Falling Grace in Golden Years

This image was created to decorate a polyhedron called the Rhombicosacron [link] A picture of the finished sculpture appears in my Flickr gallery [link]

I first started out with a fractal image from Gnofract4d included in the download. Then in the GIMP I did a "Color to alpha" on the brightest brownish yellow color and slipped a background of a brighter orange colour to give it more contrast. I took an Apophysis flame I found in DA user ~Fractal-Impact's flame pack [link] (the one named "hears") and layered it on top, making that layer "Addition" mode. The layered GIMP file is included in the download.

It all sounds pretty simple, and in a way it was, but my biggest challenge in creating an image is not how it looks in a box on the screen, but how it looks when it is the skin of a polyhedron. Actually, only the upper right half of this image will appear on the shape. The image ends up getting mirrored in 3 places and so I have to use my imagination to make the leap from 2D to 3D. To get a satisfying result takes a lot of tinkering...

Interesting, as we get deeper into fall, the colors of my fractals are changing with the leaves. I think I have been subconsciously influenced by the huge downpour of golden leaves out my window.