Category: Art

Plasma 5.11 Wallpaper

Well, it’s that time of the year again where I talk about wallpapers!

For those who watched the livestream of the beach wallpaper, you’ll notice this isn’t what I had been working on. Truth be told after the stream I hit a few artistic blocks which brought progress to a grinding halt. I plan to finish that wallpaper, but for this release I created something entirely different while I decide what to do with it. I enjoyed this “wireframe” effect, and will probably experiment with it again.

This wallpaper is named “Opal”, specifically after wood opal resulting from when water carrying mineral deposits will petrify wood it runs across. Wood opal is pretty special stuff, and often it can often look straight out of a fairy tale.

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The Plasma 5.11 wallpaper “Opal” is available on the KDE Store.

Plasma 5.11 Wallpaper Production – Part 1

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ocK54NsqN2Q]

Today I streamed the first half of the Plasma 5.11 wallpaper production, and it was an interesting experience. The video above is the abridged version sped up ~20x, heavily edited to the actual creation, and should be a fun watch for the interested.

It looks like there’s another full work-day that needs to go into the wallpaper still, and while I think I’ll also record the second half I don’t think I’ll livestream it; while I’m very appreciative of the viewers I had, it was quite a bit of extra work and quite difficult to carry on a one-man conversation for 8 hours, while working, for at most a few people. Like I said, I will still record the second half of the wallpaper for posterity, I simply don’t think I’ll be streaming it. I do think I’ll keep streaming the odd icon batch, as those are about as long as I want, so they can be kept to a digestible hour.

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The wallpaper as it is is based on an image of a reef along with a recent trip to the beach during the Blue Systems sprint. There’s still a long way to go, and I can easily see another 8 hours going into this before it’s completed; there’s water effects, tides, doing the rocks, and taking a second pass at the foam – among other things – especially before I hit the level of KDE polish I’d like meet.

Looking at it, I may also make a reversed image with only the shoreline components for dual-screen aficionados.

Within the next week or so I’ll post the next timelapse after I complete the wallpaper. 😀

Wallpaper Livestream

It’s getting to be that time of the release cycle where I’ll be making a new wallpaper for the next Plasma release. For the 5.11 cycle I’ll be doing things a bit differently owing to a request on Reddit several weeks back; this wallpaper is going to be done over a livestream!

The wallpaper livestream will be on Saturday the 20th, and start ~10:00am Eastern Daylight time, or 2:00pm GMT. I’m going to estimate the stream to last ~8-10 hours, with a couple short breaks somewhere in the middle.

The aim will be to get the majority of the wallpaper done during the stream (they take that long!), with anything done beyond the stream falling into tweaks and correction territory. There’s also the chance you may see a few attempts until I settle, as I have a few designs in mind and there may be some experimentation there along with some spectacular failures along the road.

I’ll keep a chat open, and I’ll field any questions I get, but beyond that I figure it will be the kind of stream people might like as background noise. I also suspect it might be the kind of thing people will want to minimize now and again – I think it will be a passive viewing experience. When the livestream is over I’ll go back and create a sped-up version which I’ll post on YouTube.

Which brings me to an important question I have for everyone who does or is into livestreams; I’ve never streamed before! I know about Twitch and YouTube, even Hangouts, and have heard about OBS; are there any recommendations for which streaming service/software I should broadcast with? Comment here (or on Reddit, I’ll be posting there) with input as to the best way to stream a fairly long art session. Also, I’m considering using a webcam as well – please let me know if that’s of interest, and if there’s software for a total rookie to do it. I’ll post the info on where I’ll be streaming once I figure out where it will be.

Lastly, if the stream is fairly successful at least on a technical level, I’ll look into shorter episodes featuring Aether icon development which would probably see rounds of 3-4 icons being completed in the space of a shorter session.