Oh yes, conventions were great before Covid, now they're just bloody dead. Feh. The lack of them is a source of stress to me for various reasons... nothing that can be done though.
Gaming now, that I could rant about for pages and pages, though of course with so many different genres there's not necessarily a match really. I tend towards roguelikes and such... I used to be into turn-based RPGs, waaaaaay back when (I'm talking like NES era) but after not too long they started to get WAY too easy... like "just hit attack over and over, who needs all those spells" sort of easy. Need a challenge for anything to even hold my attention, so... yeah, switched genres. Well, USUALLY need a challenge. Sometimes a game like Animal Crossing is just right, eh? I remember the Gamecube version, boy was that a treat. I havent played the new one.
Also enjoy watching gameplay too! Do you have any specific Youtubers you like to watch? (or things on Youtube in general?) There are certainly some games that I much prefer to play myself, while others I will just watch through instead (like Resident Evil 8, watching that lately). Definitely understand the appeal of watching those. Overall I tend more towards indie games though, but still, any can be good.
As for what fractal art is, er... frankly the explanation is a headache.
Here, have a look for examples:
ScrapFractals - Hobbyist, Digital Artist | DeviantArt
Those are things I've made! Ignore the pair of godawful eldritch meat face monsters, most fractal artists dont do stuff like that, though they are still fractals. I'm bloody strange though so I made them anyway. Because I can.
Fractals are... I guess you could say they're made of math (which you dont have to understand to make them). A visual representation of some crazy algorithm... if you've ever heard of Mandelbrot, that's an example of a fractal (and it's the most famous example). Making the things is a very strange process... with normal art, you just decide "well I think I'll draw a frog today" and then sit down and start with a blank slate and work till you have a frog. With fractals, you start with some bizarre nonsense shape and sort of twist and tweak it until you get something that doesnt suck... it's a very "exploratory" form of art. Sometimes literally, as the 3D ones often involve diving deep into them with the camera to find interesting shapes. And all the while, you can tweak parameters to make the shapes of the things change... the possibilities are endless (and so are the individual fractals, they tend to be infinite). As you can see in the gallery there, they can look wildly different. The process of creating them is a strange one and the programs used are horribly complicated yet nowhere near as hard to get started with as they look. I only started on this about 2 months ago.
They also tend not to take all that long to make. Some of them take a few hours, others take like 3 minutes, even if they LOOK horribly complicated. But, they can take long to RENDER. Very... very long. Animations made out of them, in particular, take an absolutely stupid amount of time to render.
How about you, got any examples of the sorts of things you make? I'm sure everyone on here would love to see them.
