Art Works

I've been using POV-Ray on and off since 1999. As of this writing, that's a quarter century. Since 2011 I used it for some furry-adjacent art, but grew tired and took a long break before picking up OpenSCAD for some ships from The Dream.

• The dream-rider Spirit Walk
• the Venerator, an armed merchant in space
• the Iris, a steampunk submarine cruiser

POV-Ray is still vital for artistic renders of the same or visualising places like Bellawood Station.

Voxel art

More recently I started using a simple voxel editor called Goxel. It basically adds another dimension to pixel art, like this:

Or like this:

Vector art

But sometimes I just like to make small vector art pieces:

This icon was initially the centerpiece of a text adventure cover (published under my real name). But then I figured, hey. Might as well use it more.

Or how about my portrait on the homepage:

That was originally made (in Inkscape) for a game, or rather a tech demo, except in there Wizard Claude can only be seen from behind. So I was free to use this piece elsewhere. Speaking of which, here's an 88x31 button version:

Art tips

For OpenSCAD:

• OpenSCAD has an integer data type and preserves type in arithmetic, so for example 34 / 7 won't do what one might expect!
• If you're looking for a cone primitive, there isn't any. Simply use a cylinder and give different radii for each end.

For POV-Ray:

• 0 can stand in for <0, 0, 0> (same for any other number and vector)
• the unit vectors x / y / x can be used to place objects; think a cylinder or cone that follows an axis
• version 3.7 has a for statement now!

Generally:

• The Golden Ratio is your friend.
• Easiest way to use it is to pick numbers from the Fibonaccy sequence (not necessarily successive).
• Tweak those numbers as needed; the ratio doesn't have to be that exact.

More generally:

• Block out the main areas of an image, then work in the details.
• Limited palettes help rather than hinder, modulo technical restrictions.
• In traditional art, mixed media also work great.

But also:

• Learn to decompose a scene into basic geometric shapes you can deal with more easily.
• Linear perspective isn't the best or only one. There are other good ways to look at things. Literally.

— Claude