Category Archive for ‘Inspiration’

Recently, I came across this quote by T. E. Lawrence (also known as Lawrence of Arabia) which basically summed up the idea of a world-shaker for me:

All men dream: but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake in the day to find that it was vanity. But the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dream with open eyes to make it possible.

~ T. E. Lawrence

The dreamers of the day… what a fantastic concept. Everyone is creative in some capacity, but those who are dreamers of the day are the ones who see the outcome of their creativity, the ones who actively set and achieve their goals. These individuals have incredible potential for changing the world around them, and that’s why T. E. calls them dangerous.

Dreaming in the daytime is the act of actively deciding what you want, why you want it, how you will get it, and then following the steps to achieve it. And because every decision in life (whether you realize it or not) is a creative act anyway, this applies to every area of your life.

Because this quote so inspired me, I created a small poster of it, and added it to the Byteful Gallery’s InspirationEverywhere album.

Enjoy, and today, be a dreamer of the day.

Yesterday, a friend of mine gave me the push I needed. I had been tinkering with the sequel to the Sol Over Silk Ocean wallpaper for some time. A friend of mine mentioned that she liked some of the 3D wallpapers I had created with Bryce and asked me if I could create a new version of Sol Over Silk Ocean. That bit of encouragement spurred me into launching the somewhat-unstable Bryce 6 app and experimenting with some of its atmospheric settings. Showing off some of the capabilities of the program, I sent her stunning red sunsets, strange alien skies, and eventually settled on a more natural morning-violet color. I struggled with changing the water to blue until I realized that the violet color was simply a result of the sun’s low distance from the horizon. In the original wallpaper, the atmosphere was artificially slanted toward a yellow color, but this new wallpaper would be more natural and perhaps less intense.

Impulsive Creativity

Now looking at a decent sky, I created a small island in the silk ocean, and I made it out of transparent blue metal for no particular reason. I’ve always been a fan of Bryce’s transparent metals – though not to a geeky level – and in this situation the result was quite unique. But I wasn’t satisfied yet, of course. I spent much longer creating an refining the island contours. I couldn’t seem to get the southern contour quite right, but I rendered the entire 4 megapixel (2560×1600) image anyway and closed the project for the day.

Defining the Problem

Today, I asked myself this question:

Why procrastinate about this? How long do I really think it will take to fix this annoying contour problem?

I asked a question to define the problem for myself. By asking myself this question, I realized it probably wouldn’t take that long, so I delved in again. Fifteen minutes later, I finally reached a pleasing form. If you’ve been following the “What I’m Doing” status messages in the sidebar, you would have seen when I made those “minor changes.” The newly added “What I’m Doing” section is powered by the ever-popular Twitter.com – a useful service for providing short, up-to-the-minute text updates to people. If you’ve been following these Twitter updates, you also know how long I waited for the 3D rendering to complete: about 9 hours. Patience is indeed a virtue, especially in 3D graphics.

After some tweaking with the curve adjustment layer in Photoshop, I was pleased with the result. You see, with a little help from a friend, a decision to define the problem, and some patience, I can now present to you: Indigo Island.

Enjoy.