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Aesthetic by *nukeation on deviantART

I've finally found a nice corner on the Internet for my artwork (3D, 2D, traditional) and photography (my flickr is still active though). I'll be posting a lot of art and photo related stuff, as well as keeping an art blog of sorts. Prints of my works are available on deviantArt as well.

A few months back, Andy convinced me that I should get a Canon EOS camera if I wanted to take my photography to the next level. I almost got the Rebel XT, but then bought the Rebel XTi after remembering some advice from Deepak Gulati.

I got a 70-200mm f/4L USM (telephoto) and will be going for a 100mm f2.8 Macro soon. I also got the standard kit lens (18-55mm F3.5 - F5.6) which I occassionally use for landscapes, but I am definetely in love with the 70-200mm.

Coming from a non-SLR Fujifilm S7000 - which I used for 3 years - this is a BIG BIG improvement for me. I've taken 1000+ photos in the past month.

I've been hanging around the lake (Hamirsar) at the center of my town (Bhuj) where a whole ecosystem of insects, birds and reptiles exists.

I had this amazing encounter with this snake who was stealing a fish a stork had kept in his nest.

I eagerly await the rains when there actually are clouds (these summer sunrises are too clean).

The 200mm is perfect for animal shots. Especially animals that will scratch, bite, or sting you. I've had more than enough of those!

I'm really loving how close I can get to the lizards with this lens!

My encounter with "Bruce" - a baby bat - was unique and wonderful thing! You can see all photos of Bruce here.

Portraits with the 70-200mm is fantastic!!

You can all of my photos on my flickr page: http://www.flickr.com/photos/nukeation

In May/June I will be going to Costa Rica where I will hopefully climb the volcano Arenal and go in a river infested with big crocs! Not to mention run after all those snakes and other reptiles!! I can't wait to see what kind of photo opportunities I'll get there.

I finally decided to go with flickr as my photographic gallery. I ended up loading hundreds of pictures today. My favorite is the "My Water" collection.

A couple of months ago, I was in Mumbai for IndiMIX and we were enduring a long taxi ride to the Microsoft office. I had my camera with me as usual and was snapping random pictures everywhere. At a stop light, I saw this very young kid standing next to a bus stop. He was barefoot and looked very poor and possibly homeless (which in Mumbai has a very vague meaning!). He was carrying around a discarded half litre soda bottle full of water.

I started taking photos of him purely on instinct (and because of his charming smile). He was so curious about something hanging from a small chain on one of the poles of the bus stop. He kept playing with his water, washing his head, and splashing water everywhere. He was very quite, didn't seem to be speaking at all. He would walk around and then come back to the thing on the chain and he was SO curious.

It was heartbreaking! And then he moved away from the pole and went to a shop with shoes lined up in the window. I just wanted to get out of the car and get him a pair of shoes. But to my shock he wasn't interested in the shoes. He just wanted to pour some water on the window sill and play some more.

At that moment I decided to get out of the car and just hand him some money. He was unsupervised so I hoped he could spend it on something he LIKED and not needed. But before I could do anything the traffic started moving and there wasn't anything I could do.

I went back through the same route the next day but I couldn't find the kid.

You can see the "My Water" set at: http://www.flickr.com/photos/nukeation/sets/72157594424347659/ 

and my other collections at: http://www.flickr.com/photos/nukeation/

 

From left to right:

Ravi Venkatesan, Chairman of Microsoft India; Tarun Gulati, MD of Microsoft India; Steve Ballmer, CEO of Microsoft Corp.; Dax Pandhi (Me), CEO of Nukeation Studios.

This week has been amazing! I don't do much public speaking but the guys at Microsoft got me to be a speaker at IndiMIX'06. The central focus of the event was Expression and Live. Designer and developer. Cricket and Bollywood.

The event (my first big event) was fantastic. It started with a keynote from Steve Ballmer. Following that the application MatchCast, a high-end cricket statistic and analysis application, was showcased by Anil Kumble. Nukeation was the UX consultant on the application.

There was more stuff after that (from 1100 to 1300) but I missed it for two reasons. First, as the winner of Microsoft Blogstar, I had to go backstage and meet Steve himself!

>> This blog has been interrupted to announce that you are reading the blog of a Blogstar. We now return to the regularly scheduled post. <<

I got my photo taken with him, but they haven't sent it to me yet. :/ And secondly, after Steve left, my team had to prepare for our session.

