First Entry in the Walrus Competition

While searching for high resolution pictures to enhance my computer background, I came across a newsgroup alt.binaries.pictures.wallpaper. In those early days of the world wide web and download speeds of 54k, large high resolution graphic files were hard to come by.

a.b.p.w. is the home of Walri. A curious tribe of digital artists that self administer and compete in a game known as the "Walrus Competition".

The object of the exercise is that an image is posted at the beginning of the week and participants world wide use it to create a computer wallpaper. Everyone enters their artwork and at the end of the week they collectively vote to declare that weeks winner. Affectionately known as "The Big Walrus". It is up to the Big Walrust to post a brand new image and administer the competition for the following week.

After some weeks of lurking, through no fault of my own, I reluctantly entered the competition in walrus week WW56.

This was the source image.



Superman was also known as the "Man of Steel", hence the inspiration for my wallpaper entry.

The challenge was to cut out only the line art of Superman's face, enlarge it and make it appear as if it was carved into the steel plate texture. A very simple design, the learning process came in trying to cut out 'only' the line image and enlarge it without the edges remaining heavily pixelated or having any left over remnants of the original image.

WW56 Entry - Man of Steel - 19 09 2003

Little did I know then what a key role this competition would play in the development of my skills as a digital artist and that it was to be the kernel of my interest in photography and textures.

http://oscatextures.blogspot.com/