Surface Detail is a computer generated short video created by Tom Beddard, featuring a hypnotic and ever-changing landscape of 3D fractals. To find out more about how this video and its author, I interviewed Tom via email:
Quito: Hello Tom, thanks for this interview. Tell us a little about yourself.
Tom: Hello! I am an Englishman now living in Scotland just outside Edinburgh. At university I studied physics and then went on to do a PhD in laser physics. However, while doing my PhD I got more and more interested in web development (no small influence of the first dot com boom) and built up a small portfolio. Once I had my doctorate I decided to change career and got a job doing web development specialising in content management and ecommerce systems.
I now work at a company in Glasgow called 55 degrees currently working on all the interactive software for a brand new transport museum opening later this year.
Quito: How long have you been experimenting with computer generated imagery?
Tom: I’ve been using Flash since v4 but in 2008 after I redesigning my site yet again I decided to focus on more generative graphics using Flash and other technologies.
Quito: What is it that drew you to fractals and made you want to express them visually through computer graphics?
Tom: I’ve always had an interest in raytracing ever since I spent an hour watching mirror balls render on my dad’s old Mac LCII. I love the little details in anything visual and fractals have an infinite amount of detail! It was only in late 2009 that new algorithms were developed on fractalforums.com by some serious maths enthusiasts that true 3D fractals became possible.
Creating my own raytracing programs to render these new algorithms was a very rewarding project and there are still some fascinating structures yet to explore.
Source: vimeo.com
