Dear Friends;

I'm not sure whether I'm justified in sending you this stuff since you
probably never heard of me...  Though I AM indeed an echo regular
(since just after the dismal days of Carol Lewis began; seems
like years ago... ooops, it WAS years ago), I am not presently a
regular echo POSTER.  Though I used to input dozens of messages a
week, lately I am often a week or more behind in my message reading
and so I usually choose not to post so as not to appear hopelessly out
of date. Try as I may, I just can't seem to keep up... I am one of
those folks who refuses to filter messages; I read EVERYTHING in the
Amiga echo and the Amiga Video echo, no matter how long or how silly.

Let me tell you a little about myself and maybe you'll see why I've
been having trouble keepin' up...

I am 38 years old, born and raised in upstate New York and a Georgia
resident since 1979 (see HEADSHOT01 for a pic of my mug).  My wife and
I have a daughter named Sieren (pronounced SEER-en), who has Spina
Bifida, and so we are always on the road back and forth to Atlanta for
medical care. There's a picture (SIEREN01) of her in her wheelchair
washing the car.

Since 1970 or so I've been an artist, and since 1976 I have made my
living doing pottery (see HOVEYPOT02... one of my lowfire pieces;
different from most of my present work which is in porcelain).  Since
1982 I have also manufactured artist's brushes (made from deertail and
bamboo) that are marketed internationally by a company in Chicago.

I bought my first Amiga in 1986 and have been doing art (2D and 3D) on
it ever since, mostly for pleasure (see SKYWHY04, LANDSCAPE05, GWOK
and F-16.02) but I've also done some independent work for local video
producers (see VICTORIA05, a title shot for a video of a local
restaurant) and programmers (see CAT06 and CAT13, the title and
interface screens for a program written by Mike Cargal for an eye
doctor) since around 1989.  In addition, I'm a founding member of the
AMIGA USER'S KLUB here in Columbus (see AUK01 for a pic of our
'mascot') and am presently serving as president and newsletter editor.
My current machine is a  28MHz 2000 with 3 megs (of 16 bit, alas), and
an 80 meg Seagate.  We also have a 512k 500 which I mostly let my
daughter use and also take to AUK meetings... but every time I use it
I find myself wishing I'd never sold my 1000 (which I had to, in order
to afford the 2000).

So far, so good... I was busy, as you can see, but nothing I couldn't
handle (though I'll admit, I'd lost a few hours sleep here and
there).  I went to art shows, played with my daughter and (after a
friend gave me a modem) I started having fun on the echos.  Then, last
October my life changed bigtime.  WRBL-TV3 bought a Toaster in July
'91, and though they'd been having good luck with the CG and Switcher,
they were pretty lost in the 3D animation and Toasterpaint areas.  The
production manager went looking around for "an artist, preferably with
3D design experience, preferably on an Amiga."  Well, there's only one
of those animals in all of Columbus so I ended up with a job (no
interview, no nothin'... just "come on in, fill out the paperwork,
here's your timecard and key to the side door, now get to work").  I
LOVE this job (high praise from someone who has been militantly
self-employed nearly all his professional life); it is a chance to
work on a killer machine (9 megs, soon to be 17, 50MHz, DQ-Taco, MII
tape deck) and the entire graphic look of the station is pretty much
my responsibility (see CAMERA), in addition to doing animations for
advertising clients).  Only problem is that trying to juggle all these
jobs has taken its toll... I come home, often well after midnight, and
fall asleep in a chair while talking to my wife or watching a movie.
The next morning I'll get up and over a cup of coffee I'll get on the
board (AMIGeorgiA, Jack Mowery, Sysop) to download that day's message
packet while trying to read what I can of a previous batch of
messages, getting further behind every day.  Then, towards the end of
the month when I have to get out a newsletter, I'll pull an
all-nighter and catch up on all the unread messages, saving the
"newsy" info and wild rumors into a clip file for inclusion into the
newsletter (all our members have been pretty lazy about writing
articles, so this is the easiest method of getting a nice newsletter
with lots of info and gossip; all I have to do is do a little
cut-and-paste and clean up some grammar and spelling).

I hope this frantic schedule isn't going to go on forever (like this
letter).  As if things weren't bad enough, we've been in the process
of moving across town... as a lifelong junk collector, this move has
involved LOTS of work, but looking on the bright side, the work's only
temporary, and I got a great new computer room out of the deal.  I
guess I'll probably be backing off from the art festivals (I do about
10 a year) and just stick with the shops and galleries.  That should
take the load off until the TV station puts me on full time (I'm at
25-30 hours now), at which time something's gonna have to go...
probably my sanity.

