Eon Works - Art of Dawid Michalczyk

Old images

Fri, 03 Feb 2012 17:34:26 +0100

Today I added to the gallery three images that I did back in the mid 1990s: Arctic spikes, Intruders detected, Sunset flight. They are all low resolution (640x386 pixels) and were done in the first version of Bryce. At that time I had a Mac, a Performa 5200 with 12MB of RAM and a 75Mhz 603 PPC CPU, which was much faster at 3D rendering than the equivalent Pentium. The fast CPU was actually the main reason why I bought a Mac instead of an Amiga. Initially I wanted to buy another Amiga with the new MC68060 CPU but they were too expensive and not as fast for rendering. All in all, the Mac was a good buy although the operating system was quite unstable.

Cosmic vista

Wed, 18 Jan 2012 13:46:02 +0100

I start the new year with a space artwork. I actually wanted to do a space landscape with an icy or snowy terrain, but as you can see, I ended up doing something different. The snowy terrain idea will have to wait for later use. By the way, I have added a few more mousepads to my Zazzle store.

One And All - new space video

Sat, 17 Dec 2011 11:11:03 +0100

To end the year with a nice collection of my recent and other popular space artwork, I made this video with the music from the latest Anosphere album. The track is called One And All and so is the video. You can watch the video on youtube as well. Merry Christmas and a happy New Year!

New mugs

Sat, 10 Dec 2011 11:54:22 +0100

I have added many new mugs to my Zazzle store. Available in multiple colors and sizes, even in frosted glass! Dishwasher and microwave safe. You can choose which type you prefer in the easy to use selection menu. Ideal for drinking your favorite beverages. (Mine is water by the way).

200 light years away

Tue, 29 Nov 2011 10:32:26 +0100

In September 2011 it was announced that Nasa's Kepler telescope discovered a planet orbiting two suns. The planet lies some 200 light years from Earth. This inspired me to do this view from a planet orbiting around two stars that are pretty far apart. Original rendering resolution: 12000 x 7754 pixels.

New mousepads in the store

Fri, 25 Nov 2011 14:39:57 +0100

I have added many new mousepads to my Zazzle store. They look great and the quality is outstanding. I have been using them myself and have given some to my friends and they love it.

By the way, one really cool feature that Zazzle has recently added to the store is the ability so see how a poster or framed print looks like in different rooms with different wall colors. You can even upload a photo of your own room to see how well an image will work in your room. This is really neat!

For international orders just select the country you prefere to order from: Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, France, Germany, Japan, New Zealand, Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, South Korea, UK, USA.

Drifting Planes II

Sun, 20 Nov 2011 11:44:23 +0100

A new lovely addition to the Drifting Planes series of vibrant colors and forms interwoven in rectangular motion.

A few days ago I bought a new 2TB WD external harddrive. It's hard to believe how much space there is on it. I still remember when I got my first 30Mb harddrive for my Amiga back in the early 1990s. That was so exciting. I could load the OS from it really fast and store so many files. It was a huge improvement over a floppy.

Anyway, after partitioning and formatting the new 2TB harddrive, I set windows to check and fix all partitions for errors. This took about 6 hours... Then I had to copy all my files from my old 0.5TB harddrive which took about 7 hours because I have so many small files. And I couldn't copy all files at once from one partition to another because windows can't figure this out - after several minutes of preparing to copy it said: too many files (cancel). So I had to copy the files over several steps. But now, everything works fine and the new harddrive mounts faster and doesn't get as warm as the older one, which I will now use for backup.

Ancient stars

Tue, 08 Nov 2011 16:35:41 +0100

Ancient stars, a big moon, and a calm afternoon on foggy shores... a perfect vacation destination.

Some people have asked me about the 2012 calendar. Unfortunately I won't be doing a calendar this year. Due to the state of economy and very slow sales it is not worth the time and effort. I keep doing images because they help keep me going by nourishing the spirit.

Synergy

Tue, 25 Oct 2011 17:45:57 +0200

The interaction of elements that when combined produce a total effect that is greater than the sum of the individual elements.

Due to the sad state of economy, I have been wondering lately what is more worthwhile: 1) increase artistic output, thus more frequent updates with new artwork, or 2) focus more on promotional activities which will pay off once the economy will get better.

Actually I have been doing the first option for some time now. And now I'm thinking about shifting focus to the second option. There will still be regular updates with new artwork but not as frequent.

