To commemorate the new year, here is a collection of the first fractals ever made by various deviants.  


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To new beginnings!

Read it for a daily dose of fractal fun.

1. Go to the fractal gallery, find five fractals made by newbies, and write "lovely" on all five.  Remember what it was like to be brand new at fractals, when all fractals looks strange and gorgeous, and remember how exciting it was when someone commented on your work.  

2. Go to the fractal gallery, find a fractal that looks like it was made by a skilled fractal artist, and write one insightful critique on a piece of artwork.  Skilled fractal artists generally appreciate critiques much more than "lovely" and "fantastic," because it tells them what they are doing right and how to improve.  

3. Post a journal linking to your three favorite fractal journals or news articles.  Say in one sentence each why you liked that article and found it useful.

4. Post a journal linking to your three favorite tutorials.  Say in one sentence why you liked it or found it useful.

Stan, aka f--l--a--r--k inspires me because he is living my dream:  selling his fractal art.

Art and business are two wildly different skills.  There are dozens of amazing fractal artists on deviant art, but there are barely five that I know of that have made serious attempts to market and sell their fractals.  This is because business requires just as much discipline and focused effort as art, and very few artists have the time or desire required to learn the art of business.  

Stan is one of those artists.  Stan's website, www.stanragets.com, is the most fully professional fractal-selling gallery I have seen.  It is even better than mobilelectro's  website, www.coryench.com, because Cory, although he's a professional artist, does not actively sell his fractal art.  Stan is also very active in the aposhack.

Most fractal artists learned fractal art from other artists.   Five years ago, people used to hoard styles and techniques like gold.  Over the past five years, this has changed- a few people began sharing, and soon, they set the standard.  More and more artist began to share tips, skills, styles, and encouragement in places like the Aposhack.  Fractal art has matured greatly, and the fractal gallery has turned into a lively and vibrant community.  

The fractal art business community is exactly where the fractal art community was five years ago.  Very few people know the business side of fractals, and exactly one person has come to the Aposhack and shared his tips, techniques, and tricks.  That person is Stan.  When fractal art begins to support the artists who practice it- when people can make fractal art a profession- it will be due to the efforts of people like Stan.  

Thank you, Stan. You are an inspiration.

This weekend at the Dr. Who con I became a distributer for Dave Langkamp's detailed designs for a british police call box, as seen here:  [link]

One of my customers asked for an estimate on how much it would cost to build a Tardis.  Well, Paul, according to Dave, "I would suspect that you are looking at around $300 or more.  That's if you build it out of pine and not very expensive plywood. It could be more or less depending on what all you want to put into it.  This estimate would not include anything like lights, computers, or whatever else you want to do with it."

Hope that helps!

-Tara

N8tiveattitude1, [link], aka Light,  is special because she a leader.  Leading is an art- so let's talk about Light's finest and most artistic creation: the Aposhack. [link]

How does the aposhack work?  The aposhack is a community of fractal artists. Communities get together because it's members have something to offer eachother.  Let's see what the aposhack has to offer.  

What does the shack have to offer new artists?  A friendly atmosphere and help.  When a brand new artist enters the aposhack for the first time, they are immediately greeted- usually by Light.  They are usually looking for fractal information, so accross the top of the chat a bar of the best fractal resources are displayed, and light, or someone else if light isn't here, will link them to the right tutorials to get started.  Occasionally, the newbies stick around and become regular shackers.

What does the shack offer regular Shackers?  Three things: A friendly atmosphere, help, and fun.   First, a friendly atmosphere. The conversation is uniformly positive. It might be silly or completely off-topic, but it contributes to the Aposhack's tradition of being friendly.  Second, help.  When the shack is talking about  fractals, Aposhack has evolved several traditions for solving art problems.  If someone complains about being frustrated or uninspired, an artist will donate parameters to the other artist. Usually this inspires the artist and a new fractal will appear in their gallery.  Through this  tradition, many fractal artists have grown leaps and bounds faster than if they were left to struggle on their own.  If someone complains about  having a specific problem with a fractal, they will post parameters and the artists in the shack will do their best to help solve it.  Third,  there is fun, in the form of apopong.  Apopong begins spontaneously when someone is in the mood to create fractals.  They post parameters, and  other fractal artists in the room will take them and tweak them.  Apopong sessions usually only last about 20 minutes (that's about how long most people can hold their concentration on one thing) and it results in, once again, new art.  


