You can listen to music I've made, available under a free Creative Commons license.
Here are some other artists I enjoy. You can download their music for free too; it's 100% legal.
Thanks to the Internet Archive for providing such a fantastic service.
Stop by the FS Image Gallery: View 2D and 3D artwork in a convenient gallery format.
I enjoy creating 3D animations; you can see a few here. To view more, please visit my Youtube channel.
This one's a clip of a fictional planet done in a more realistic style. It makes use of some pretty cool technology like volumetric scattering materials and a node-based procedural texture. As far as the planet itself goes, you can see the blossoming gases and strong lighting from nearby suns. More detail at: Hinoumi (Sea of Fire) - A Distant Planet from Marc Carson on Vimeo.
This is a portable computer that my nephew drew up and emailed to me. I modeled it from the drawing and decided to animate it with a screenshot from one of his favorite computer games.
This was an attempt to make "2D" trees look "good enough" for 3D animation. The problem with full 3D trees is, they take forever to animate. So, in 3D animation we use lots of little cheats like this to speed things up.
Here I was trying to fake the "shaky camera" effect you get with video cameras in real life.
Just a simple animation of a sword. A few people have said they really like the background effect.
This is a promotional video for the Art of Illusion 3D software package, using some of my older portfolio work.
Back in 2002 I started a comic called "Roba." It had no script. I had no plan for how it was going to end. I only had a challenge: I would draw the entire thing in Windows Paint (ack!) and see how it turned out.
The comic progressed well for the first few weeks, but the fact that I didn't know when it would end really made it difficult to do as a hobby. Working in Windows Paint was a bit silly too (I had Photoshop, but that would have been too easy, right?).
Oh, by the way, I never finished chapter four. It was getting to be too much of a pain, doing all the detailed work without any script to reference. You can see how far I got with it, though.
It wasn't until a couple years after I stopped working on Roba that I started to hear from fans. "Whatever happened to that comic? That was getting good!" they'd say. In retrospect, I should have made it very short (maybe 10 chapters max), written a simple script, and installed some sort of feedback mechanism so people could let me know they were reading it.
I always have several comic/graphic novel ideas floating around in my head or in my sketchbooks. I have one in serious development right now, in fact...
I enjoy using the Ubuntu Linux operating system on my computers. You can see what one of my desktops looks like or what my laptop screen looks like if you want. I try to take advantage of some advanced productivity features like virtual desktops - I spread my work across two screens, using a total of twelve virtual desktops and one mouse/keyboard to control both laptop and desktop via the Synergy software project. I began using Linux in 1996 and I love using it to work on my projects.
In my opinion, open source "Freedom" (as opposed to proprietary) software like Ubuntu Linux is too beautiful a concept for an aesthete to pass up. What is freedom, to an artist? It is expression without fear.
Occasionally I'll hear one of my students compare Freedom software with proprietary software on the basis of features and capability. Some even go so far as to say that capability is really all that matters, and that they only view software as a tool to "get things done."
I, too, view software as a tool. However, software is also infrastructure. It is virtual real-estate. It is freedom of speech. It is a livelihood. It is a spiritual connection between human beings (yep, there are even churches out there, connecting via software). Software is all of these things . Those who see software as a simple tool, like a hammer or a wrench, are simultaneously ignoring the significance of what they have and pooh-poohing the risks faced by users of proprietary software as their freedoms are eroded by those who would restrict this transcendental medium.
As Eben Moglen said, "Freedom of speech in a digital society is digital freedom of speech." Your freedom to express yourself is no less serious because it takes place online and finds itself represented in pixels on a computer screen.
Should all software be Freedom software, then? I hope so. Imagine a world where programmers are no longer selling a product limited by the time they were paid to devote to it, but instead offering creative development services that build on all that has been done before them. They are aggregators, constantly breaking new ground in harmonizing combinations of existing tools and services that benefit all of society as well as their customers. They take those elements and combine them into something equally artistic and effective. That, to me, is the spirit of computer programming. The programmer is no longer like a factory worker competing against factory workers who purchased the same software. He is again an artisan. (Abstracted from Eben Moglen's Software and Community in the Early 21st Century)
I said "imagine a world" but this is already happening. Teams of programmers around the world are using Freedom software to this effect. If you are skeptical, you have but to look around and witness this. The very software and services that power much of the internet were incubated in the minds of people who were concerned about preserving your digital freedoms.
Besides the complicated internet-backbone stuff, here's some desktop Freedom software you might enjoy:
As a creative person, I find it insulting that "creative person" is becoming a synonym for "consumer of high-end products." By sharing free, sustainable technology with others, we can begin to turn that image on its head.
My reading tastes have shifted as well, in large part due to the feelings I wrote about in the Computer Software section, above.
First of all, I support your universal right to read. In an age when much information is commoditized, it's sad that so much is done to lock up or "protect" books, mostly from the very people who buy them.
I read many books every year on an ebook reader. I started reading this way in 2000. It's an amazing way to read, and I'm sure it will replace traditional book reading. If you don't think so, you haven't tried it for any significant length of time. Or perhaps you've never held 10,000 books in your hand?
However, I'm concerned about "protected ebooks" that expire after you've finished reading them. I'm also concerned about the scary legal terms you must agree to when you read such protected electronic books.
Even though the future seems bleak from this standpoint, I think it's smart to educate ourselves about real risks, rather than running away. As I've searched for solutions, I've found a few outstanding sources of ebook reading material; sources that work to preserve your right to read while promoting education, literacy, understanding, and wisdom.
The first resource is Project Gutenberg, where thousands upon thousands of books are available for reading. There are bookshelves full of books. Sci-fi, mystery, poetry...an ever-expanding collection. We have these treasures because they were not protected by "digital rights management." The paper they were printed on did not self-destruct after they were read. Even the all-digital books here were released by their authors under permissive, not restrictive, licenses.
The other resource is the Creative Commons Text site. Whether you prefer your right-to-read books on paper, on a PDA screen, or read aloud and distributed over the web, you'll find guidance here. You may be surprised to know that there are current, successful authors out there who sell books and give them away, at the same time.
You won't find all the latest, most popular books to be permissively licensed (I would argue that you'll find even better). But by reading permissively licensed books, you'll be supporting a sustainable reading culture that won't steal your rights away because of the pressure to sell, sell, sell.