A million stars

Sun, 16 Oct 2011 11:37:09 +0200

A view from a hypothetical planet near a globular cluster of stars. A typical cluster contains over 100,000 stars but can contain several million stars - billions of years older than the Sun. In the Milky Way galaxy there are currently over 150 known globular clusters. Most of them are located in a halo surrounding our galaxy.

Strata

Sat, 08 Oct 2011 11:21:27 +0200

Strata is the third piece in an ongoing series of abstract renderings of the primordial. Lately I noticed that the more abstracts I do the more I enjoy the genre. There is so much freedom of expression... the unlimited possibility for exploring this largely uncharted visual dimension makes it even more exciting to work with. It is also more forgiving. When I'm low in creative energy I turn to abstract work, and something good always comes up and that lifts my spirit.

Desert moons

Wed, 28 Sep 2011 23:19:06 +0200

In the two previous space artworks there has been plenty of snow and ice, so I though about doing a space landscape of a dry and hot desert environment. At first I actually made a green sky with some funky colors and patterns on the rocky terrain. That looked unusual and kind of cool, but it was not what I wanted. So I remade the sky with blue tones, and made the terrain colors more desert like for this otherworldly landscape.

Deep time

Sat, 24 Sep 2011 11:50:34 +0200

I have been listening to Landmass by Steve Roach while preparing to put this new abstract online. It is a great ambient album. Somewhat different from his older work, and it's hard to describe the music. It has a metaphysical feel to it, a sort of quantum physics meets shamanism...

Anyway, for the past couple of years I have been experimenting with acrylic painting. If the economy doesn't get too bad I will start offering original acrylic paintings on canvas. Not sure how soon, as there is a lot of stuff I need to sort out first, but I'll let you know as soon as I have anything ready.

Cosmic sunset

Sun, 18 Sep 2011 20:08:50 +0200

A sunset over snowy space vista with a grand nebula above the horizon. It's been a while since I did any nebula work so I thought about doing one for this far away space landscape. Lately I started doing landscapes with a snowy or icy surface because that contrasts nicely with the dark sky. The blue frozen surface on the ground is also something new that I'd like to explore more in my future work. Original size: 7484 x 5100 pixels with a total of 397309 unique colors in the picture.

Red Moon Chronicle interview

Sun, 28 Aug 2011 17:45:37 +0200

I have been interviewed by Wayne Gerard Trotman at Red Moon Chronicle. Wayne is a British author, filmmaker, artist, photographer, composer and producer of electronic music. We talk about digital art, my learning process, my favorite artwork, and other interesting matters. Make sure to check other interviews at the Red Moon Chronicle as well, which include the highly respected sci-fi artists like Syd Mead and Chris Moore!

Snowy vista

Fri, 10 Jun 2011 11:08:31 +0200

Snowy vista is the latest addition to the ever growing space gallery. A tranquil view of a snowy landscape on one of the planets in the vast universe.

Another news is that Zazzle, the print on demand store I use, is well on its way to world domination, as it has opened online stores in even more countries around the world. So if you live in one of these countries, and I know many of my regular visitors do, ordering can't be more convenient: Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, France, Germany, Japan, New Zealand, Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, South Korea, UK, USA.

The explorer

Tue, 19 Apr 2011 15:29:52 +0200

The surreal gallery has been updated with a new addition: The explorer. Every person is an explorer of his own life. Sometimes one ventures into areas of experience or understanding that are entirely different from every day existence. Such explorations expand the perception of reality.

I rendered this image at the highest resolution ever: 12000 x 8177 pixels. I could go much higher but images so large are very heavy to work with.

Mekanika

Fri, 08 Apr 2011 13:38:55 +0200

A new abstract has been added to the gallery. Mekanika is the first one done on the new monitor and it looks sharp.

I've been adjusting the monitor settings even more and ended up not using the monitor profile that my calibration device created. Just setting my monitor to sRGB mode actually gives better results than using the calibrated profile. If I only started with that it would have saved me few days of hassle...

