Updates
7/11/2002 - AtS CD labels
7/14/2002 - Summer Night
7/15/2002 - Basic Tank Top
7/17/2002 - Photoshop
7/19/2002 - Devil
7/23/2002 - Invictus
7/30/2002 - Darth Rosenberg
8/02/2002 - Flash
8/04/2002 - Magic
8/07/2002 - Wild Girl
8/13/2002 - Anya & Prophecy
8/22/2002 - Merl
8/27/2002 - Musical
Raison d'Être
In the past few years I've become rather a computer junky, and I love being creative with my new found technical skills. Hence my choice of "synthesis" (the combining of discrete elements into a unified entity) as the word to build the site around. ("Tangled" just reflects what a mess my mind is <wink> ) Right now that creativity seems to be centering around Buffy so most of the work on this site probably will too. But I reserve the right to tackle anything else that inspires me, which is why I've kept BtVS references out of the title and general site design. This site was started in late Feb/ early March 2002.Links
For more info about BtVS, and other (smaller) episode collages, please see the Buffy Dialogue Database. I've joined the Yahoo group ImagingBuffy (6/7/2002) which hosts frequent challenges (most of which I intend to post to this site). Join us if you've an interested in creating Buffy-verse art...Site Design
The design for the site was inspired partially by Beardsly's Mort D'Arthur illustrations, partially by the illustrations in an out-of-print book I grew up on (Aiken's Kingdom Under the Sea; intricate black sillouhetted figures on marbelized backgrounds) and partially by my experimentation with making my own custom brushes in Photoshop.
The outer frame is a colorized piece of the wrought iron gate in front of Thomas Jefferson's grave. Custom brushes made from photos of trees and ivy along a trail I like to hike are used for the texture in the central panel, the background of the design frame and the dark brown site background. A crack on my kitchen wall goes diagonally across the center of this text area. I drew the curvy "Tangled Synthesis" lettering at the very bottom of the page on paper, scanned it in and messed around with it until it looked as you see here. I intend to use all sorts of random different images to make different frames for various pages within the site. For more information about each frame and the images used, including the home page, please visit the site design gallery.
Technical Stuff
I used Adobe Photoshop 5.0 for all my collages. Some day I hope to upgrade to a newer version, but meanwhile PS5 still has plenty of features I haven't learned to use yet, so I'm not complaining (too much!) I'm mostly self taught, from tutorials available on the web, and with the help of the wonderful people who've taken the time to answer my "howdidyadothat?" questions. I dabbled for a few years, but didn't really seriously start trying to learn how to do digital art until June 2001. If you compare some of the earlier collages to my newer stuff, you'll definitely see a difference! The "info" links next to each thumbnail will explain any new technique I used, as well as give dates, info about inspirations, links to brushes or other resources I used and sometimes feedback people have sent me.
