Sta.sh
- - - The F Word - - -
Interview with ~kr0mat1k
Welcome to another edition of The F Word. On this edition, i have an interview with ~kr0mat1k. Please enjoy my interview with him.
can you please introduce yourself?
- My name is Geoffroy, I'm 41, from France, studied Arts at school, had many different jobs, and I'm actually a stage sound ingeneer.
What is the first thing that makes you attracted to Fractal Art?
- That's a big question !
Since I can remember, I've always been a science-fiction addict, comics, movies, litterature, TV series.....everything. I was fascinated by those psychedelic environments and colors. Then we got an Amstrad cpc464 (yes the one with the tape recorder
), and I found in a coding book some examples on how to create a computer generated image.It was basically geometric patterns and some kind of rose-window pictures.
I found some similarity between these images and what I liked in the sci-fi world.
This was terrible, I had to type pages of code to "render" a simple geometric shape.
But it was so addictive. I spent days trying to mix different parts of codes, that I didn't understand, to get different shapes. I guess it was my first incursion in the CGI world.
As I said, I studied Arts, but, in France, at the end of the 80's, computers were a fringe area.....yeah you know, we invented Minitel ! And you know how frenchies are, minitel was far more interesting than this internet thing.
So I mostly studied traditional Arts, a bit of photography and video.
When i got my first own computer, Windows 95 just arrived, 3DSMax was still called 3DS4 and was booting in DOS mode, it was the time of Photoshop 5 if I'm correct, and I found back my lovely tools enhanced by years of development !
There were some fractal generation and pattern repetition plugins for Photoshop (can't remember the name), that's how I made my very first fractals.
Later, most of those plugins have been compiled by Corel (I guess), to make a more complete plugin, which was very similar to the actual Fractal Explorer.
You can find 2 examples in my scrapbook, made with Photoshop7.
What kind of fractal that you like the most,and Why?
- I like when it has a mood, that means the artist has to control every aspect of his work, shapes, structure, complexity, colors, not just shaking randomly some parameters and put it online.
It also needs to be original, watching the same type of combos again and again is just boring sometimes.
I prefer quality over quantity, showing a nice enhanced image is a mark of respect for the viewer imo.
There are always exceptions, but there's only one *n8iveattitude over DA
Who is your biggest influence in creating fractal and art in general?
- Whoaaa another really big question
Ok let's start with Art in general.
I've always been influenced by music, music is a huge part of my life. But if we talk about painting i would say Rembrandt for the light, Picasso for the shapes, Bacon for the movement, and Tapiès for the texture. On another side, I'm fond of "Art Nouveau", especially Alfons Mucha and Antonio Gaudi, they've both been very influenced by Nature and have injected this organic mood into their Art, not so far from fractals in a way.
About fractal Art, my main influences come from DA, I've been very impressed by ~grinagog, =NinthTaboo, `ClaireJones, ~neonrauschen or *Zueuk works, they made me understand the power of Apophysis and what's possible with flames.
After some more researches, i found a lot of help with the works of `SaTaNiA, ~TyrantWave, ~guagapunyaimel and how i couldn't mention the famous girly crazy team : *n8iveattitude, *Fiery-Fire, *lindelokse, *penny5775, =LoonyL.
They've all been, in some way, an influence for me.
Actually my fav 2D artists are *FractalDesire, ~Mobilelectro, *cyberxaos or *pillemaster
In the Mandelbulb world, the very first artist to catch my attention has been *MANDELWERK, and I guess I'm not the only one in this case
In late december 2010, I decided to test Mandelbulb3D, and not long after that *HalTenny put online his now famous 2nd tutorial [link]
I definitly fell in love with this software.
So, about my MDB3D influences, i would randomly mention *MANDELWERK, *HalTenny, *bib993, ~FractKali, *mcimages, ~Len1 or *MarkJayBee
what does your art means to you?
- Lots of things ! I'm not a very talkative person, I've always expressed myself through Art. As I said before, I used to paint a lot, had a band for years, been a deejay, created 3D environments.....and now fractals. I just need it, I guess I wouldn't be ok without creating things. And I also need it as a brainfood, I need it as an actor but also as spectator.
Can you please tell us about your creative process?
- Well, it depends a lot of my feelings, my mood, it's like cycles, sometimes I'll produce maybe 5 or 6 fractals in a week, and the other week nothing. Mainly because I'm busy with my life, but i need to be in a creative mood. If I don't feel the need to say something, then it will not work.
Sometimes, I want new stuff, so I'll keep on searching for new combos, different looks, some other times I just want to enhance a previous work with fresh ideas. But I often choose to take a direction before starting to work on an image, I mean organic or architectural style.
I focus first on the shapes and surfaces, then improve the general view till I get something structured enough to be explored. After that, I try to find an original point of view and improve it again, maybe some slight changes to the formulas to get better details. When I get a nice balanced result, then comes the time of lights and colors, one really important part of the final image.
I spend a lot of time on this particular point, as you maybe have noticed.
how do you see the future of fractal art?
- I'd love to see fractals applied to a 3D animation movie for example !
Would be amazing to travel through a fractal environment with a little spaceship.
Combining 3D fractals to real 3D animations iz da future , i'd say
Jesse (creator of Mandelbulb3D), =LucaGN and more are doing a great job, they keep on writing new codes, searching for new tools.
I just hope they won't stop !
Right now, I'm just dreaming about some 3DSMax tools in the MDB3D animation maker, even if the possibilities are already infinite with the actual tools
Fractals used as a decoration can be quickly boring, we need to explore other dimensions
Do you enjoy creating any other type of art?
- I still like drawing, painting, sculpting, even if I don't do it as much as I would. I stopped playing guitar, mainly because I'm particularly good at hurting my left hand fingers with various objects.
I also have a time-eater hobby (can we call this Art ?) : astrophotography !
For the people who don't know about it, it consists in shooting our solar system objects (moon, sun and planets), and also deep sky objects like, nebulaes, star clusters and deeper, other galaxies !
It's like travelling through time
If there were a single person you would give credit to for getting you started on your current path of Fractal, who would it be?
- Hard to tell, I don't have a specific memory on what pushed me into this, all my visual background attracted me into the fractal world I guess.
If we just talk about the DeviantArt community, the one who pushed me into Apophysis should be =NinthTaboo and more particularly this flame
Anything else you'd like to say?
- Sure ! Thanks for the opportunity of this interview and thanks to the whole DA fractal community and the #Aposhack team.
Keep on fractaling the World
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