A very happy birthday wish goes out to my brother-in-law. I hope your trip to the Boundary Waters was fun.

The doorbell just rang. When I opened it, there were two squeaky clean young men in suits. Each had a little black name tag. Yep. Mormons.

One of them started speaking in Icelandic and I stopped him. Turns out they were both Americans, California and Utah. Can you imagine? He was about to witness to me in Icelandic. That’s so cute and it makes me jealous. A year and a half and he can have deep religious conversations in this crazy language. So they talked to me in English and I explained that I’ve read the Book of Mormon and that I’m comfortable with my own religous state. I also told them that I appreciate what they are doing.

In related news, I start Icelandic classes next week. I’ve got my placement test tomorrow.

Gah. Okay. There are some amazing computer programs out there, but for crying out loud that doesn’t mean that you get to ignore the basic elements of composition. Nor does saying that your work is surreal mean that you get to ignore shading when you are using hyper-real stock elements from a program. Plus, it’s not surreal just because a tree is floating. It’s lazy.

Here is an example of computer rendered art which is very, very good. Please, if you are going to send me computer art try to be this good.

In fact, here are the websites of the artists we’ve printed at Shimmer. If you want me to use your art, you have to be this good or better.

David Ho
Chrissy Ellsworth
Stephen Stanley
Sandro Castelli
Stephanie Rodrieguez
Frank Harper
Liz Clarke
Joseph Remy

Please. Know how to render. Know what gravity means. Know how light behaves. Understand composition.