Balrog - As seen in Lord Of The Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring
Not the first Balrog I’ve done, but this one is based off this picture:
http://tinyurl.com/zm2x82y
Even though it’s an ominous, apocalyptic image, there’s something kind of…adorable. I think it’s the tiny ember eyes in that big fiery magma shell. I wanted to do a version of the Balrog that stayed true to that image’s badass nature while also capturing some of that same cuteness.
Original Tumblr post here.
As seen in Warcraft 3: The Frozen Throne
Also experimenting with some new lighting techniques on It Came From The Craft Section!!!
Full post (with more pictures!) here.
While snowed in this weekend, I decided to take a crack at restarting an old project I'd let fall by the wayside: the tumblr It Came From The Craft Section!!!
I've been building things out of pipe cleaners for as long as I can remember, and created the site several years ago to showcase some of the many creations and tributes I've made. The pipe cleaner art on the site come from movies, books, games, real life, and concept art (you know, all that good stuff).
When the Washington Post named the storm 'Snowzilla', I took it as a good omen for getting the project going again, as well as inspiration for the first new uploaded pipe cleaner creation in something like half a year.
Thus, Actual Snowzilla rose from the icy depths
Thanks, Winter Storm Snowzilla 2016!
And hopefully this will be the start of more regular schedule pipe cleaner art on It Came From The Craft Section!!!
If there were an artificial intelligence active right now, would we even know it? And what might such an intelligence want?
In January's Clarkesworld, Naomi Kritzer explores this idea and more in an absolutely awesome short story. Kritzer's AI is aware of the usual tropes, from Frankenstein to Skynet, and how she (it? Feels like a she to me) might be perceived as a threat by others in the world. This sets up the AI's sneaky and subtle moves as she attempts to figure out her purpose in the world (a feeling we can all relate to, I think), as well as fuel her insatiable thirst for pictures of cats.
One of my favorite things about this story is how it's fantastical science fiction fundamentally grounded in reality. The sense of real world paranoia, of people being tracked through their online presences; the effects the AI gradually has on the other characters, none of this really contradicts how the real world operates. Instead, it pulls back the mask on the mundane to reveal an amazing explanation for why the world is the way it is sometimes (and why there are so many cat pictures on the Internet). I love it when a story makes me consider how there's so much more going on to the world than is first apparent. And it's funny as well as thoughtful.
You can check out Cat Pictures, Please in the January 2015 issue of Clarkesworld magazine. Let me know what you think of it! And whether or not you think there might be something more lurking among the cables and wifi signals, hungry for feline photographs.
I also highly recommend another Naomi Kritzer story from Clarkesworld, from October 2013, called Bits. That one is about sex toys and human alien relationships, and has a similar blend of humor and interesting, unexpected ideas.