IT'S WINTER.

 We have more snow forecast for tonight, the stuff in the town has mostly disappeared, just a few slip slidey patches but up here we are left with a mixture of nice flat snow and nasty rutted ice. I rescued my car this morning as I had to be away horseing. Blathered in ice it was. The car takes ages to defrost as the heater fan only works on number one. I think the thinghy at fault is a little thyristor, costs a few pounds but it means dismantling the car interior to change it. Whatever it is it will cost a few pence to produce and causes serious grief when it fails. My passenger window goes up and down fine but it does it at random intervals, I suspect there is an icicle inside the door. The car also has a very swish looking air dam as part of the front bumper, it is a go faster type thing to smooth the airflow under the car, load of bollocks on a Renault Scenic. It is obviously not intended as a snow plough and seems to be suffering a bit with the snow and worse the ice. Hopefully it will grind away to suit the conditions without getting ripped off. I don't like modern cars and will look for a cheap van or pickup next. 

I am still playing with the swirly transformation but am missing something basic. It will half work it's just something I'm doing that confuses the computer. 

I decided to try and recreate the Marvel Comic look. I was never a fan of the stories or the comic but liked the way they are drawn with lots of dots a bit like early pixels or crude inkjet printing. This node tree will, with an hour or two spent refining produce animated comic videos. 

The image below is a very quick, crude snowman. It could be anything with a single material applied as the computer is only reacting to light.

SNOWMAN.

This is recognisable. It also a bit daft as who in their right mind would question how a comic book illustration was created. They were created by jobbing craftsmen using tiny dots and must have required great skill and application. Streets ahead of Jackson Pollock and folk of his ilk whose only skills are self publicity and vanity. 

 I know this is monotone but it's a start. Already I can change the dot size and swap white dots on black for black dots on white. I can change the size of the dots, alter the light intensity and more importantly animate the snowman or anything I fancy popping in front of a camera.

Here he is rotated a bit with bigger dots. I could give him eyes, nose and mouth. Could pop buttons down his front. Any mesh can be used including text but excluding a sun lamp for light. Multiple point lights animated could look good as could coloured light but I suspect they would just look dimmer. The scene has to be limited to the camera or window view, things can move within in it, also if one zooms out you get a Moiré pattern as the dots react with the pixels. I can live with that as it is dependant on ones monitor resolution and possibly not on print resolution. I'll give messing with it a whirl should anyone be bothered. This has possibilities as a bit of a title sequence or just as a fun way of making a computer think and learning how they think.  What I have to accept is that node based programming is the dumb clucks answer. I am a dumb cluck, it's taken me years to get where a half bright fifteen year old would consider me easy meat. 

Have a great weekend.