The Designer Session Team

This was my first real, big speaking event and I was nervous as hell at first. The main reason I was able to give a good presentation was because of three incredibly cool people - Leon Brown, Pandurang Nayak, and Deepak Gulati. Our session was 75 minutes and covered the three Expression products. We also launched www.1expression.net (more on that later) and the WebRockstars contest at http://www.webrockstars.in/

I couldn't have asked for a better team! These guys are amazing. Thanks so much, guys! We spent two days in a conference room in Microsoft Mumbai preparing for our stuff. It was a first-of-it's-kind experience for me. Of course, the traditional "pizza while debugging" was a familiar entity.

Our session went excellently. It opened up with Leon (who was our session host) and cricket player Murali Kartik (a name Leon still probably can't pronounce - man, he got a lot of torture from me about that - and lots of other stuff!), followed by a walkthrough of Expression Web by Pandurang.

Pandu explains the session to Murali Kartik

I followed that with a brief intro of Expression Graphic Designer and Expression Interactive Designer. After that Deepak and I did a Developer-Designer workflow integration demo. He made a strict "developer looking" application (aka, functional but crappy looking) in Visual Studio 2005 with "Orcas" tools. I opened the solution in ExprID and enhanced it with styles and animations. We got a really great response from the audience. Deepak and I immediately developed this chemistry which allowed us to create a funny little style of working together on-stage. And I think the people really loved it.

We ended our session with three important things: an announcement that great things will be revealed about Expression in the first week of December; the launch of www.1expression.net; and a Q&A session. My fun moment there was representing my fellow designers worldwide - the most audible form of that was during the closing when someone asked "What are the debugging capabilities of Expression Interactive?". Deepak, Leon, and Pandu gave good, real answers. I, of course, said "Designers don't debug". :)

Mandira Bedi, TV personality and the host of the live webcast

I again missed the next session (Developer) as I was asked to be interviewed on the live webcast (75k viewers - made my knees shake!) by Mandira Bedi. I was able to catch Bob Muglia's closing remarks and Q&A. After the event, Leon and I also did a short interview for CNBC.

Bob Muglia answers a question. The four guys in the background are Deepak Gulati, Janakiram MSV, Kevin D'Souza, and Rohit Kapoor.

Praveen Srivatsa, Microsoft Regional Director for Bangalore, takes software construction seriously

 

Over the past 5 days, I got to meet some really great people - Microsfties, MVPs, RDs, simple civilianss, business execs, Cricket stars, movie stars, and who can forget Steve Ballmer! I also got to learn so many cool things that I can't tell without violating a dozen NDAs. That's the price you pay for being close to Microsoft.

All I can say is: hang on - the ride has just begun!

PS. Leon, yes, still MEKNB.

I've tried often to keep a personal website. First there was this unmentionable, horrible website (my first actually! back in the day you made a web page - not a web site), then long years later, there was AFTER-IMAGES (art), then PIXELATED FOCUS (photography), then recently DIGITAL EXILE (art + photography).

In this long tradition the newest generation shall soon be unveiled - PERPLEX. The site will no longer be nomadic but be anchored to http://dax.nukeation.com where it shall stay until the end of time.

Perplex? That's a weird name.

Oh, not really. If you personally know me, you may know that I live by the motto: "the purpose of my life is to confuse as many people as possible". And I always do. I'm often confused myself.

This name was also chosen to reflect the look on the viewer's face when seeing my work or words.

Subscribe to the new RSS feed (a category of this very blog) for updates to my photography and art collections. The site will be online soon enough.

A few weeks ago, I had the opportunity to cover new territory near Solitude. The whole place is amazing! As I've mentioned a hundred times, we actually have GRASS this year! And a desert animal like me goes wild when he sees all this green!

Now the trek from Solitude to the new place I've dubbed Solace, is not quite that long. But it is a bit deeper into the hills, and these parts are known to have wolves and even a panther or two. I've seen both of 'em first hand (in another place) so I know the danger. Joining me for this little adventure was Nukeation's newest addition, Parvez Ansari. We were both armed. No, no. No firearms. Just your standard issue melee weapon (see Parvez try to attack me with it in a later photo).

Just look at this photo from the point where we started. Wouldn't that make you just want to go ahead and explore?!

