about 25% more expensive than on land, but in ‘free’ ocean. While unnecessarily alarmist about our reasons for needing sea colonisation, this pioneering book lays out a plausible plan for sea-living experiences and research by 2050.

player videogame, which allows the players to explore an aquatic alien planet by scubadiving and using submersibles. Imagine Avatar's Pandora planet, crossed with the Great Barrier Reef, plus fab futuristic gear.

We installed and tried the game and had a great first two hours encountering scary abysses, dancing luminous manatees, and exploring vast undersea forests. There’s obviously a great deal more to explore, and there are no worries about being eaten by sea-monsters — because Subnautica offers an easy 'explorer' mode to just swim and explore. Subnautica coped with a basic Windows PC, but will obviously benefit from a fast graphics card or an XBox One. It also integrates with VR. Available now on Steam, with the full version 1.0 in September 2017.

Picture: official Lilypad Islands concept art for Subnautica, by Jengineerr. https://unknownworlds.com/subnautica/

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https://www.seasteading.org/book/

2017 : A Clarke Odyssey

Sherlock Holmes

9th December 2017, UK

Until 8th October, Sydney, Australia

This one-day conference and event in the UK will mark the centenary of Sir Arthur C. Clarke, one of the most important sciencefiction writers of the 20th century. The event is to be held at Canterbury University in the UK, and award-winning science-fiction writer Stephen Baxter will give the keynote speech. Conference talks will be academic but limited to 20 minutes to ensure variety and reduce waffle, and these will be on a wide range of Clarke-related topics.

The ‘International Exhibition of Sherlock Holmes’ comes to Australia for the first and possibly only time. This major gallery show will display original manuscripts and first edition books, accurate recreations of 221B Baker Street, plus a comprehensive display of Sherlock items produced since 1888, including movie costumes and props. Produced by the Museum of London and the Conan Doyle Estate, this is a respectful and detailed exhibition on Doyle’s famous creations of Sherlock Holmes, Dr. Watson and the evil Moriatary. The large exhibition is interactive and has plenty of activities to keep detectives occupied, including a Victorian-era crime laboratory which invites visitors to ‘solve a murder’ — but reviews state that the sleuthing is rather complex and as such is best appreciated by over 10 year-olds.

http://www.metmuseum.org/ Pictures, from left, across double-page spread: Arthur C. Clarke (centre) visits NASA, to consult on the making of the movie adaptation of 2001.

Crime detection laboratory set, part of the Sherlock Holmes exhibition in Sydney.

Detail from the cover of Dec. 1952 Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Chesley Bonestell.

Detail from an inked original John Romita pencil drawing of Spider-Man. With thanks to Marvel Comics.

“An enjoyable exhibition that whirrs in as many intriguing directions as the mind of the great man himself” — review in The Daily Telegraph. https://maas.museum/ 94

Dreaming the Universe

The Art of Spider-Man

Opens March 2018, Pasadana, USA.

Until 26th August, New York City

This major new exhibition at the Pasadena Museum of History will explore the history of science fiction in Southern California from 1930 to 1980. When the U.S. movie industry moved en masse from New York to California, many artists and writers followed them out west, establishing a baseline of talent there.

Then in the 1930s and 40s the cross-country postal service improved, meaning that science-fiction and fantasy writers and artists could live in wonderful weather while liasing with the New York magazines and publishers by post — and perhaps snag some local movie work too. After the war the growing market of high-budget movies, and then TV, turbo-charged this imaginative mix, and the whole scene fed into the West Coast's worldshaking science and computing boom.

Curated by the Los Angeles Science Fantasy Society, this unique exhibition is currently being actively researched — so if you have museum-worthy artifacts from the science fiction scene in Southern California then they would very much like to hear from you!

This New York Society of Illustrators show is the first ever exhibition of original Spider-Man artwork by John Romita and other significant artists — including Steve Ditko, Todd McFarlane, John Buscema, Gil Kane, John Romita Jr. and others. Significant early original inked pages will be exhibited here for the first time, including Spider-Man’s battles with the Green Goblin, the Rhino, Doctor Octopus and many others. The exhibit runs at the Society of Illustrators galleries in New York City until 26th August 2017, and focuses entirely on rare original Marvel artwork including advertising and other illustrative work — making it "the largest, and most comprehensive exhibition of Spider-Man art ever seen anywhere in the world."

http://www.lasfs.org/

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Accompanying the Spider-Man show is a companion exhibition ‘The Korshak Collection: Illustrations of Imaginative Literature’, presenting a rare opportunity to view some of the originals of some of the greatest fantasy illustrations of the 20th century. https://www.societyillustrators.org/

Are you interested in being interviewed in a future issue of the magazine? Or presenting a webinar for our series? Please send the Web address of your gallery or store, and we’ll visit!

Back cover: “Forest Pixie” by Redanta.

Made with Poser.

paul@digitalartlive.com

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