There is another class of people that comes regularly to the shack:  wizards. The aposhack offers wizards two things: Access to other wizards, and a save environment.  First, access to other wizards. Wizards are generally people who come to fractals by way of math and computer science.  Wizards are the people who make the programs shackers use to create beautiful art.  By the time they make it to the shack, they've usually devoted years of study to learning fractal math and computer science.   When you have spent years studying a subject that only, maybe, a few hundred people on earth understand, very, very rarely will you run into someone else with an interest in fractal math, and when you do, it's generally love at first sight.  There are at least 5 wizards that hang out in the shack on a regular basis, and another 10 that occasionally drop in.  Talk usually turns absurdly technical as wizards discuss the chaos game, affine linear transformations, spline animation, or whatever mathematical formula strikes their fancy, and the result is usually new or improved software.     Second, a safe environment.  The aposhack offers a safe environment for wizards.  Due to how wizards are created, (usually by working alone on stuff  nobody else understands for long stretches of time) they are not the most sociable people.  Anyone who has hung around with computer scientists for  awhile learns to have a thick skin as they are told to stop wasting the wizard's time or to RTFM or gets insulted and kicked for asking a simple  (but uneducated) question.  That does not happen in the aposhack, and as a result the aposhack wizards spend more time wizarding and none of their time fighting.  

Shackers and wizards also have a lot to offer eachother.  Wizards who are testing new software get access to artists who give them instant feedback on their programs.  Artists get new and better programs to play with.  Wizards get practice trying to explain math to artists.  Artists get a glimpse of how the program works on the inside.  And everyone supports everyone else- with encouragement, critiques, and sometimes just with friendly conversation.  The aposhack has created for free the sort of interdiciplinary collaboration universities spend billions of dollars trying to foster.  In short, the aposhack offeres a lot to every single one of its members, and because of that, they offer their time, friendship, and expertise right back to the aposhack.  

Fractal art is the art of feedback loops.  The Aposhack is one big positive feedback loop,that with every iteration  creates exponentially more and better fractal artwork and fractal artists. It is the best example of fractal art on deviantart. And who is the artist who created it?  N8tiveattitude1.

How does she do it? I asked her, once.  "The chat has to be comfortable for me." She said.  "If there is tension and dArama then it's not comfortable."  

Light keeps the chat comfortable in two ways. First, she ruthlessly removes all negative influences- anyone from drive-by trolls to respected fractal artists who do not play well with others.  She does not tolerate swearing or insults, or even negative feedback, because negative feedback will cause a negative feedback loop that will cause dArama and make the chat uncomfortable.  She witnessed the destruction of several other fractal chats due to dArama, and she learned from what they did wrong- hence the rules.  Finally, she is fair: she enforces these rules upon everyone- even herself. She has been known to kick herself for accidentally swearing- and as a result, all other members follow her example.  Second, she promotes positive infulences.  She is friendly to everyone, from the newest newbie to the greatest of the fractal greats.  Every day she shows her enthusiasm for fractal artists and fractal art by sharing parameters, complimenting spectacular pieces, and all in all demonstrating through word and action what being a positive force in the world looks like.

Through simple rules, artists can make spectacular fractals.  Through simple actions, n8tiveattitude01 created a safe, positive, growing fractal community unmatched anywhere on deviantart and perhaps in the world.  I would say n8tiveattitude is the most important fractal artist today, because by her leadership and her example she created a fractal community poised to take the world by storm- she created artists that work together, that share and share alike, that communicate and collaborate and have the potential to take fractal art to higher heights ever before- and more importantly, make us all a little bit happier.    

And here's the most heartening thing: n8tiveattitude is not unique.  Anyone can learn to do what she does. In fact, she'll eagerly teach you. Learn  from her. Imitate her.  Do what she does.  Follow simple rules, and simple actions, and repeat them over and over, because they will allow you to create communities just as vibrant.  Come to the Aposhack and learn from a true fractal artist how to make your corner of the world a better place.

As most deviants know, a good critique is hard to find. For every thousand people that tell you, "Wow!", "Awesome", or "totally cool!" there is, maybe, one person willing to tell you why they think it is totally cool. Postitive feedback is nice, but after a certain point you realize that hearing that you're art is cool for the thousandth time  isn't really useful.  Nobody will tell you what specific bits they actually liked about your artwork. As a result, you tend to have to be your own critic, which makes it a lot harder to figure out how to improve, and also leaves you completely unprepared for the sorts of criticism you might get if you actually try to sell your art or design skills.