We started at around 5pm. Just 20 minutes of walking later, I saw this cool roundish hill that I just HAD to climb. The surface was covered with small loose stones, hidden by the new grass. Parvez decided to stay back (afraid of heights, I believe) as I ventured forth. To boldly go where some men have gone before. That's my motto. So I climb easily halfway up the hill when I suddenly realized that the rest of the slope was practically unclimbable. The loose stones were dangerous. So then I decide to turn back only to notice that the climb down from the hill would be just as bad, if not worse. Too bad I had the camera, otherwise Parvez might've gotten some cool shots of me panicking.

Now as I'm trying to decide whether to go up, down, or sideways, I suddenly look down and find myself standing not more than 3 centimeters away from a SNAKEHOLE! It's actually a mouse hole. But you can often find snakes living inside them after having the previous resident for dinner. I threw my backpack to Parvez, and slowly began to climb back down. It's a wonder that I did not fall. I did manage to get this beautiful shot of Solitude as seen from this hill. It's a good thing I wasn't able to climb up the hill. The top, as we saw from the other side later, was filled with dry bushes that would definetely hold one or more snakes or other small creatures that might be harmful.

We decided to go around the hill and the nearby lake. Just take a look at all the grass covering the land!!! Woohoo!

We kept following the small creek (see the first photo above) as it had made a clean path through the rocks. I was a bit disappointed that there were no snakes around. But here's a resident of these parts. Isn't he a beauty?! (that one's for you Steve-o!) It's a dragonfly! I've seen this particular dragonfly and his mate (or her mate?) before, I think. The photos I took have the same wing and body patterns. I wonder how long they live.

As soon as we followed the creek path to its end, I saw this AMAZING rocky structure. I couldn't not climb it!! It was beautiful! See for yourself:

The rock was roughly 25 to 30 feet in height. Not making the same mistake again, I gave my camera to Parvez and climb this sucker. This one had loose stones on it as well (the whole damn place was covered in them, it seems), but this was pure rock not gravel, and I'm much more comfortable climbing those. Took me only a couple of minutes to climb it, and the view from atop was AMAZING! Too bad Parvez had the camera. Too bad we took only one camera!!! I have to go back there soon!

This rock, dubbed The Holy Mound of Solace (hey, I had climbed it, if that ain't holy, nothing is!) may seem easy to climb but I tell you there were sharp rocks jutting from bigger rocks, and the climb wasn't as easy as it seems. I nearly broke my leg. What I noticed AFTER I was on top was that this was a quake damaged rock. Half of it had fallen (behind the face you see here). And the whole thing was somewhat unstable. Look at this photo I took of the underside of the rock I was standing on.

A few inches of rock supporting the whole top of one side. Scary. Especially if you have been standing on it. That put a scary end to my rock surfing career you see here.

It was getting dark and we had a lot of ground to cover to get back to the car. But I definetely intend to visit this place again real soon. I plan to spend a whole day scouting out the area as well following the now almost empty river bed of a cool river where you can find crystals inside just about every rock! Check this out!

I'm not rock expert but this seems to be somewhere between a flintstone and a rubble ... I mean flintstone and granite. But its only semi-precious and has no real value.

Here are some other shots from the trip including a vulture that hovered over us a couple of times, Parvez getting tired of my antics (I knew I should've kept the short sword!), a cool spider I found under a rock in the river, the Eye of God we saw as we were leaving, and a strange manmade (?) rock formation we found near the lake.

This was one of my more fun adventures and I definetely intend to revisit this place. Like I said I'm gonna go spend a whole day in the hills and scout out all the paths.

Just missed him. What? No ... that's the title of his blog!

I should've blogged this days ago, but an accident (broken leg) had kept me away from the computer for some time.

Anyways, I would like to take credit (until I am served a notice) for pushing Andy to start his own blog, which was also *ahem* designed by yours truly. I seriously advise you to subscribe to his blog. Andy is kind of a guru to me (I don't call him Andy-Wan for nothing) and he will (supposedly) be posting pearls of wisdom on his blog soon.

http://blog.andyeick.com

And don't forget to check out the new gallery of cool photos (the GALLERY tab on top of the blog)!

