Biography | FAQ System | Portfolio | Resources | Contact
Frequently Asked Questions
Technical Questions
My Inspirations
Domain Questions
Random Questions
1. You talk about your mobile wrath. What is it?
It's a beautiful 1.5 Powerbook G4 with a massive 1gig of memory. It has a nice 15.5 inch screen with a 1280 resolution. I take it everywhere whenever I need/feel like working outside of my studio (which is alot of the time). I love working at coffee shops.
2. Do you use a Wacom Tablet? Should I get one?
Yes I own a Wacom Tablet, but I cannot say I use on in a frequent basis. You should get one if you are interested in digital illustration.
3. What software do you use to do your work?
Adobe Photoshop
Adobe Illustrator
Adobe Indesign
Adobe Aftereffects
Adobe Premiere
Adobe Auditions
Sound Forge
Cakewalk Pro
Macromedia Flash
Macromedia Freehand
Macromedia Dreamweaver
Macromedia Fireworks
Macromedia Fontographer
Combustion
Maxon Cinema 4D
Discreet 3D Studio Max
Final Cut Pro HD
DVD Studio Pro
iNotepad (for web content organization)
Notepad
4. Do you use a PC?
Yes I do. My PC is a 2.2ghz Intel Core 2 Duo. It has 2gig of dual channel ram with several SATA hard drives and two external hard drives. I work on a 19inch flat panel monitor with 1280 resolution. It's a powerful machine for all kinds of work I do.
5. What kind of digital camera do you have?
I have a Sony DSC-S85 digital camera. It's a bit old but it does the job. I have to say it's pretty good quality for a dinosaur camera.
6. What kind of camcorder do you have?
I have a Sony TRV-S38 Widescreen LCD (Touchscreen Edition). It records in excellent digital video quality. It has firewire, memory card, and editing support. It's pretty small for the quality and technology it carries.
7. Who is your host?
I have signed a contract with Media Temple (mt) for this layout you see today. They are a very excellent and powerful web host.
8. What is your bandwidth usage every month?
I don't really pay attention to it.
9. How many hits do you get per month?
Again, I stopped paying attention to this. I realized that quantity isn't what I need to worry about, but the quality of my visitors and to understand some of them.
10. Any details about your site?
The whole website is laid out using 2 CSS files. One for typography and one for div tag layout. The website is powered by movable type 3.2 with some powerful plug-ins installed. The website has a very strong and organized file hierarchy system in the server. I can access any file very fast. Dreaminfinity.com has about 70 directories in images, media, content, and files. DI_2006 took about a year to design, write, and organize.
12. What color profile do you use for your web designs?
Most of the time I stick with Adobe RGB 1998.
13. What type of printer do you have?
Epson Stylus 1280. It is the best home printer that I have worked with in a while.
1. What are some of your inspirations in terms of music?
As many of you probably may know, Nine Inch Nails has been one of my biggest influences in music. Trent Reznor's music has brought so much idea's and creativity to my head in various ways, I cannot begin to describe how and why. His work style also influences me as an artist. His way of working his projects, as well as his collaborational efforts with artists and designers (i.e Russel Mills, David Carson) has shown me how art and music can collaboratively come together as one form.
Some other top musical inspirations:
Aphex Twin
Project Pitchfork
Before-Celsius
A Perfect Circle
Flesh Field
Assemblage 23
Bjork
Clint Mansell
12 Rounds
Delirium
Teargas and Plateglass
Liquid Tension Experiment
Dresdon Dolls
Frou Frou
Stabbing Westward
Marilyn Manson
Eminem
Portishead
The Birthday Massacre
Evanescence
Velvet Acid Christ
Funkervogt
Front 242
Ministry
Suicide Commando
VNV Nation
Wumpscut
2. What are some of your inspirations in terms of movies?
This is a hard question. I watch alot of movies. Going to the movies on Friday nights and just relaxing to some good movie is a great way to spend some time off the computer. I really love variety of genre when it comes to movies. I like horror movies that scares me shitless. Some of my favorite horror movies are the old Day of The Dead, Dawn of the Dead movies, SAW, old Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Friday the 13th Series, The Ring (both american and japanese) and alot of japanese horror flicks that I watched when I was a kid. I watch many independent films and appreciate them as well. I enjoyed American Beauty (before it got big), Dancer in the Dark, The Secretary, and Dirty Pretty Things. I love trilogies like The Matrix Trilogy, Star Wars series, and the classic Back to the Future. Also can't forget about the Hannibal Lecter series. I loved all of them with Red Dragon being the least favorite. (I know some of you will e-mail me telling me that Manhunter is the best) I love Sci-Fi movies like The Terminator series, Blade Runner, Total Recall, Alien series, and etc. And I love movies that tell a story in a different pacing (instead of A-Z) like 21 Grams, Spy Game, etc. Many films out there gave me different inspirations and all I have to say is, go out and watch alot of different movies because it will give you an different effect each time you watch a good film. Oh yeah, I am really obsessed with Battle Royale. I thought the movie was plain okay, but the novel and the comic book is amazing.
