"Dragon, Faux Scratchboard". You may notice that I don't have my usual watermark on this image:  Please
feel free to use it as you like, for webzines or program books or newsletters, advertising -- you name it.
I place this work in the public domain, and as soon as I can find out who actually took the photograph I
used to create the piece, they will be duly credited here: [                        ]

But the photo can be seen (along with many more) at the website of the greatest li'l convention in the Great
State of Montana, www.MisCon.org.

Dragon and I were twin brothers separated at birth. He got the good looks, talent, skill, and brawn, I got
this website. He's a fixture in Hollywood these days ... if you need a horseman who stands well over 6' and
has his own armor, swords, staves, and rayguns (and who makes them all himself!) ... or if you need a
Klingon for a Trek feature film or an episode of one of the Trek franchise series ... or if you need the
Alien and the Predator to do a love aria from "Phantom of the Opera" on "Jimmy Kimmel Live" ...

Say you need to create a biographical picture of Lyman Frank Baum that explains the creation of
The Wizard of Oz. Or create the amazing universe surrounding McLeod (McCloud?) -- the
immortal Highlander -- or need some skeletal fingers to do 3-Stooges schtick with Bruce Campbell
in a hilarious horror-movie send-up like "Army of Darkness"...

Or maybe you need to steal people off a 747 that's about to crash and replace them with pre-killed
corpses so nobody will suspect they've been abducted into a hopeless future , and you need to
show the crash once the "air raid" is accomplished...

This is the guy to talk to.

Dragon and I are fans of each other's work, visit his website at www.renegadeeffects.com and be prepared
to be surprised at how well you already know him and his work. But you never knew it was him ... now you do.

I mentioned the technique I used to create this image on the gallery page: I can't say enough good things about
this pay-for plug-in to Photoshop. The image above started as a color photograph, which I sized several
times to get the best effect from the plug. I converted it to greyscale and started playing with it using
"India Ink", a masterful tool created by Flaming Pear. This is about the best fifteen dollars I have ever spent
on a software add-on for an of my graphics packages, it has kabillions of settings and special effects, some
so technical that I can't begin to explain what they do because, to be honest, I don't have a clue.  The ones I
do understand are rich, deep, and amazing. This was my first attempt to use the tool.  My *FIRST* attempt!

But Flaming Pear offers many free plugins, as well. There's one called "Lunar Cell" that creates (at your command)
every imaginable ... and many unimaginable ... worldlets  or megaworlds. You want more ocean? Raise
the sea level. Change the color of the water, the deserts, the ice, the sky. Add coriolis storms to the clouds,
vary the amount of cloud cover or wind strength, tweak to your heart's content! It's a wonderful toy that includes a real Luna,
our own moon, as an accurate pre-set. Check them out (FlamingPear.com) and throw a few bucks in their direction,
these people are brilliant and deserve your hard-earned filthy lucre. You will get more value out of it than you put
into it, I can guarantee you, even if just for personal entertainment value.

I have spent hours exploring the Mandelbrot set, which is fascinating in its implications and never ceases to
amaze me. When I get up to a size that my original image is about the size of the orbit of Jupiter, it tends to
break down and all the little ones and zeroes  in my computer tend to stop talking to each other. But Lunar Cell
goes a step or three beyond that and lets me create worlds of infinite variety, it even lets me make maps of
them that I can apply to spheres in MAX  to create features it does not support (such as rings, space elevators,
moons that cast shadows on the surface, etc.)

This is a personal testimonial, I have not been paid to critique or advertise this company or its products,
but I learned a lesson from Kelly ... "Anything you want to know is yours if I know it." And I bleat you not,
this company deserves to succeed for their quality and imagination.  I really love their stuff, and I offer a warning
to go with the testimonial: The Surgeon General should require a label on their website that their products
are addictive and may cause sleep deprivation.

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