Here’s something I always wanted to write about – one of my favorites places in the world! I have always been a nature nut (or as some say, a nut by nature) and I relish any chance to hop on over to Solitude. Now, yesterday at dawn, June 26th, I was kinda stressed out, NukeBall had to be delayed (for the last time) to July 24th, and needed a break. I had been working all night (all through the rain and ten gazillion power failures) and suddenly I noticed it was freakin’ red outside. It was dawn and I hadn’t noticed.

For a very arid desert-like area, you don’t get too much visibility as there’s always sand blowing about. But the rain had cleared the air, and the red and blue sky was amazing! Like I mentioned, I love going to Solitude. It’s a small mountain range about 6 miles from where I live (See map below). Officially, the place has no name. It’s triangular sedimentary rock formation, probably 3 times higher than the town (from sea level), and is a very quiet place, though I’m afraid “civilization” will overrun it in a few years. Sigh. I have been going there practically all my life. I named it Solitude (though it has been called other things as well). Would’ve planted a flag there, but the rocks are too solid.

Anyway, so I’m fighting those little bugs that come out after a good rain and at 70kmph on a 150cc bike on wet roads, you hate them! Soon enough I would find out how deadly these little critters are!!

Here is a shot taken at about 5:30am, and the second at 6:10am:

I rarely go to Solitude in the mornings. Mostly coz I sleep in the mornings. Nature nut that I am, I started chasing after all these birds and small animals I never get to see at any other time. The first was this cute little brown owl. Unfortunately, it was too skittish and the only shots I got were out of focus. For the few hours I was there afterwards, it kept teasing me by calling me out from the cliff floor, and even did a couple of flybys.

While I was trying to find the perfect cam setting in the rapidly changing light, I heard a weird noise behind me. I turned around to find a pair of Mongooses (or is it Mongeese?). Apparently, it was a mating pair and I had intruded. The male was big (easily 2 feet+) and was baring his teeth and growling. I remember doing something similar when someone last interrupted me, so I quickly got away. No pictures of them, unfortunately, but I did get a quick shot of their den.

As I was trying to leave the mongoose territory, a damned bug flew right in my face, and I almost swallowed it. And in that moment I panicked for second, sadly, and stepped onto an unstable ledge right on the edge of the cliff. The ledge broke, and this nature nut almost cracked! I fell about 4 feet, right on the knees, and missed falling off the cliff by hardly 6 or 8 inches. (Note to self: lose some weight). Parts of me are still aching. Nasty fall.

Of course, the day could only get better from there. The photo you see below is of the nesting grounds (or rather small caves) of various birds, including a few small brown owls, a few dozen parrots, and a few exotic looking birds I don’t know the English (or Scientific) names of. This is a very dangerous place. The rock is very brittle, just like the ledge I stepped on. If you fall from this place, you fall on some seriously sharp rocks and cactuses! Of course, there is a still bigger danger. Look at the huge (4”-12” wide) crack in the hill. It goes on for a few hundred meters. It was caused in the 2001 quake, and keeps getting bigger with every subsequent aftershock and now new quakes (4.7 on the Richter scale, 4 days ago). While the thing is solid and stable, you never know when it will suddenly fall off. The sharp rocks I mentioned are the remnants of the adjoining huge ledge that fell in the big quake.

The photo below is of a strange moth-like insect that often likes to hang around on these black rocks. These weird creatures make for great art study.

There is something strange about me (yes, yes, ONE of the things that’s strange about me) – I never really liked mammals. Give me cold blooded animals anytime! I love reptiles and amphibians. I had three pet tortoises growing up (they all live in the wilderness now). One of them was even named Raphael! So, as I moved closer to the avian nesting grounds, I saw this big (8”+) chameleon. Now, these are a different species (or rather sub-species) of the normal chameleon found in rainforests, tropics, etc. These chameleons are more adaptive to the dry area. Usually, these lizards are very shy and run off when you approach them. But this one was amazing. I was able to get within a couple of feet of it and it didn’t move. Heck, it even posed for the camera! Check out the perfect profile shot below. I sat next to it for almost 15 minutes and took many photos. After that it got tired and moved down the cliff wall. It was a great experience! I was "One with the Reptile".

It started getting cloudy after that, and I had to split before the rain started again (digital camera, y’know).

