Two new Celtic art designs at Saga Shirts

Filed under Works in Progress

I’ve been concentrating lately with the retro-futuristic side of my brain, but look what popped out this weekend: two new Celtic art designs for my Saga Shirts site.

“Do Not Meddle in the Affairs of Wizards” is of course Gandalf’s famous advice about, you know, not meddling. The consequences are grave – witness the frog (“You Are Here”) and the rest of the quote: “For they are subtle, and quick to anger.” As are we all, I expect. Like all the Saga shirts these are available in loads of colors and styles.

“Visit Scenic Annwn” is what you might expect from the Otherworld Tourist Advisory Board: first, an invitation to spend your vacation time in Arawn’s kingdom – which lies just on the other side of those fields we know – and then, a few tourist advisory notices. Don’t eat or drink anything; don’t make any bargains; don’t take or offer gifts; and, above all, watch out for the hounds.

2008 Calendars: Celtic Art, and Retro Science Fiction Art

Filed under Works in Progress

It’s still early in the year, unless we’re really planning ahead – but for the first time I’ve added calendars to my Celtic Art & Retro-Futuristic Design site.There’s a Celtic Art Calendar with twelve of my original knotwork designs. They’re what you might call eclectic, including a knotwork biohazard symbol, a Chaos Star design, a Skull and Crossbones and a few more traditional designs like my “Tanglewood” and “An Claidheam Soluis” pictures.

On the Retro-Futuristic side, my 2008 Retropolis Calendar offers twelve months of retro rockets, faithful robots, flying cars, and death rays. Sort of an early indicator of the year we have to look forward to. Hint: be prepared to duck.

And on a tangential note, my Retrovert site also has a couple of WPA poster calendars (Travel Posters and Health & Safety Posters) and one with covers from vintage Modern Mechanix & Inventions magazines.

Ladies’ World Domination Society Tees

Filed under Works in Progress

Here’s something I think is pretty fun, even though I can’t exactly wear it myself – women’s T-shirts for the “Retropolis Ladies’ World Domination Society”.

Sugar, Spice, and complete, uncompromising oversight over everything that goes on in the Future That Never Was: that’s the chemical composition of the Ladies’ World Domination Society. Also, they serve tea.

Their motto is “Don’t MAKE me come down there!”

Available (on different selections of shirts) at both the Retropolis Transit Authority and at Celtic Art & Retro-Futuristic Design.  Be the first on your block – I just finished ’em today.

“If I Only Had Wings, I’d Fly” – a new Retropolis Poster

Filed under Computer Graphics, Works in Progress

These don’t happen too often – they’re fairly complex undertakings – but I’ve just added a new Retropolis poster to my Celtic Art & Retro-Futuristic Design site.

This scene – a sort of car show of the Future That Never Was – showcases one of the rockets I modeled for my Empire State Patrol project. Here I changed its color and dropped it into a variation on the scene I built for my “Skin A Scion” contest entry at Deviant Art.

The poster (18 by 24 inches at 300 DPI) mixes some older and newer characters together, and its title – “If I Only Had Wings, I’d Fly” – marks the second time I’ve named a picture with a quote from Nat Gonella’s “It’s a Pair of Wings for Me”, which still swings after about 66 years. Love that song – and in fact, though I’ve never known how many people noticed, almost all my Retropolis pictures use titles or quotes from popular music of the twenties through the forties. If you figure out why, you can explain that to me.

The poster is available now. An archival print should be available in a few days.

My Sites – the Retropolis Transit Authority

Filed under Print On Demand, Works in Progress

If you read my earlier blog entry you’ll have seen how my Saga Shirts site transmogrified over time from a site where I sold silk screened shirts to a print-on-demand based site – once I found a company that could do very good quality digital printing directly onto black and dark colored shirts. They’re Printfection, and they rock.

And as soon as I’d wrapped up the new Saga Shirts site, I wanted to use them with another kind of design that’s near and dear to me – my “Future That Never Was” of Retropolis, a land of personal rocket ships and Faithful Robot Companions – the sort of future that once seemed inevitable to us because we were reading too many Buck Rogers comics and pulp magazines, reinforced by the fact that industrial designers were now streamlining everything – from locomotives and airplanes, where it makes sense, to clocks and refrigerators, where, just possibly, it doesn’t. I love that stuff. Especially when it doesn’t make sense.

“Space Cadet” Scion XA

Filed under Computer Graphics, Works in Progress

Heres‘ my entry – possibly my first entry – in the “Skin a Scion” contest at Deviant Art.

True to form, I ended up skinning the world around the car, too. Win or lose, I think I’ll end up retooling the scene after the contest, with one of my own vehicles. Something you’d expect to see coming out of the Retropolis Rocket Works.

My Sites – Celtic Art Books

Filed under Print On Demand, Works in Progress

I’ve always loved books, and I do mean always; I learned to read at such an early age that I can’t remember doing it, or a time when I couldn’t read. That’s very different from the way I learned to talk, but trust me – that’s another story.

In fact when I was young I always believed that I was going to be a writer. It just didn’t work out that way.

I started using traditional Celtic knotwork designs in my drawings and paintings back in 1980. During the 80s I continued that and eventually began to invent new patterns of my own. Then at some point in the early 90’s, I stopped. I think it was because I was getting so typecast as “the Celtic Art Guy” that it was annoying, and I figured I ought to show my chops in some other kind of art. But also, I probably wanted to explore something a bit different just to suit myself.

Tutorial: Making Displacement Mapped Terrain with World Machine and 3DS Max

Filed under Computer Graphics, Works in Progress

This is a test rendering of a natural landscape which I rendered in 3DS Max 8. The terrain’s from a height map I generated with the free version of World Machine. This height map became a Displacement map in 3DS Max.

I’ve written up a tutorial on how I created the height map (in World Machine) and turned it into a textured 3D landscape using 3DS Max. You can read the whole review/tutorial here.

My Sites – Saga Shirts

Filed under Print On Demand, Works in Progress

I must have started thinking about Saga Shirts in early 2005, though it might have been a bit earlier. There were two things that combined to make it happen.

First, I’d been very happy with my print-on-demand web sites like “Celtic Art & Retro-Futuristic Design” and “The Retrovert“. But one problem with print-on-demand (at least then) was that there was no way to get good quality printing on black or dark colored shirts. I was asked for black shirts more often than anything else, I think. There just wasn’t any way to offer them that I felt good about selling, through a print on demand service; you still really needed to go with traditional silk screen printing.

Making of – Warrior Tools

Filed under Computer Graphics, Works in Progress

I’ve posted a previously unpublished “Making of” article I wrote for my winning entry (several years ago) in a 3D art contest at 3dLuvr.com – it’s not as in depth as I might like, but it does explain some of the experiments I was doing at that time: mainly, using displacement mapping to create interesting terrain.

You can find the article here.