^ yes im really liking the sounds of that. Now maybe im takin it too far here, I know that less is usually more, but maybe a very subtle "breathing" of the entire image or a majority of it (maybe just the vines or something?). Make it look like its a living, breathing thing, charged with energy and on the verge of exploding with growth and new life. Im talking very subtle here, so you barely even notice that its happening, you just feel yourself being drawn in toward this thing, mesmerized by its beauty.
lol, maybe not, i dont know anything about how difficult that would be or anything just an idea.

That's a great idea , but yeah it would be a bit hard to accomplish without making the whole thing in Flash or something, and that creates alot of compability issues so I think we should stick to good old html/javascript. But little gif animations throughout will be no problem, so little star twinkles, eye/frog winks, leaf shakes and flower bloomings are all in the plan. I already started on the modeling and I think it's gonna look really cool with all your awesome screens..

A lot of animation = longer load times and compatibility issues (flash means no iPhones, for instance). But twinkling stars, rustling leaves, winking frog... These entail small, quickly loadable graphic overlays.

Cyb- love them both, but I think the first one has a very deep, tranquil, ancient meditative quality to it, while the newer one is flashier and more modern. For the purpose of FAQ, the first one may be better- but I'd be psyched to see either one in the finished piece.

It may be worth waiting till the rough overall template is done and then auditioning them both. Seeing how they fit may be the thing that decides it. One is a balanced, central composition while the other is strongly diagonal- so they will read very differently once dropped into place. The choice may become obvious at that time.

Thanks for the input Guy.....someone went to Art school..

I may lose the pedestal and just go for the book as the full thing may end up looking to small..

Keep on Truckin'...

until today, i had not idea that FAQ and Links were inside the current dmt nexus homepage lol

i just happened to scroll over them

Yeah, I think the separate windows in the new design will clarify what's going on and invite more exploration of the site.

Just had a thought... You know how the existing pages (with some exceptions, most notably the forums), that the old Nexus banner is still hanging out at the tops of these pages? Those old banners could be replaced with large versions of the appropriate window graphics from the new homepage. Not only would this be a nice upgrade for these pages, but could provide an opportunity to showcase these amazing graphics at a larger size.

Cyb: I agree about the pedestal- but maybe rather than losing it entirely, just include the top third of it, and then make the book and ? bigger. I think the sense of the book being elevated adds to the narrative of the piece.

No formal schooling, just a lot of personal seeking and reading. It can sometimes be helpful to know the academic lingo- often it serves as a well- tested and universal shorthand for complex ideas.

little update from me - getting towards finishing the base colours, will start on hilights next week

lookin pretty awesome i like how those colors pop!

Coming along awesome stalepixel! The tetris vines are my fav

Some brilliant ideas forming here, I'm really liking everyone's ideas! OK so I've been working on a few paintings recently and I've just done two very (and I mean very) quick sketches, just to show the overall form of my intention. The first two are the sketches and the other images are the paintings I'm working on. I intend to paint this image in a similar way, so expect it to be like an amalgam of these images. More and more I find the way I paint and the way I draw look nothing like each other, and really don't give a good enough idea of my finished piece since I work in reverse of how I draw. Hopefully you get the idea.

I got FORUM, so this is me demonstrating the connection of human mind energy and information across space.

EDIT: I intend to add color of course!

absolutely beautiful stuff Orion you have a real talent with paint and a very original style

heres my last update before i finish mine next week

Excellent sense of form as always Orion. Those first two sketches are actually pretty close to what I envisioned you coming up with for this. Can't wait to see it come together.

I have some sketches and a work in progress that I'll be uploading soon. I'm not 100% satisfied with either, but I'm going to tweak them some more and then post them for feedback. I usually end up starting a few pieces before I find one worth sticking to.

Orion- gorgeous, I love the looping sense of energy. The skull is incredible. I think your sketches showing two faces are probably the best narrative for the Forum window... Very curious to see how you bring it all together.

To my eyes, your drawings and paintings seem to be coming from the same place, but inside your head, perhaps the difference feels much greater...?

Thanks very much Guyomech, I see where you're coming from but the best way I can describe it is the way I draw is a subtractive process whilst the way I paint is mostly additive. There's a little interplay of the two, but for me when i paint its more like i am building something from clay in 2d, and I find it difficult to draw that using blocks of shade, since I much prefer to work from absolute dark up to light, the opposite of what I was taught.

You ever wot with black paper, or scratchboatds? Here's a link to a scratch art gallery- the high quality boards are really amazing to work with (available through www.ampersandart.com)

http://images.hyperspace.../guy/gallery/Scratch-Art

Well, I got this far before going to bed last night. I worked on it for about 5 minutes this evening and it crashed the program, and now is crashing every time I try to open it. Clearly, I corrupted the file somehow, so for the moment, I believe I'm screwed. I did back up my system a couple of days ago, however, so I may be able to retrieve the file from before it got corrupted and then just recreate the last couple days' work. That's probably about 8 grueling hours of work lost, but that's the way the cookie crumbles. I'm just glad I decided to back up.

The file is enormous for my paltry laptop. I can't even merge the subtools to transpose his limbs as it crashes the program each time I try, so aside from manipulating his fingers and adding in a few props, he may need to remain standing and in a static pose.

I just upgraded to 4 gigs of RAM too. I guess maybe a 64-bit machine with a graphics card would help? It's frustrating for sure. Even when it isn't crashing, once I reach a certain poly count, everything slows down to a crawl.

Man, that's about as frustrating as it gets. Nothing more entertaining than redoing stuff you've already done!

But to be fair: every time I've ever had to totally re-do something, it went quicker and came out better the second time.

A couple thoughts: if you don't plan on seating him, maybe the file could be lopped off at the waist. That part won't fit in the window's aspect ratio anyway- might save you a couple million polygons.

Also, the final piece will be kind of small... This may sound like an unsatisfying answer, but simplifying it down in detail by an order of magnitude probably won't be noticed in the finished homepage but would make a world of difference in terms of your machine being able to handle it.

Otherwise: super cool, can't wait to see him painted!

Yeah... It's hard to look on the bright side here. I retrieved my external hard drive and what do you know? The backup didn't pick up any ZBrush files. I do have some of the original subtools saved, but will have to recreate quite a few. And the ones I'm recreating are the ones I liked best, so it really just blows all around.

And simplifying isn't any kind of answer. I was planning on using it as the central figure in a larger piece as well. That will teach me not to make safe copies all along the way...

That Sux Art...sounds like you have enough Ram...(although 32bit can only use just over 3gb)..maybe the CPU or GPU overloading...try quitting all other unnecessary running tasks/services (anti virus etc if your not online)
and dedicating as much Ram to ZBrush as poss...maybe increase your virtual ram size

Alternatively...you have the main structure now....you could move it over to PShop (less memory intensive) and chop it up and colour in there ...clone tool is your friend..

good luck...plenty of time to go

really sorry to hear that art i know how frustrating it can be.

I remember painting this piece for a good 2 or 3 weeks before buying a new colour of paint, using it and finding its consitancy was completely off leaving me with this huge streaky patchy mess. took me a good few days to de-stress

hope the second run goes smoothy for you.