New Eizo monitor

Mon, 04 Apr 2011 21:04:33 +0200

My CRT Samsung monitor, which I have been using for the past 7 years, started to flicker recently and sometimes made some buzzing sounds. So I decided it was time to buy a new LCD monitor. After few days of research I ordered an Eizo ColorEdge CG223W at the cost of $1700. The ColorEdge line from Eizo is specifically made for professionals who work with images. I calibrated and profiled the monitor to ensure color accuracy and am happy with it. The only thing that bothers me is that some of my images now look too saturated. Actually everything looks more saturated and some of my images have color saturation that is unacceptably high. I'm not sure if that's because LCDs in general produce brighter and more saturated colors, or perhaps it's simply the old annoyance that all monitors display colors a bit differently. But it sure is nice to have more space on a wide screen :)

UPDATE (2011-04-05): I did some more calibration and profiling and arrived at an almost ideal configuration. Everything is still a bit more saturated compared to my CRT monitor, but the colors are more consistent now and the images on-screen are practically identical to their printed versions - which is the most important thing. Now I can sleep better :)

Fantastic Visions - new art video

Sun, 06 Mar 2011 16:46:45 +0100

Since Cosmic Voyage is such a great success with over 32 000 views on YouTube, I decided to make a new and better video showcasing my artwork. It took me about a week to create, and despite long rendering times it was great fun to make. I rendered a few animations based on some of my 3D images and included them in the video. To spice things up a bit I also did a few cool effects - as an extra eye candy boost :) The wonderful music was composed by Anosphere.

It was fun to make but the whole process reminded me why I don't do animations. The rendering time takes forever. Just to give you an example, the first animation sequence in the video, the one with the "Fantastic Visions" sign, is only 15 seconds long but took over 12 hours to render at 640 x 480 resolution on my 3Ghz dual core CPU. Then I always need to tweak something and start rendering again... Fortunately the other 3D scenes didn't take that long. May you enjoy this one :) You can see the video on YouTube as well.

Cheerful structure

Tue, 08 Feb 2011 13:19:33 +0100

I finished this abstract a couple of days ago. It was real fun to make with all the vibrant colors and angular structures. I find such colors uplifting to look at :) I have been thinking about doing some distinct 3D abstracts but somehow never got around to it. Maybe next time. I also got a couple of ideas for new surreal images. So the surreal gallery should have a new addition soon.

Starry isles

Sat, 29 Jan 2011 10:40:57 +0100

I start the year 2011 with a late space evening on a faraway planet...

Over the years I learned how to minimize 3D rendering time without sacrificing the visual quality of the image. Whenever possible I construct my 3D images in such a way that the final hi-res rendering time is rarely over two hours. But this one is heavy on refraction and transparency and some of the textured surfaces looked so jaggy with standard anti-aliasing settings that I had to increase it to the highest available. This obviously greatly increased the rendering time: from 16 minutes to over 10 hours at 7200 x 4096 pixels on my 3GHz dual core CPU, but it was worth it :)

Free wallpapers update

Sat, 11 Dec 2010 13:15:08 +0100

The free computer wallpapers page has not been updated for at least few years, so I thought about adding two additional wallpapers. They are Stellar vista from the space gallery (which currently ranks as the 3'rd most popular image from all galleries) and X2 flight from the Sci-Fi gallery. On a second thought, perhaps I should start rotating some of the free wallpapers on a regular basis?

Digital frames are becoming increasingly popular and eventually large sizes will become affordable. Which is yet another reason why I should reconsider selling wallpapers again. Anyway, I hope these two additions to the free wallpapers page will make your computing experience more enjoyable :)

New abstract art: Tranquil evening

Sat, 27 Nov 2010 11:53:14 +0100

Impressions of a tranquil sunset suspended in memory. A simplified design that proved more satisfying than what I originally intended.

You can save on shipping costs in my Zazzle store: free shipping on orders of $50 or more. A great way to save on Christmas online shopping. Just Use Code: FREESHIPFORU. Offer is valid from October 16, 2010 through December 31, 2010 at 11:59pm PT. Your order must be placed during that time to qualify for this special offer. You can read about the details of the offer here.

New space artwork: Distant system

Wed, 10 Nov 2010 12:42:36 +0100

I was watching Carl Sagan's Cosmos documentary, and there is a beautiful galaxy in one of the episodes which inspired me to do this space landscape. Initially I painted a large galaxy above the landscape. Unfortunately the galaxy looked different (terrible) on the LCD screen I have here at home (I use CRT for all art work) and even tweaking the colors did not help. I got discouraged and decided to do a large Saturn like planet instead. Nevertheless I'm quite happy with the final result.

New abstract: Camo

Mon, 25 Oct 2010 17:34:53 +0200

Just added a new abstract creation to the gallery. A result of a brief, but direct input from the source: Camo

By the way, Zazzle has a 50% off 2-day shipping promotion to U.S. addresses. Use code: SNEAKUPGRADE for 50% off 2-day shipping and get your order before Halloween! Ends Tuesday at 3PM PT!