Getting people to tell you why they like your piece is hard: getting people to tell you what is wrong with your work is even harder. The vast majority of people are so well-trained in politeness and niceness that they will never criticize someone to their face.  Very few will tell you exactly why your art is terrible, and almost all who are willing to do so are unrepentant trolls who would rather piss you off than actually help improve your artwork.

Why is a good critique so rare? I have a theory. First, a critique takes effort. Someone can say "Awesome" in about two seconds, while it takes anywhere from five to fifteen minutes to write up a good critique. Second, people are very bad at recieving constructive criticism. When someone says "Your art sucks," you feel personally attacked and are not likely to listen to anything they have to say, regardless of its merit. If you yell at someone for critiquing you, they will never criticize your art again. Why? It's just not worth the effort to work hard on a critique and then have it thrown back in your face. Third, people are very bad at giving constructive criticism. When most people start out trying to critique works, they usually say something like, "This really sucks because (list of gripes here)."  The artist almost always reacts badly to hearing their art sucks, and the critic feels offended that their hard work was rejected.  Critiques, like art, generally get better with practice, but if a budding critic gets a bad response the first time they try to give a critique, they're likely to never critique anything ever again.(see [link] to these three factors, the likelyhood that you, as an artist, will hear anything but "Nice work" and "That's awesome" ranges from  miniscule to nil, and you have to  be your own critic.  

So...how do you go about getting good critiques? We in the Aposhack decided to run a critique event to see if we could answer this question.  

Critique rules:

I. People who want critiques should tell the moderator and get in line. They will choose three pieces to post. Have your three pieces ready to be thumbed when it's your turn. Each turn lasts 20 minutes.
II. Critiquers: First name the good features, then the bad features and then some good features again, like a good-bad-good sandwitch.
III. Post your critique in the comments.

The first two rules had a little bit of psychology behind them. First, instead of having deviants post one picture, we had them post three. Why? That comes back to some research done by MIT professor Scott Klemmer. He found that artists that brought one example to a critique session and had all of its flaws pointed out came away depressed and hating themselves and the artwork. Having only one piece of art made the art a stand-in for themselves, and having the art attacked felt like they were being attacked. People who came with three or more drawings did not mind if two or even three of the drawings were flawed- instead, they were able to focus on the good points and agree that the bad points needed to go. In other words, having more art meant that the artist's ego was not tied up in having one piece perfect, and they came away from the critique session energized and ready to have another go. For more on the topic, see [link]

The second rule comes from standard buisiness practice. [link] People are always more willing to hear what mistakes they've made after you've told them what they're doing right. They are also more willing to work on those mistakes if you finish by once again reiterating what they are doing right. Sandwiching the negative with the positive allows them to see the negative objectively, without feeling like only their worst features are ever noticed and singled out for attack.

What were the results of all this social engineering? First, nobody took offense to any of the critiques. Second, everyone got at least one critique, and most people got at least one critique per peice, which gave the artists far more specific feedback for their flames than they had gotten previously. Finally, there were a few cases where critiquers completely disagreed on what they liked and disliked about a fractal, going to show that different people have different tastes. Finally, we had a call to do this again at least once a month. That, ladies and gentlemen, is what you call a successful event.  

What were these critiques, you say? Look for them in the comments sections of the fractals below!

Session 1:
TaraRoys:  
pillemaster:
FarDareisMai:
Piethein21:
TrulyRem:
08Spectre80:
Argothar:
deadened-glow:
caffeine-addict:

Session 2

DothackersDaichi:  
lindelokse:  
DothackersDaichi
heavenriver
N8tiveattitude1
ChaosFissure

My collection of Apophysis Tutorials has been updated and moved to [link]
Those of you who've had trouble the past couple of years with badly-formed xml errors and general unreadability can rest assured that I ditched all of the malformed xml and validated my page.  If there are any more errors, please let me know!

Also, I would like to announce the creation of the Apophysis User Manual, which is basically the tutorials above in a slightly different format and rewritten to be more detailed than you probably want.  It doesn't have anything the old set of tutorials doesn't have, but I experimented with sticking them in Docbook XML and outputting it as a standard user manual, so you can pick whichever one floats your boat. It can be found here: [link]
Happy Fractaling!

-Tara Roys