This place is a sanctuary for me. I came here first in 1989, and have been coming here almost 4 times a week since then. It can get dangerous at times. I’ve encountered several spitting cobras (one was a giant 12 foot, red toned cobra!!) that can spray their venom 10 feet away. And they're severely venemous. Wild dogs and wolves are often a problem if you go deep into the hills. But the most fearsome thing I’ve seen here was a panther cub back in 1997 or 98. It was probably adolescent. I was alone. My old SLR had just run out of film. Thankfully it was young enough to be scared of me as much as I was scared of it. I quickly got out of there, and have not ventured that far again. I was later told that a whole pack had moved into the mountain range and were even picking off cattle from a nearby village. Thankfully, haven’t seen them since.

It’s a great place. If you’re in the Bhuj area, just head up on Mundra Road, for about 9 kilometers. Just give me a holler and I’d be glad to show you around.

I know at least one guy who is itching to roam this place again! Right, Parvez?

Now this is a welcome sight! It rained here yesterday! To most people out there this is not a big deal, but when you live in a place where it rains about every 3 (or more) years, it's very important. When it rained a LOT in 2003 and the whole region was green, that was the first time I saw so much grass here in my whole life!

Anyways, this year seems promising. Another cool thing about the rain is that brings out all these insectoids that you usually don't see. For example, I spent 20 minutes chasing this fast little bug. As a student of both nature as well as art, it pays to study these little strange creatures. Just take a look at the beautiful carapace. It is METALLIC! Of course, when I got too close, it opened up from the behind and sprung two wings, came right in my face, sprayed me with what I believe to be insect pee or something, and flew away. But not before I got some cool shots of it!

In a week or two, I'm planning on going one-on-one with some big Crocs at a sanctuary not far from where I live. Now that will be something to remember. Need to get more memory for my cam.

This is a small lizard which has taken to hanging around my window at nights. As the only (big) source of light at night in my neighbourhood, the bugs stalking my window feed Grog (that's what I've named him). Dogs may creep me out, but I like reptiles for some reason.

Now this is quite ironic. A mosquito, found up the hole of an electric mosquito repellent device. The device manufacturer is safe tho, since this guy died there.

Yes, as you can guess one becomes weird when working late nights.

For someone who has been certified an incurable obsessive compulsive site revamper, it took me almost a year to update www.digitalexile.net (my art and photography gallery). I had a cool Flash interface ready near the end of last year, but gathering and organizing and sorting my photographs (which I shoot by the dozen every day) and going through all the old paintings was too time consuming.

I was finally able to update the Flash interface with a new theme and add some other cool stuff (like the slide-menu). You can check out the result at http://www.digitalexile.net

Note: I went overboard with the graphics here. A 1024x768 display running on a 32MB AGP is the bare minimum for this baby. I recommend at least 1280x1024 running on a 64MB or 128MB AGP/PCI-E.

The new version of the site will be launched on 1st January along with a ton of new content - including a new MACRO PHOTOGRAPHY gallery, and the new series of paintings entitled "Liquid Carnage"

Only 6 hours left before the solar eclipse starts. I intend to be on top of a hill with all my photo equipment. Will be posting pics and videos here later today.

I'm hoping that a digital camera's viewfinder will filter out UV rays. :-P

The irony of it all is that a web designer doesn't have time to update his own website! Well, I spent about an hour or two every week for the past month or so, and FINALLY www.DigitalExile.net is now gone v2.0!!

I added the complete Art Collection! I used to work with Corel PhotoPaint to make paintings, but I recently got Painter IX - it's a wonderful software - and I've made the "Exile" collection in Painter IX mostly. Also added a TON of new photos - including the all new LIGHTNING collection.

So check it out - http://www.digitalexile.net and feel free to drop by any comments.

Lightning shots from Bhuj, India.

It's been a while since I blogged. So here's a roundup of the main events that probably 2 and a half people care about!

DigitalExile.net is live!

My long planned personal site (after the demise of after-images.net) is now finally live. www.digitalexile.net

There are lots of new photographs available (for licensing, too), and my art collection and written works will be added soon. There's also a download section with small apps, wallpapers, and some random stuff available for download. Or will be soon.

My Blog rates #1 in searches

A pleasent surprise - I saw a referer tag in my server log for this blog (hey, that rhymes!) - for someone searching for "Pandhi" (my last name, you dumbass!). I decided to follow that search link on Yahoo and voila - the #1 (and many subsequent links) are for this very blog as well as my corporate site www.nukeation.com! The same is on Google. But there, my corporate site is first, and the blog after that. Needless to say I like Yahoo! better than Google. The blog is at #1 even if you search for Dr. JJ Rawal

Republic Commando still the best!

