#6 - 3points #20 - 2 points #13 - 1 point

I love flame fractals so much I took all the standard fractals off my website and have now dedicated it solely to my flames. www.arcanefractals.com Quite early on I found that for some reason that no matter how beautiful a flame may be, to my eye it almost always looked a bit lonely sitting by itself. So I started creating flames and putting them together to make compositions. It was for me quite a natural evolution to combine pure flames. It takes me days, sometimes weeks to find a flame with wow factor. This involves using mostly the mutation windows and speed controls. (I had never moved triangles around until last night). Then several hours playing with colour and lighting. For me that is the crucial bit. I think too, a really good title can never be underestimated to help evoke a feeling or atmosphere or help define the fractal. By the time I have finished with my flame fractal I am well and truly owner of it because I know that it wasn't something that took me five minutes to knock up by randomly hitting a few buttons, but rather took me a huge amount of effort and time plus imagination. Yes the generator is making the flames, but I am choosing, eliminating and tweeking fractals to my taste which ultimately influences the final outcome. For every action (mine) there is a reaction. Thanks for sharing your thoughts Keith. I found them and also Agnes's really interesting. Keep flaming :-) Fran

Hi Seadreamer, Have you tried sharpening your flame in a graphics editor. I found on some of my slightly blurred flames it worked wonderfully.

The site is available now. I couldn't download myself for some hours but all is well now. Beta 16 version is now available. Just before a beta version is due to expire an updated beta is available to be downloaded. If you are subscribed to the mailing list then you will be notified of these changes. Fran

Angie, I think your fractals are just lovely. People who go to all the trouble to make unkind and unwarranted comments are obviously very unhappy and disturbed in themselves. They look at the world with jaundiced eyes. I think if you or anyone else gets unpleasant messages just trash them straight away and don't give them a second thought. There are so many other nice and supportive people here in the fractal commmunity. They are the ones I like to reflect on. Happy fractaling!!! Fran

I forgot to mention that when using the beta 2 version you can save your flame fractals directly to your hard drive as a .jpg using the "Render" button.

The beta 2 version of Apophysis is available only if you subscribe to the apophysis mailing list. Send an email to apophysis-subscribe@lists.fractalus.com The link to download the beta 2 version will be at the bottom of the email you get from the mailing list.

Hi Nick, You could state some parameters for us to follow when designing this award. Perhaps the final pixel size required and the exact wording needed. eg Winner of the Monthly Renderosity Fractal Challenge. It would be nice for the monthly winner to choose from three different styles. Fran

I have been thinking exactly the same thing. Great idea Joey!

#31 3 points #32 2 points #47 1 point So many gorgeous gardens here by such talented artists. It was really hard to narrow it down to only three. There were others that I really wanted to vote for too :-)

Lovely image Marcos! Thanks for the feedback on your printed flame. Fran www.arcanefractals.com

Hi Marcus, I would be really interested to know how well the flame fractals turn out. With my own flames they didn't come out well on my home printer but other standard fractals with blocks of colour printed nicely on the glossy paper. I would like to hear from anyone that has successfully printed flame fracals and the way this was achieved. Thanks for the tip about going to places that print digital camera pictures - hadn't thought of that one :-) Fran

Attached Link: http://www.arcanefractals.com

Hi G Dawg, Speaking from my own personal experience there isn't any tutorial that explains how to make spectacular fractals. Most of the time it may take hours to come up with one really nice fractal and to do this you need to have a good understanding of the fractal programme you are using and this is where the tutorials for those programmes come in. If you are just starting out, I suggest you try out first the freeware programmes "Fractal Explorer" or Tierazon. I found that Fractal Explorer was extremely user friendly with an excellent easy to understand tutorial to get started. For something different try the freeware Apophysis or the Gimp for flame fractals. Ultimately as with any art form, you will need lots of patience and plenty of time to experiment.

This was the first time I have entered a competition at Renderosity. It was a lot of fun. Thank you very much to all the people who voted for me. Fran aka Fractal Dreamer

#2 3pts #12 2pts #13 1pts