Anyway, through it all I've remained an Amiga fanatic (yea, Irving, we
ARE fanatics... one of the rare TRUE statments you've made, and one I
consider complimentary though your use of the term was not intended to
be such), and the Echo is a cherished place filled with dear though
distant friends.  I hope that as things settle down I'll be able to
join you in a more participatory fashion.  Until then I'll remain with
you in affectionate silence.

Sincerely,

Bob Hovey


PS: The pictures I've enclosed are mostly for your amusement... I know
the Echo disk is getting full and there probably won't be room for a
mugshot, let alone anything else.  But If you feel one of the pics
would make a good title screen or whatever, you are welcome to use
whatever you like.  Complete descriptions of the pictures follow.
I've included Showiz to view them with.  I've only included one
example of my 3D Toaster stuff; it's all at work, and it's all 24 bit
anyway.  Also included is a short bio (README.Brief), which contains a
Reader's Digest Condensed Version of the above info...


AUK01:  A picture of our mascot pursuing his favorite pastime (an auk
is a flightless aquatic bird, sort of a north-Atlantic penguin).
DeluxepaintII.

CAT06:  A title screen for a program to test vision.  A pattern is
copied from one box to another using a lightpen.  Different lines are
in different colors to test colorblindness, or patterns may be
reversed or rotated to test visual acuity and perception.  Rendered
with DeluxePaintIII.

CAT13: An interface screen from the above program.  DeluxePaintIII.

F-16.02:  Rendered with DeluxePaintIII from the cover picture of
Falcon:Operation Counterstrike.  I have been accused of digitising
this image on more than one occasion, but believe me, it was
hand-drawn and hand-antialiased (using an old mouse with a sticky
button).  It took about 30 hours, and is in 8 colors (saving half the
palette so that it could be merged with another image... like a nice
sky that I never got around to...).

GWoK:  Great Wave off Kanagawa, from a wood-block print by the
19th-century Japanes artist Hokusai (from his series '100 views of
Mount Fuji').  Drawn with DeluxePaintII on a 512k Amiga, which is why
it has 8 colors instead of 16.  I always meant to expand the palette
and touch it up, but never got around to that either...(sigh).

HEADSHOT01:  Yours truly, in all his fuzzy-headed glory.  Captured by
a fellow AUK member using LIVE!

HOVEYPOT02:  Digiview from a photo.  This pot is salt-vapor bisque, a
handbuilt top on a wheel-thrown base, about 18" tall.  Most of my work
is in porcelain these days; this piece was done around 1988.

LANDSCAPE05:  One of my "watercolor-by-computer" series; done with the
original Digipaint, before I fell in love with Photon Paint.

SIEREN01:  Shot from one of my photos, using a friend's DCTV.  Sieren
was about five in this photo and is seven now (but still looks pretty
much the same; spina bifida kids grow slowly).

SKYWHY04: Done with DeluxepaintII, originally in low-res as a study
for a pattern to be painted on one of my porcelain pots.  I later
used WRAP/Free in Photon Paint to see what it'd look like on a pot.
This version, repainted in hi-res, was done at a computer graphics
workshop I gave about a year or so ago.

VICTORIA05:  Hand-painted logo, from a fuzzy B&W silhouette captured
(DigiView) from a letterhead.  The restaurant commissioned a video to
be shown at "A Taste of Columbus" and this was the title screen.  This
is what most of my artwork is like these days; I do the paying jobs
first and if I want to do a "fun" picture, it gets done when I have
some free time (which is seldom).  This picture was done with
DeluxepaintIII which is still my favorite 2D program... I spend many
hours a week in Toasterpaint, and while it's nice to be able to paint
in 24-bit, the program's a dog as far as ease-of-use is concerned.

CAMERA:  I wanted to throw in a Toaster image, but unfortunately
they're all at work, 'cept this one.  Converted from 24-bit, it is an
in-progress rendering check, two views of a Sony M7 camera.  This was
one of my first projects; the intro for our 7 & 11 News, done kind of
"48-HOURS" style (but the viewer flies into the camera lens instead of
the viewfinder...). These views are of the half-finished camera; it's
missing the lens and quite a few body details.  The modeling took
nearly two weeks and the file ended up at about 6000 points.  The
finished animation was about 20 seconds long and came out great if I
do say so myself.  If you'd like a copy, send us a tape and I'll
record our demo reel containing this and a dozen or so other anims.