Strange, Weird and Fetish Computer Art Gallery

believe it or not, this started out life as an innocent old photograph of a butterfly! then i got this cool program that would 'kaleidoscope' images. i had hours and hour of fun playing with that thing. anyway, when i stuck this photo of the butterfly into it i noticed that a portion of the image kinda sorta maybe looked like a skull.

remember, this was done way back in 1999! back then we were lucky to have ANY graphics at all, so this was one freaking amazing thing to be able to work on an image in full color!

then it was a mission to try to 'do something' with that idea and the butterflies, and death... the concept was interesting because butterflies have been associated with death for centuries. historians think this association happened because butterflies are always looking for salt. not only did they land in milk that was set out in bowls (which propagated the fairy myths), but they were also a common sight around dead bodies. back then, people didn't realize that the butterflies were attracted to the salts on the skins of corpses. to early man, it seemed that there must be some magical connection between death and the beautiful 'spirit insects' because wherever there was death, there were always lots of butterflies.

back then i was also working with my good friend Rowen, of Persephone's Dream, fiddling around with their logo and other imagery seeing what gelled. when i showed him the image, he thought it was really cool so we snuck it into the Opposition CD artwork, on the credits page, as I recall... I took Chris' bass and with Photoshop, made it look like he had this image airbrushed onto his bass. LOL

so, after much fiddling with the photo of the butterfly... layers and layers of effects to get the metallic sheen, i added shadows and then used them to ornament the corners of the 'skull like' kaliedescope.

so this is the original butterfly photo. considering it was taken in the 1980's it's not that horrible LOL

the center 'jewel' has a vignette from the Symbol of Man image - since she figured in Rowen and my early artistic ventures.

here is the Persephone's Dream logo - a stylized PD symbol - used to create a seamless tile background

software & resources used: Photoshop