www.fractalland.com - a new era

Somehow inspired by things like what has been said in this post (and many others) at the Orbit Traps Blog ("Make the art that pleases you rather than the art you think other “good” artists want to see."), I decided it's time for a facelift here and to go back to the fractals. For a while, the galleries will stay as they are now but they will change soon.

I've decided to send the images I didn't like to the fractal heaven, and some images are now gone. I've kept those that really interest me, who cares if it's a simple spiral, or a 256-colour image made in Fractint? I am the first person that must like my work. I don't work for the masses, I don't work expecting public admiration (although I must say it's quite nice when you're invited for an exhibition at the Lincoln Center as I was...), I don't make fractals based on how many comments they will get at some community site. I just do this to please me.

A little background on all this: I've started making fractals probably sometime around the mid-90's, when I found Fractint in the middle of one of these CD-ROMs that came as a bonus with some computer magazine. It was love at first sight. Of course it was far from being anything remotely interesting at first, but then I became an addict. It was fun, relaxing and quite nice to make all these weird images. This was sometime slightly before the Internet boom, I think. I was still saving some images, and had quite a bunch of them.

Sometime around 1996/97, me and some other fans of the band The Cure used to gather in a pre-historical video chat service thing, using Cu-see-me, while the band was recording their new single. Sometimes some members of the band used to appear in the live chat and talk to us for a while, and sometimes even Robert Smith himself showed up, although he didn't chat. At that time, the official Cure site had sort of a fractal theme - lots of mandelbrot sets in the background, and even one of the new songs had some sort of a fractal theme, it was called "strange attraction" (perhaps the Internet Archive might have a sample of the site from these days). Anyway, one night finally Robert Smith stopped after the recording sessions and talked to us. But what to say or ask other than these typical fan questions? My first thought... the fractals. Not many people there had any clue about what these odd background images were, and I thought this could be some interesting move and a different subject other than the boring fantalk to break the ice... then I said "Robert, are you interested in fractals? I have a website with some images I've done"... to what he replied... "What's the URL, Baco (my nickname...)?"... well... the problem is... I didn't have a page set up yet! No need to say that I had to pretend I was reorganizing things and gave him some URL of my old Geocities personal page, saying that the fractal page would be back in a couple of days... I built a page ASAP, put my images in there, and this is how it all started, I guess. Yes, he visited the page later. The ice was broken, and we managed to talk about other stuff as well, but my fractal web history started with something... that didn't exist.

After that I started to update my fractal pages not really often or thinking to keep a "fractal gallery" always active but according to whatever good work I thought I was making. At some point, I found UltraFractal, and even though I didn't like it much at first (I was a Fractint addict!) I started using it and started to produce things like mad with the new possibilities. Soon... the first invitation to an exhibition happened. I started to look at things more "professionally" so to speak. And this is what made me stop, after some time.

As time went by, I started making fractals like crazy, zillions every day. And I started to look at my images with a different approach than when I started making them. It was no longer fun - I guess I was trapped in the Guild (or by the Guild?). I started to get more and more frustrated with what I was doing, thinking everything was boring and ugly (and it was!) and that I would never be able to make such good art as these people from Renderosity (that was the hit of the moment). Despite having 1200 images posted here, I was not interested even in looking at them again. Then... suddenly I stopped making fractals. For a couple of years (!). I think I've even probably skipped a few UltraFractal version updates. I opened Apophysis or UF here and there once every 2 months maybe, played a little but didn't save anything. I was really bored. Only after realizing that I was unhappy because I was trying to do something with my "art" and my pasttime something that it wasn't, trying to make it sort of a job instead of the funny pasttime, was that I noticed I could (re)start from scratch, even if keeping my old stuff and not making as much new images as before. This is what made me give fractalland.com a new go. Let's see how it goes.

www.fractalland.com - the images

Welcome to www.fractalland.com's image gallery. Here you will find links to all my image galleries, along with a few other links and resources related to fractals, although you will find more links and resources in the main page, this page is most dedicated to the links to the galleries. Enjoy your stay and have some fun!

how it works?

Use the menus at the left to navigate through the sections of fractalland.com. Clicking each of the galleries links opens the specific gallery initial page in a new window.

Each gallery page has 15 images. except the last page of each gallery which can contain less images. This can change as I'm still making changes on the page layout so it can vary but the galleries won't have more than 15 images, so they can load faster (I hope). When clicking the thumbnails, the bigger images will open in a new window (most of them, at least).

The pages are best seen in 1024 x 768, but you shouldn't have problems if using 800 x 600. Most of the images have a maximum size of 800 x 600, but a few are slightly bigger. As just about 15% of my visitors are now using 800 x 600 screen resolutions, I will be adding bigger images from time to time. It also looks slightly better in Mozilla than IE.

There is a version of this page in Portuguese, the link is at the bottom of the page (Há uma versão desta página em Português, o link está ao final desta página).

All the gallery updates and announcements relative to the site are posted in my Fractal Blog. Usually the newest images are posted in the last pages of each category. If you want to know which pages are the latest, go to the bottom of this page and see how many pages there are on each category, this can give you an idea about where the newest images are.

about the images and the links

Most of my images were done with UltraFractal. The images in the Fractint gallery were done with Fractint exclusively, but some of these images were imported into UltraFractal to make some small fixes (mostly regarding colour smoothness), and these "enhanced" images are posted in the UltraFractal galleries. As I've said, most of the images have a maximum size of 800 x 600, some are slightly bigger.

All the images have a watermark, which can (and will!) be removed if necessary, if you've asked me to use the image (except for wallpapers or screen savers which must retain the watermark). More information about image usage policies in the proper link in the main page.

I have a hotlink protection working, so if you try to link to any of the images in this site, you'll get a warning image instead. Don't use this method to post images to any other site, Usenet group, message board, weblogs or similars. It won't work. You still can right-click and save the images and sort of do what you want with them, but this is something which I don't have any control. Just remember that all these images are copyrighted material.

If you want to use any of my images anywhere else or in a commercial project, please ask for permission. I'm not selfish about my images (I have given an authorization to many people who have asked me first before using the images), but all these images are copyrighted material and a permission is a must before using them on any commercial project. If necessary, I can make new versions of almost any image without the watermarks and in almost any resolution (Apophysis images might have some limitations).

If you have any questions, feel free to e-mail me at fractalland@Ggmail.com (remove the first G before "gmail" to get the actual address). This is not a clickable link, copy the address to your e-mail client. I'm sorry, but this is to prevent spamming.

how many images do I have?

Although this should be addressed in the F.A.Q. page, I'll be posting a somewhat accurate counting here from time to time. I quit announcing the total number of images daily in the blog when the number of images reached 1000 images, but a more or less accurate total updated maybe monthly will be posted here. So far, there are:

  • 13 pages in the Black and White gallery, with a total of 225 images;
  • 9 pages in the Blue gallery, with a total of 148 images;
  • 8 pages in the Green gallery, with a total of 131 images;
  • 7 pages in the Metal gallery, with a total of 110 images;
  • 22 pages in the Rainbow gallery, with a total of 391 images;
  • 12 pages in the Red gallery, with a total of 208 images;
  • 8 pages in the Yellow gallery, with a total of 137 images;

The approximate total of images in the UltraFractal galleries is 1350 images (last counting done in 06-19-2004). This total does not include the Fractint images, which are about 500 images.

Whenever I reach 1500 images, I'll do some "cleaning" in the galleries. I'll let just the images that I like the most (or that I found to be the most popular) available for viewing in the galleries, but I'll probably create a "repository" for these older images.


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