I you have been following updates for the last couple of days, you'll have noticed two new godheads: Myopianati and Dubbha.
They explain themselves, really.
A few artistic notes.
I have some much darker godheads coming, but for the moment I am enjoying working with the relatively bright palettes and pastels. Most of the work involved is getting the palettes to combine correctly, and getting the images to combine in aesthetically pleasing and significant ways.
The godhead portals are designed to be approximately symmetrical like a Rorschach, and also like a face. Even in the examples with no face/head, asymmetry is important. Kate Beckinsale's eye in Myopianati is the perfect combination of asymmetry and natural beauty (preternaturalism-naturalism is another theme).
The two thespians/actors chosen for Dubbha also have faces that are wonderful examples of natural near-perfect and flawed symmetry. Those familiar with chaos theory and fractals will see the relevance of beautiful asymmetries.
Originally, the Dalai Lama was meant to be a third morph, but his broad faces beauty was too difficult to combine with the much younger faces of the actors.
If you are a fan of movies from the 1980s, you might be able to spot where some of the inspiration for the flaming, lightning filled, cloud-portals comes from. The movie in question is one of the most famous science fiction and fantasy movies of all time, and of the 1980s. If you guess it - say so in the comments. There is also a hat tip to the sky-scapes of late 200th century album cover art and the work of artists like Vallejo and Bell. Especially that with volcanic themes.
Initially Myopianati's fractals were going to be Julia and Mandelbrot sets, and a Sierpinski triangle (to complement the pyramid). However, I discovered several new tools for producing my favourite kind of fractals: Lyapunov fractals and strange attractors. These chaos theoretic 'butterfly effect' fractals exemplify/capture the idea of a mathematically modelled physical system that evolves in time in such a way that it's trajectory in phase space stays random but confined within certain boundary parameters.
The whole tool set was in mothballs for about five years. I remembered all of my original techniques, and am building my repertoire. I use the software equivalent of a lot of techniques.
Each piece is now taking a full day or so to properly develop, and each one involves the use of no less than 10 major combined images and graphic elements.
I draw quite well, and my shading is effective, but there is no drawing in these two recent additions. I let fractal geometry of nature in the photographs do a lot of work.
If I sell more of these, I will begin drawing again, and spend more time on each piece. Designers that produce such things as movie posters and sci fi book covers will notice many 'bad practices'. I let asymmetry have its way, and am not trying to balance backgrounds and negative spaces like Vallejo and Bell, who are professional, trained artists who draw magnificently:
THE COMPETITION
Dubbha comes with benefits.
A competition. If you can guess the two thespian celebrities that have been morphed into Dubbha's face (both of them), then you will be gifted ANY godhead NFT from the existing collection.
If you buy the Dubbha NFT, the celebrity identities will be revealed to you and you alone (provided no one has won the competition), so that you can continue the competition as owner yourself (i.e. Run a new competition of your own) or else reveal them to the world if you so desire.
HINTS: Only one of the celebrities is still alive. Both are famous, but one more than the other now. One's story is quite tragic. Both have been appreciated by large audiences, but one in particular was loved by millions of children who probably, in most cases, did not know their name.
I necessary I will keep providing hints until the competition is won.
