Sometimes things come along that you just can't pass up, and Hive account@lilyraabe seems to be making a habit of posting contests of this exact kind ;P
 
This time, the task she gave her followers was to share a work that blends two or more artistic genres. This is my entry.
 

Here are the rules, quoted from Lily's post:

(1) Create a post sharing a piece of your own work (or a collaboration you played a key role in) that mixes 2 or more artistic genres! This might mean sharing a video, an image, writing, a sound clip, or something else (who knows!).
(2) Write at least 100 words describing the work and the artistic techniques at play
(3) Drop the link to your post here in the comments. This is the only way I will accept submissions! Deadline is next Saturday, when this post expires!
(4) Extra credit: I’m always very interested in seeing documentation of your artistic process, and will award “extra credit” accordingly!

I've decided to go with these two pieces I made as gifts for each of my brothers. They combine maths and science with the visual arts, as well as the art of creative writing (if you look carefully enough ;P)

Reggie's gift: "gl.EE.42 - 01"

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Gallery: Commissions/Gifts
Max. Print Size: 53" x 35"

Galactic Survey Archives, File 72fa8c-ddf21b: System gl.EE-42. Nothing significant to report, except for a strange and fascinating planet (many of us are still questioning whether it should be classified as a planet or as a rare SVD [sentient vacuum dweller]. Perhaps it is both.) orbiting at a distance of 156.4 million kilometres. We have named it "Glee". Further research required. We are all very excited.

Bradly's gift: "gl.EE.42 - 02"

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Gallery: Commissions/Gifts
Max. Print Size: 53" x 35"

Galactic Survey Archives, File 72fa8c-ddf21b (continued): We have been monitoring what at first appeared to be a simple dull star. It is no star. It is moving, approaching Glee at a speed of 16MGLT. We have detected both human life forms and a high-powered weapon system and fear the worst. If they power up their weapon, I may have to declare a temporary stay on our non-interference policy, lest we lose a rare treasure just as we've found it. Infernal humans!

First, let me explain: Everything you see in each piece is a fractal, made by me. The sun, the planet, the Deathstar, and the starry background are each a different fractal.

 
Fractals are basically pure mathematics plotted onto a 2D plane or 3D space. If you're interested in how the maths works, please let me know in the comments =)

And then there's the creative writing. If you zoom into the image, on the bottom white line that is framing the planet/Deathstar, you will find words. (The same words that are under each image above).

They give some context to the images, which are snapshots of a universe that exists in my mind, where the Deathstar from Star Wars meets an Archivist race from the Star Trek universe ;) ...

Also, notice the max. print size... 53" x 35"... That is over 1 meter on the long side! ... Which means it took a long time to render each fractal.

Now for some deconstructions...:

The starry background:

I knew how I would achieve this because I have done a lot of spacey art before. I opened up trusty old "JWildFire"...

And tweaked some old parameters of mine until it looked just right:

The sun:

I had some idea of how I would do the sun... In Mandelbulb 3D (the fractal software I use) you can render up a sphere pretty easily:

From here, you can add a texture to the sphere, to distort its surface, used as a heightmap. I downloaded many black and white textures until I found the right one...:

I had to tweak the parameters a lot before getting it to look how I had in mind (even then, it wasn't quite right...):

Of course, it was still way too "perfect" to look like a roaring sun. Where are the sunflares?? ... So I needed to combine the sphere with some craziness:

And that did it! ^^

The mushroom planet:

With fractals, it is quite easy to find mushroom shapes... Just go type "fractal mushroom" into deviantArt or Google images search and you'll see what I mean... But, I just couldn't get a mushroom PLANET, no matter how hard I tried. So in desperation, I searched for "mushroom" in a fractal group I'm part of on Facebook, and found someone had done this! :

I could work with that! I contacted the fractalnaut and he kindly gave me permission to tweak his formulae. It took a lot of tweaking but I finally got it, as you can see in the art ;) I just needed to make it a bit more psychedelic, so I added this as a colour map:

The Deathstar:

I'm especially proud of this! =) ... I loaded up a sphere as I explained above with the sun. I then used a wonderful little tool called JSPlacement to generate a heightmap:

That by itself though wasn't going to do it. I needed to do some editing in Photoshop to make it into a Deathstar heightmap:

After A LOT of tweaking to get it just right, I added it to the sphere and presto! My very own Deathstar creation ;)

So there you have it! =) ... Science and maths, meets visual art, meets creative writing. And yep, my brothers were both very, very happy with them ^^