They also have another offer with free shipping on orders of $50 or more! Just Use Code: FREESHIPFORU. Offer is valid from October 16, 2010 through October 31, 2010 at 11:59pm PT. Your order must be placed during that time to qualify for this special offer. You can read about the details of both offers here.

New space art: Far away

Sat, 16 Oct 2010 21:27:10 +0200

Far away took me one day longer to do than I estimated. There was some quite noticeable color banding in one area of the image that was difficult to eliminate. I tried every trick I know of, but none worked well enough. In the end I re-rendered the 3D parts of the image in a different way and did some of the haze in 2D. It all ended up working better than I expected.

15 Years Online and Birthday Sale!

Tue, 12 Oct 2010 14:51:41 +0200

After surfing the web for over a year I decided to establish a personal existence in cyberspace. So at the end of 1995 I started learning HTML. Back then things were much simpler online so my first website consisted of just a single page with few of my images. As my HTML skills improved I eventually expanded the site to several pages. And this is how the Sci-Fi gallery looked like until 1997 :)

To celebrate this anniversary I offer a 20% discount on posters and framed prints until the end of October. So, whether you need new artwork to hang on your wall, or a nice gift for a friend, see what my store has to offer.

With any luck, there will be a "30 years online!" update in the year 2025, which is only 6 years after the Blade Runner movie took place. Will we see genetically engineered organic robots and flying cars by 2025? Sounds too soon to me, but I suppose it could happen by the "60 years online" update :)

The effect of the recession...

Sun, 03 Oct 2010 11:48:54 +0200

Yesterday I have been looking at my statistics from the last few years. Although the recession made a huge impact on the numbers, there are other disturbing trends.

Since the recession started, my traffic gradually declined from an average of 2500 visitors a day to 1300. My sales suffered the most and my overall online income went down to about 20%. While the frequency of image commeting went down from an average of 23 a month to 8, the comment spam increased several hundred percent. And the click through rate of my email updates has been steadily declining and is now 5-8%.

On the positive side, few of my important keyword rankings went up considerably. And interestingly, although Suburbs 2100 is my most popular image throughout the years, Planet scape continues to be a best seller even during the recession. Overall however, the numbers are depressing. Yet, based on what I hear from other artists, things could have been much worse...

Cyberian flight

Sat, 25 Sep 2010 09:49:35 +0200

It's been a while since I added any new artwork to the scifi gallery so I thought of making a new addition. Back in 1996 I did a rendering called "On the patrol". Since I like the idea of scout vessels patrolling snowy terrain I decided to do something similar: Cyberian flight. Two vessels on a reconnaissance mission gathering intelligence data.

On another note, few people have asked me why they don't always receive my email updates. The most likely explanation is spam filters. Adding my email address to your contact list in your email client should help. As an alternative you can subscribe to my RSS feed instead. The content of the updates is the same, I just offer two different delivery methods.

Featured Artist of the day!

Tue, 21 Sep 2010 12:40:52 +0200

Today I received a very nice email from Imagekind:

"Congratulations! You have been selected as the Featured Artist of the day at Imagekind.com! Imagekind is the fastest growing online art site and it is our privilege to showcase your work as being outstanding amidst a field of so many other great artists and photographers."

Thank you ImageKind! This is the second time I have been selected :) You can see a list of Featured Artists of the day here. Imagekind is one of the largest online communities for buying and selling art from thousands of unique and independent artists around the world. I've sold much of my artwork through them and can only recommend them!

The Cosmic Voyage update

Fri, 17 Sep 2010 10:01:09 +0200

It turns out that the Cosmic Voyage video I did last year is becoming increasingly popular on YouTube. In fact it is now one of the most popular space art videos and has already been seen over 21 000 times! The second most popular of my videos is Future Visions with over 16 000 views. I have other videos on YouTube but they are not nearly as popular. Perhaps it's the timing of transitional effects and the music that makes all the difference?

On another note, I updated the mugs section in my store. To simplify things there are now two mugs: colorful and standard. And they are black on the inside to minimize the possible visibility of stains :)

2011 wall calendar

Sat, 11 Sep 2010 23:50:16 +0200

The main news of this month is the brand new wall calendar. I selected the best and most popular artwork from all my galleries so you can enjoy something different every month. The 2011 wall calendar is available in three sizes: small, standard and huge.

I sell the calendar through my Zazzle store which is available in different countries around the world. So if you prefer to order it from a store that is closest to your country (or in your native language) here are direct links to the calendar in different stores: Australia, Canada, France, Germany, New Zealand, Portugal, Spain, UK, USA. May this 2011 calendar bring you much visual pleasure and help keep track of important dates.