I play an hour of Republic Commando every night before I go to bed with Gratu'acuun ringing in my ears. This is better than Half-Life (1 or 2) and Doom combined. They're great games, but this just ROCKS MY WORLD!

Radio Acting Debut

A few weeks ago, I made my recording debut as the "Human Resources Executive of IBM" on the comedy online radio show MONDAYS (Episode 25) - download it! No, no. No autographs. You get a free autograph when you sign up for the Dax Pandhi Official Fanclub.

A GIG goes a long way

I finally added a gig of RAM to my 1GB system. Needless to say it works better. Though it generates more heat, I love the tradeoff.

Jungle Coast, Costa Rica

I'm helping out with the branding and e-solutions for a dear, dear friend Cynthia Najim's new real estate business. This is one of those fun projects I rarely get anymore (if you're a client of mine, no I didn't mean it like that - your projects are just important - this is just different coz there's unreal amounts of creative energy tingling it up). If you're looking for nice, affordable, and beautiful villas, cottages, or even farms - these are the people to call. Will post their website URL as soon as I finish it.

Am planning on going to Costa Rica next year, maybe.

We just had a power failure at 1:30am. It was damn hot, and I was sitting on the roof in my underwear (the neighbors didn't complain because of the darkness, and probably coz they were doing the same). As usual, I had my camera with me. I love star gazing. I was looking at the Milky Way - going from South to North in a straight arc. And I could swear I saw PINK in the milky clouds. Most photos of nebulae and galaxies are colored. Most are artifically colors - but in natural colors.

Anyways, so I push my S7000 to it's limits by setting the ISO/Sensitivity to max, and quality to 12 mega pixel. I put it on manual/B/Bulb setting and take hundreds of shots at a shutter speed of 15 seconds - open diaphragm. Here's the original - unenhanced photo.

As soon as the power came back, I switched on the PC, and transferred the pics. Using good ol' PhotoPaint I started enhancing the pictures. Here's a basic intensity-enhancment shot (2.8x intensity). You can see the pink colors in the clouds. I was psyched. I couldn't wait to blog it. But the proper enhancements would take time, so I just put this here at a 600 x something resolution. Hi-res later.

To show the average'd intensity of this area of the sky, here's a color-levels edited version.

This is the edge/other side of the frickin' place we *LIVE* in. OMG! The actual view was breathtaking.

More on this as I try to enhance the images properly.

All images are © 2005 Dax Pandhi. All rights reserved. Permission for usage in personal or commerical projects can be requested by e-mail.

I finally passed the 3000 line on my FujiFilm S7000 Camera. Of course, I might have deleted about 500 pics from the bunch, but still - I took 3000 pictures!! And this was in a matter of about 3 months. I'm averaging a thousand pics a month, and dual layer DVDs are not enough!!!

Well, I'll finally be able to post a big update on Pixelated Focus when I do a major revamp - new site opens on June 17th (my birthday, thank you).

I just finished the processing of a cloud video (the first in a series of many) taken during a bright afternoon. This video was 'shrunk' from a whole 3:47 minute shot.

http://www.pixelatedfocus.com/cloud01-1.zip

Hopefully, I'll be shooting some really cool cloud shots and some lightning shots as well.

Skinning Metal

 

See also: PwopCatcher Skinning Video (new)

 

It all started when Carl Franklin, CEO of PWOP Productions Inc suddenly mailed me saying “I got a chance to change the world.” Carl was starting a software project that would change PodCasting forever (among other things). He wanted me to come up with a few concepts of what it should look like – it had to be skinned.

 

Carl had this abstract idea of something “warped”. After racking my brain for over 9 minutes, I sat down with my Tablet PC, and sketched out a quick metal skin with pencils and markers. Ripped out holes, embossed metal letters, and digital LCD screens found home on this metal object.

 

 

 

The idea got a solid ‘thumbs up’, and the work began.

 

Before I start blabbering about the whole process, I must point out that a good deal of ideas in the project were Carl’s or came from our discussions and my memory may elude me, so I may forget to mention, but that does not mean I forgot … umm, you know what I mean.

 

Metal Bashing

Now, there are some amazing tricks you can pull off in Corel PhotoPaint (or Photoshop, though PhotoPaint does have some tools that kick Photoshop’s ass) to achieve realism and create good looking metal and glass objects. But there are mixed methods that create even better effects – and that’s exactly what I opted for.