3. Who are some of your inspirations on the web?
Let's see. I love the works of Bradly Grosh (Gmunk), Jens Karlsson (Chapter 3), Adrian Luna (purusdesign.com) Mike Cina and Mike Young(weworkforthem.com, designgraphik.com), the guy and girl at AvacadoLite, the work of Yugop.com, and not so much anymore but I have to admit Eric Jordan has impressed me many times. The guy from Deaddreamer.com has been also a great influence in the past as well. There is really so much to name cause honestly I've gotten inspirations from everywhere.
4. Any good books you can recommend?
I read alot of books on design and art in my life so far. It's hard to really tell you what books are good cause there are so many. One thing I believe in is never buy tooo many books that showcase people's work. That's reallly a worst way to waste your money unless you're rich as hell and wipe your ass with it. I bought the book from Andreas Lindholm (Metalheart). It's a great book but it just showcases their work and other people's work and it doesn't really teach me anything. I love resource books that can tell me information I cannot find easily on the web or other places. I also bought many books on 3D Studio Max, Flash, Director, Dreamweaver, etc. Those are good books to learn software but alot of the information can be found on the web by doing good searching. I have only bought one Photoshop book in my whole entire life and that was the Masters Of Photoshop book by FriendsOfEd. That was a good book to learn some of the techniques my favorite designers did/do. But again you have to becareful with books like that because they can make you do exactly the same things they do and you're not being original at all.
5. You play video games? If so which ones inspire you?
I love video games. I am a huge fan of FPS games like Quake, Doom and Half Life. Some of my latest inspirational games were Half Life 2, Max Payne 2, and Halo. I was a huge Quake 2 and 3 player, and I also played Doom 3 as well. I'm also a huge Counter-Strike player, and have been since 2000. I also played great games like Prince of Persia Sands of Time and Warrior Within, Need for Speed Underground, Final Fantasy XI (siren server, name: synergen), and played alot of Starcraft in the late 90's. Name a FPS game and I am probably interested to play it.
6. How do you play video games and work on your site at the same time?
If I quit video games, I would probably have released execution 8 by now. But video games is my tool to run away from the design world.
7. What kind of magazines do you read?
Baseline, Flaunt, Adbusters, CMYK, Communication Arts, and Print magazine.
8. You inspire me, will you talk to me?
I love talking to my fans. Please do contact me. I would also like to note that I get plenty of inspirations and idea's from my fans. I am not perfect and don't wish to be, and I want to continue meeting people who say they are my "fans" (but in all honestly, I don't like that word. You are my friend to me).
1. When did Dreaminfinity.com first establish itself?
I can't really say 'establish' because of the fact that dream infinity went through several evolutions through the year. But in technical sense, the domain was registered in November of 1998, and launched a fullscale site in January of 1999.
2. How many people run dream infinity studios?
It has always been one person, which is me, since 1998. There is currently plans of this site opening a part of my site to other talented designers, and forming a team based system/project in the near future.
3. You only released five executions since 1998?
Execution series didn't start until the end of the year 2000. Before that I had about 10 versions of Dreaminfinity.com which was pretty different in concept and theme compared to my execution series. Execution series is a whole new way of communicating through web design, even though that concept itself has changed with this release.
4. I am your old fan and I have heard you talking about releasing a downdriven 2. What's going on with that?
Things have changed.
5. Why isn't Dreaminfinity.com linked on " " ?
I don't really try hard to be spread apart all over the net, even though I should. I try hard to promote new executions as much as time lets me. If you want to link exchange, please e-mail me at chris@dreaminfinity.com
6. Do you program and design all of the site? Or do you have programmers on the side?
I program about 99% of the site and design 100% of the site. I only have programmers to help me in complex programming environments but that has changed during the past 3 years because I try my best to learn programming languages that's useful for web design and development. This is the first version using 100% CSS.
7. Do you hand code or are you a dreamweaver user?
I use Dreamweaver as a core "construction" tool for my websites. I am no where near patient enough to do everything by hand and design everything from scratch. However, to use Dreamweaver, you do need to know the basics (HTML, CSS), so it's not like I am clueless about web programming.
8. Where are your other Executions?
Executions 1 - 3 is archived in a private location in my hard drive. I don't have them available publicly anymore. Execution 1 "Synth" dated from 2000 - 2001, Execution 2 "Atmostfear" dated from 2001 - 2003, Execution 3 "untitled" dated from 2003 - 2005.
9. There used to be a title for Execution 3. What happened?
It used to be called "Exiled from the System", but from many evolutions and changes that Execution 3 went through, it just became an untitled release. Some of the things that I was going to communicate in Execution 3 are now talked about in Execution 5. I felt that the subject (love, hate, and revenge) that moved from Execution 3 to 5 needed it's own attention.
10. How come it's taking so long for "Perplex" to come out?
It's still in the works believe it or not. It is the longest production time ever in dreaminfinity.com history.