Suspended in stillness

Fri, 23 Jul 2010 12:36:20 +0200

A brand new visual stimulation from the realm of the abstract. An exploration of deeply curved shapes and 3D minimalism - a geometrical form suspended in endless void.

New online game: Magic Swap

Sun, 20 Jun 2010 20:42:04 +0200

Magic Swap is yet another fun online puzzle game that both relaxes and stimulates the mind. Like the other Eon Works games it requires Java to run, uses very little CPU time, and is very addictive. While working on it I played it far more than any other game I worked on. Finally this game is much easier than the others and still has great playability.

The game rules are very simple: swap two items that are next to each other until at least three of the same type of items are lined up either horizontally or vertically. Swapping is done by clicking on the two items to swap. The more items you can align the better your score. Have fun!

New online game: Distinctus

Sun, 02 May 2010 22:20:40 +0200

Just finished working on this new online game this evening. My friend and me eliminated the (hopefully) last few bugs so everything should work fine now. This is a different type of game from the previous ones. Here you see two images which are almost identical and your job is to spot the difference between the two images. Once you spotted a difference just click on it and continue till you find all the different areas. The faster you get the job done the higher you score. Right now it's easy to get in the Hall of Fame hi-score list, so grab the chance while you can! Enjoy this Amiga demoscene look and sound production :)

My first digital images

Wed, 21 Apr 2010 12:29:36 +0200

It may be hard to believe but I still have my Amiga 500 computer I bought back in 1987. I keep it for nostalgic reasons - to watch an occasional demo or play a game. So I turned it on recently and started looking through one of my large floppy disk boxes to see if I could find a demo I haven't seen in a while (few years). Instead I found an old gfx floppy disk with my own ancient graphics I did back in 1993. Those were the days of low resolution and limited bitdepth. The average screen resolution back then was 320x256 pixels, and 32 or 256 colors were at one's disposal. Although at first this may seem crude and limiting by today's standards, such limitation encouraged great creativity that made the seemingly impossible possible. The Amiga demo scene of that time is probably the best proof of that.

Anyway, I found 2 bitmaps aka images I did in 32 colors using Deluxe Paint 4. Game Cheats and Utilities are some of the very first digital images I ever did. Back then I did much of my graphic work by literally placing pixels next to each other one at a time until they formed the desired shape or object. 320 x 256 = 81920 pixels to fill up - that's a lot of mouse clicking!

These images illustrate how much technology has improved and how I have progressed during the past 17 years. I wonder how my pictures will look like in 17 years from now?

Calm afternoon

Fri, 09 Apr 2010 10:57:05 +0200

I have good news and bad news. The good news is that I have a brand new space image in the gallery - a very lovely piece. The bad news is that it looks awful on most flat screens. The problem with flat screens (aka LCD) is that they display everything much brighter and with higher color saturation. Because of that many of my images look terrible on LCDs. I still use a CRT monitor because LCD monitors that are good enough for doing art work are very expensive (minimum $2000). Eventually the cheap LCDs will become as good as the expensive models of today. Until that happens there is no easy solution to this problem...

Nonaquad - the latest brain workout breakthrough!

Fri, 02 Apr 2010 10:36:50 +0200

After many weeks of arcane development the new online game is finally done. Created at the Eon Works computer lab this new product is to improve the function of certain areas in the brain. It works by stimulating brain neurons with perplexing visual input that needs to be sorted out. A daily dose of just 15 minutes of Nonaquad relaxes the mind while providing a gentle brain workout that enhances its function. Daily practice may improve IQ.*

The game rules are very simple: Slide the tiles horizontally or vertically until each of the nine large squares is filled with one color. The faster you get the job done the higher your score. Enjoy this neat brain workout!

* These statements have not been disproven by the FDA.

The new game is almost done!

Tue, 30 Mar 2010 13:37:15 +0200

The new game I'm working on now is almost done and will appear online during the next few days. The visual polishing and fine tuning of the scoring system can take a while... But let me tell you, this new game will give your brain a workout few puzzle games can match! So if you thought that Pentacolor is easy, just wait for this one.

By the way, have you noticed the new players in the Hall Of Fame of Pentacolor? MURPHY from USA continues to be the king, but the new starsmaker from Romania moved from 9'th to second position in only 12 minutes!

Myself, I yet have to manage to get past the 5000 points barrier. 10000? Maybe with a puzzle solving brain implant!