The Call of Cthulu – H.P. Lovecraft
By some horrendous luck, I have managed to live 32 years without having been exposed to H.P. Lovecraft. I can sense the more literary among you castigating me severely, and with what little information I have gathered in the last 10 minutes, I duly deserve it. But apparently that silly "I Write Like" website that's gone viral thinks that I write like Lovecraft. I had vaguely heard of his Cthulu character, most recently in an artwork by a truly amazing artist I initially discovered on Redbubble, David Lange. So I decided to take a glance at Lovecraft's story "The Call of Cthulu." The very first paragraph is absolutely fascinating.
"The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the deadly light into the peace and safety of a new dark age."
"To the Old Ones" - by David Lange
Ocean Invasion #2: Nectar for the Orcas
Here is the second in my Ocean Invasion series:
"Ocean Invasion #2: Nectar for the Orcas"
"Ocean Invasion #2: Nectar for the Orcas"
Closeup
Previous works:
"Ocean Invasion #1: Octopus arborealus"
"K-T"
Ocean Invasion #1: Octopus arborealus
This is the first in a series of pieces I'm doing.
"Ocean Invasion #1: Octopus arborealus"
Click for larger. NOTE: actual resolution quality of the piece is MUCH higher than these compressed jpeg images.
"Ocean Invasion #1: Octopus arborealus"
Closeup
Modeled & Rendered in Blender2.52. Post-processing in GIMP 2.6.
I was asked by another artist whether my inspiration was the "Save the Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus" campaign. Honestly, I actually had never heard of such a thing, and was a wee bit disappointed to learn of it's existence 
Then again, a tree octopus is too cool an idea for to have not already been thought of.
The Making of “K-T”
I know of at least a couple of people who were curious how I went about making my latest art, "K-T." Here is an abbreviated walkthrough...
First came the idea. I've had the general idea of the composition in my head sometime: a view from a mammal ancestor's burrow of the distant K-T meteor.
When I decided to actually make it with the free and open-source Blender and GIMP, I first made a very quick (like 5 minute) sketch of my idea layout (Note: You can click on all images for larger versions):
Hilarious sketch up of the idea. Looks like it was made by a two-year-old.
Next up: modeling the creatures. All objects are modeled as a 3D mesh, working with them and sculpting them at times much like clay - except it's all in the computer.
Velociraptor polygonal mesh
Velociraptor Model - color and shadow to help see curvature
Next up comes the coloring, texturing, and addition of fur.
Velociraptor Texturing and Fur - an early test
In reality, the coloring and texturing is done on 2D images (using the free photoshop-like GIMP), which are then mapped onto the 3D mesh:
Velociraptor Color Map
Next up: a poseable armature has to be made and applied to the 3D mesh. Think of this as an actual skeleton that the mesh will deform with.
Velociraptor Armature Rigging
The armature has to be tested with lots of poses to make sure the mesh warps correctly.
Smile for the camera!
Rinse and repeat for the other objects:
Mammal with fur
Your great x 10 to the alot grandpa
Now start putting objects into the scene:
Basic Scene
More detail
And finally we have everything in place
Scene Mesh
Scene solid objects
At this point alot of time is put into positioning lights and tweaking textures so that everything looks good. Lighting is probably the hardest thing to get right (especially with fur).
Finally, the image is rendered and the image levels and coloring and effects are tweaked using GIMP.
Note: you can get a super high-res large poster of this artwork here.
"K-T"
"K-T" Close-up
All in all, the entire process took 3 weeks. I could have easily spent another 3 weeks tweaking and fixing many aspects of the piece and adding more details, but I was pretty much ready to move on to something else. So, I got it to the point where I was happy with it as is.
I hope you enjoyed it!
Mostly Expected Rhetoric from a Discovery Channel Exec
For those of you who don't know, David (WhySharksMatter) over at Southern Fried Science managed to snag an interview with Paul Gasek, Discovery Channel Executive.
David, as his handle implies, is all about sharks and shark conservation - in fact it seems he's been making quite a name for himself in sharkworld. Well, David, as well as many others interested in shark conservation (or even ocean conservation/health) have some issues with the way the DC's Shark Week continues to peddle fear of sharks. I've been personally pretty sick with most nature documentaries these days - catering to the 10 most deadliest this, or the Worst Disease You Can Get From that, or the Freakiest X, or the fear, fear, fear, etc...
David, based on many submissions from his readers, assembled quite an impressive list of questions (pulling no punches, I might add). I highly recommend you check out Paul's answers as it makes quite an interesting read. That being said, the answers were pretty much exactly what you'd expect from the exec of such a huge business as the Discovery Channel - and not all that impressive.
As I stated in the comments over there - it's all a bit moot to me, as I think the Discovery Channel bankrupted the "Discovery" in its name ages ago. Really - just look at the schedule on any given day. How much "discovery" do you see?
Edit: If you think this is a harsh assessment - keep in mind the titles of the first few shows for Shark Week when you read Paul's answers: the 2 hour premier "Blood in the Water," followed by "Deadly Waters," followed by "Day of the Shark 2" (about "when a great white breaks through a 300-pound aluminum shark cage and traps the divers inside. Another shark tackles a former Navy Seal in shallow waters"), followed by "Sharkbite Summer" (about "The bite-by-bite account of America's notorious "Summer of the Shark" in 2001.")