Hello, I am Tycho Magnetic Anomaly, an artist living in the Republic of Ireland.
My primary focus is on creating Motion Art using Blender and Sketchfab, aiming to make interesting looking and satisfying-to-watch animated abstract art.
Above all, I love to explore and experiment with the possibilities Sketchfab can offer as a tool to create art.
I have had a background in General Art / Graphic Design for a long time, from advert design to game art. I have also had experience with more abstract art including a few years creating both 2D and 3D fractals.
In recent years, I decided to sign up to Sketchfab to use it as a general online model viewer since at the time I was trying to get back in 3D. However it wasn’t long before I started to realize what Sketchfab is capable of as an art medium in itself and so I started to experiment with creating Motion Art. Before I knew what was what, I started to specialize in Motion Art / Motion Graphics.
The biggest inspirations that encouraged me to create Motion Art are the magical things I have seen from Processing Artists and Shadertoy Artists along with many other Artists that produce abstract / motion graphics also, going back as far as the Amiga demo scene.
Many of my works are also directly inspired by the sciences (especially the natural sciences) but are always abstract and not actual representations of such. I also have a general interest in geometry, shapes, patterns, tiling, numbers, and so on.
Although a very minor aspect, early on I set myself the challenge of titling my Motion Art works with two word titles only which has actually turned out to be a fun challenge, especially when the artwork was inspired by something specific.
And naturally the Sketchfab community has given me so much encouragement along the way, which has always been a constant inspiration to me to continue to create with Sketchfab.
I am fascinated by interesting geometry and patterns which feature a lot throughout my works.
I love color, so many of my works tend to be quite colorful and/or vivid. I adore playing with light, making it dance, bending it, bouncing it. As a result, many of my works are using tricks of light.
I am like a moth to a light bulb when it comes to neons and glows which I have featured in my works often. I like to spoof particle-like effects and volumetric-type effects a lot.
Above all the most important thing for me is the Motion. The Motion comes first and as a consequence I put particular effort in trying to create seamless loops so no matter how long or short the Motion Art is, there is never an abrupt end or start to them in most cases.
Even though my primary focus has been Motion Art for a while, I have uploaded a variety of other things, some non-animated and some not abstract, some experiments and personal exercises too. You can explore all my things by checking out the links at the end of this article.
I do all the Mesh and Animation work in Blender. Everything else—materials, lighting, camera, post-processing—is created entirely with the Sketchfab engine.
I am pretty old-school when it comes to method. Everything I do is based on very primitive and simplistic form and motion which is replicated and varied to produce something that may appear more complex than it actually is.
Many of my things may have a fractal-like appearance in form, or motion or both, I suppose this might be no surprise with my interest in fractal systems and history in making fractal art.
I do not use Nodes in Blender such as material nodes, geometry nodes or animation nodes, I do not use any particle systems or any physics of any kind.
On Sketchfab I am limited to 3 dynamic lights which can’t be animated, a camera which can’t be animated, and materials that can’t be animated, as well as other limitations. I have found it both a joy and challenge to create certain effects that I would have thought impossible for Sketchfab to do when I first started.
Besides the challenge in making Sketchfab do certain things, I have also really enjoyed using Sketchfab’s 3D editor with its deceivingly limited set of parameters and options compared to tools such as Blender. The lack of in-depth options has, I feel, heavily contributed to my technique and resulting style and is also a huge reason why I have never focused much on rendering in Blender itself.
Everything I make is designed to perform well on 1080 GTX (or equivalent) with an i7 CPU at 60fps / 60Hz at a standard 1980×1080 HD resolution, preferably in full screen, at night in the dark!
My things may struggle on older tech, mobile devices or computers running higher resolutions and monitor refresh rates.
I have not personally experienced any of my things or indeed anything on Sketchfab in VR or AR but I have been told some of my things are interesting to view in VR, however because I have not tested these platforms I cannot guarantee all of my things will perform well.
Some of my work may look drastically different depending on resolution (screen size / window size), in particular my technique of using alpha masking. These ones especially would ideally be viewed only at the recommended viewing suggestion, mentioned above.
A tiny percentage of my things have a very slight glitch / jump / pause in the loop which I have tried numerous times to resolve but have been unable to find a solution—it only affects a very small number of my things, thankfully.
I often spend quite a bit of time choosing suitable accompanying music for much of my work, keep an eye out for any accompanying music links in the descriptions in each of my works for the best experience. (None of the accompanying music choices were created by me.)
You can explore all my Motion Art and other things here on my full Sketchfab portfolio.
I have a regular ArtStation portfolio where I mirror most of the things I have posted on Sketchfab but in some cases have also provided interesting still images from exploring certain Motion Art works on Sketchfab.
I also have an alternate ArtStation portfolio website.
It has been a wonderful experience for me to have discovered Sketchfab as an artist tool. Although Blender has played its part, Sketchfab has often felt like my paints, brush and canvas all at the same time.
The community and staff have all been fantastic, and seeing the amazing artistic and creative content on Sketchfab continues to amaze and inspire me.
My only regret is coming a little late to the party.
If you wish to contact me privately then please send me a message via ArtStation. I may be open to hearing offers of work or collaborations so don’t hesitate to get in touch for any inquiries.
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About the author
Tycho Magnetic Anomaly
Motion artist