1. How did you like Art Center?
It was good and bad. I can honestly say it was a good experience, but then again, it was one of the most darkest periods of my life. I wish to never go back to it again.
2. How has it helped you being at Art Center?
It helped me alot. It definitely taught me way too many things to make a list. I was driven by many instructors and most of the time I didn't have a problem with staying motivated. It also changed me as a person in alot of ways. In many ways I wish to go back to who I was before but the damage has been done.
3. Did you meet alot of people at Art Center?
Yes, but not many of them turned into long term relationships. In many ways I wish that it would've. There was some great people at that school and if we collaborated, it would've been some beautiful synergy that would've gone on. I tried to get a collaboration going with the motion version of Execution 5. Unfortunately that didn't really work out due to time. There was alot of people that was good to talk to at Art Center, but most were not. Alot of the times I felt that they wanted to keep what they knew to themselves. I meet just as good people on the internet but I guess it's different when it's in real life. I met GREAT teachers that I wouldn't have met if it wasn't for that school though.
4. If you can change your past and go to a different school, where would you have gone?
I probably wouldn't choose a different school. Art Center would've been my choice either way. If I had to choose somewhere different, it would be Cal Arts.
5. Do you hate love?
I hate it but I can't live without it. Same goes for sex.
6. What is your wallpaper Alice about? Is that your girlfriend?
Alice is not a person, but an salvation you look for during your very hard times. I wish it was my girlfriend.
7. What is your wallpaper Everything is exactly the same about?
A past relationship that hasn't changed what so ever in a bad way.
8. What is your wallpaper "Deliverance" about?
Deliverance of truth, honesty, hate, and greed. It was pointed towards a person that lives in complete cluelessness till this day. Deliverance 2 is about unfaithfulness through truth, honestly, hate, and greed. That's about me.
9. What part of your website is your favorite?
My execution series section. I know most of my visitors come for my tutorials though. In many ways I wish that people came for my work instead of my tutorials.
10. Do you live under constant hatred and greed?
No. I live under constant regret and fear.
11. Who is that girl in "Destroy all love kind"? Is that your girlfriend?
She is Nicole Almanza, the starring actress in Execution 5 //: Destroy All Love Kind. She is not my girlfriend. I try my best not to use my girlfriends as a model or starring roles. I'd like to seperate relationships and work.
12. What is your religion?
I don't have one. I am an agnostic without a home.
13. Do you wish to get married, and have kids and etc. Or is that too normal for you?
What? Yes I'd like to get married and have kids and etc. Whatever the [etc] is...
14. Do you drive around and take pictures alot? What is your favorite past time relation to design?
No i don't drive around and take pictures. I used to do that alot but im too filled up with photo's in my computer. My favorite past time that relates to design is to create wallpapers.
15. Do you think you create wallpapers in a different way from others?
I'd like to think so. Most wallpaper designers concentrate on eye candy. I concentrate on communication. If the wallpaper is ugly but communicates it in an visually interesting and powerful way, I'm going to release it. Most wallpaper designers pay attention to how the wallpaper fits on the PC/Mac environment. I try not to care about that too much, as that isn't important to me. I had people tell me that my signature for my wallpapers dissappeared under the task bar in windows, or the menu bar on the mac os x. I just simply reply that I don't care. The truth is, I don't design wallpapers because I want to satisfy others computing experience. I design wallpapers as an release of emotion and feelings. I just use the wallpaper medium so I have a reason to show it off on my website. I honestly don't care too much of how many people use it and how many people don't use it. Don't get me wrong, I get really flattered when someone is using my wallpaper on their system, but it's not my primary reason.
16. Why did you seperate your website and executions?
I just made my website a foundation ground to present my executions. I felt that if my executions were not being focused as a layout, they have more possibility for communication and media. Get ready cause this is an exciting and one of the best decisions I made for the site.
17. How is the design scene in Los Angeles?
It's good but could be spread too thin. Los Angeles is a HUGE city.
18. Whats is your favorite color?
Cyan
19. Do you think the design scene on the internet is good?
Not most of the time. I think it's been kinda dead the past 3 or so years. There are way too many wanna-be designers that picked up Photoshop in a month and started making their own "business".
20. How often do you find yourself designing for your own?
During art center, I barely designed for myself. When I was on my break or when I was out of the school, I found myself doing it more and more. Designing for pleasure, and designing for business is a total different mentality.
21. Why are you so angry/sad/depressed all the time? And why design about it? It must be so exhausting to be like you. Why don't you just enjoy life and be happy with what you have? Get a life? [random insults here].
I try hard everyday to be happy with what I have and the life I am living. I am not angry/sad/depressed all the time either. Now to answer why design about it: Well all I can say is that it is my form of communication. Love, Hate, Violence, Sex and Politics is the topics that my site and executions tend to stick to. If you honestly cannot stand someone having to communicate and express their feelings about these subjects, no one is really forcing you to come here and check out what I have to say. If you are offended, maybe you have a guilty conscious? When I communicate about certain topics, I try my best to stay fair.