 

The first thing to do was create the base or body of the skin. It needed a solid, metallic feel – and what better to use than actual metal. I went down to a junk yard and got an old 3x3 aluminum plate. Aluminum is light, easy to manipulate and had the perfect bluish/galvanized tint. I marked out the rough outline of the body on the aluminum. Using an old rusted (purposefully) heavy pair of scissors, I took out the excess area from the sheet, leaving me with a rough shape of the body. The next step was to make careful incisions along key points of the body’s shape. The old, rusty scissors made jagged cuts. With some heavy duty gloves, I tore out the remaining excess metal with the help of the incisions. The remaining metal sheet was shaped like a ‘random’ shard of a space ship or something.

 

 

 

Now, the body needed depth. It’s a 0.5mm sheet. Very thin! So, I manually bent the edges. And made some noise with a hammer (along with some bumps and dents on the sheet). Now, the skin was looking closer to what I had in mind.

 

Point to be noted: There are limits to what you can do with a metal sheet to match the image in your head – these limits consist of mostly time, budget, and mainly your sanity. Scared of ruining this perfect shard of a spacecraft, I took pictures of it with my digital camera at 2848x2136+ - that’s very hi-res for an 800x600- skin. The brownish shine you see is my shirt. I tried to remove the coloring, but later on, it really helped me with some effects.

 

I decided to make the holes and other effects digitally. Taking samples from various regions of the body, and some hand-painted artwork on the Tablet PC, I ended up with a nice rectangular hole.

 

 

 

 

Depth was still lacking. This would need another round of photography. Taking my trusty camera, I headed off to the junkyard again and found the textures I wanted in an old hood of a car crash, a surgical lamp, and a failed metal sculpture project (I’m guessing it was that). The new photos were cleaned up and merged with some of my ‘proprietary blend effects’.

 

 

Pixel Bashing

Now came the digital part. I had to create LCD panels. Instead of going for “embedded” panels, I created solid, object-like, flat, rounded edge, glass displays. Painted them black, and placed them inside the central hole. The LCD screens would give the ‘status’ of the application. I created two warning-striped tabs, which would act as buttons, ‘behind’ the body on the top and bottom.

 

I won’t go too much into the detail of the process here, as it involves some trade secrets of mine, and the rest is just plain boring. Pixels pushed here, pixels pushed there, and so on. So, let’s skip to the future a bit.

 

And here we have, finally, a metal shard of some space voyaging vehicle with cool shines, metal anomalies, LCD displays, and wires hanging underneath it.

 

 

The PWOPCATCHER title you see in the lower right is homage to the ‘used universe’ / X-Wing paint effect from Star Wars.

 

You’re probably wondering why the makers of this space ship would make a LCD panel facing a metal wall, or why would there be buttons on OUTSIDE of the hull. Y’see this kind of technology and advanced thinking will not be seen in our race for the next 3 millennia. Remember, this is future technology. We haven’t invented it yet.

 

There were numerous changes made in the design process that weren’t in the original concept. There are some changes that will be made still. We keep improving on this, and won’t stop until it’s perfect. I’ll post updates to any major changes here.

 

Here is a screenshot of the skin in action!

http://www.nukeation.net/nukefiles/workinprogress.jpg

 

We have actual 32-bit transparency, full antialiasing, drop shadows that haven’t been seen before in this world (at least to my knowledge), and under the slick looking exterior, is a core that is made with the sole purpose of changing the world.

 

Last but not least, if you want to see an animated timeline of this skin's development, head on over to:

http://www.nukeation.net/nukefiles/NukePWOPSKINBORG.html 

 

Updates on the skins, the actual software and its availability, and much more will be posted as soon as it is available. You can find proper updates about the app at Carl’s blog http://weblogs.asp.net/cfranklin/

 

I’ll be posting another short like this one about our other skin code-named ‘SmokingGlass’. It’s just as fascinating as this one, if not more so.

 

UPDATE: See the step-by-step video of this skin.

 

EQUIPMENT USED:

Hardware - FujiFilm S7000 digital camera, rusty scissors, old hammer, 1 3x3 sheet of used aluminum, grey matter (6 oz.)

Software - Corel PhotoPaint, Pwop SkinMaker (for skin definition)