Dante's Blue Hell
Originally, I wasn't going to upload this one as a sheep at all. But, I thought, it might be good for crossing with something to try to get the motion a bit more flowing and a bit less spinning. This worked far better than I would have guessed, and the next page of sheep will be children of these crosses. I decided to upload Dante's Blue as well, as much for comparison as anything.

Rust and Aluminum
This one got uploaded on accident when I clicked on the wrong .flame file. There's nothing wrong with it - it's just a lot like The Path and Sumbel, which are better. Rust and aluminum are what you use to make thermite, if you didn't know. A friend of mine did it on accident once.

Sunlight in Solution
This is one of my favorites from this group. I saved it to post just before posting the children from Dante's Blue Inferno, hoping that the server will build an edge between it and one of the ones like Heather In the Mead. But, no... it only built two edges, and none to my sheep.

Pirate's Copper
It is entirely coincidental that this sheep was uploaded on Talk Like a Pirate Day. Aye, 'tis the glint of copper coins that brings the name. Arr!

Sumbel
It reminds me of curling horns. Sumbel is the Norse name for the practice of passing around the drinking horn and making toasts and boasts.

Sparks in the Wax
A good trick, if you're making candles, is to add just a bit of one of the metallic crayons (gold, silver, copper) to the wax. It does really cool things. It looks a bit like this.

Metal and Blue
Another one named for its color palette.

Sending out Spores
I'll be the first to admit that I have fungus on the brain. Some mushrooms literally fire out their spores, as if from a microscopic cannon.

Creepy Crowley Spiders
For the uninitiated: Aleister Crowley is one of the preeminant authors of dark and disturbing literature with which aspiring teenage pagans can scare their parents. My friends in college called him Creepy Crowley, and the sort of pentacle-like thingy in the corner of this image made the pun irresistable.

Magnetic Ferns
It reminded me of ferns, it reminded Eric of magnetic fields. Some of the edges are not technically from this image, but from its child. Its child just happens to be exactly identical to it. The first edge goes to one of my later sheep, This Current River.

Staring into the Sun
I wouldn't recommend trying it, but if you happen to do it, the effect is something like this.

Lobsters with Sparklers
The first edge transitions from a child of Bifrost to Lobsters.

Gold Palm
The first edge transitions from Gold Palm to a child of Spiders from Mars. The second edge transforms from the very similar child of Bifrost.

Red Fern
This title is literal, haven't read the book.

Icarus
Reminds me of flying.

Golden Wheel
The Whirling Golden Wheel, from the Morgan's Tarot.

Through the Ice
Title inspired by the Phish song, It's Ice.

Weaving Snow

Bifrost
Bifrost is the name of the bridge between Midgard and Asgard, between the Earth and the home of the gods. It is, technically speaking, a rainbow bridge, but the chilly names of Norse mythology suit the grays and whites better I think. At last, having lots of sheep on the server at once paid off: the first edge is between Bifrost and Icarus. The last child more closely resembles a sibling to this sheep than its parent; I think it looks a lot like Dante's Blue Hell.

Piper at the Gates of Dawn
Swiped the title from Pink Floyd this time. This one reminds me of music for the same reason that Flange does. The last edge goes between this sheep and Golden Wheel. The children are technically grand-sheep, but the two children of Piper are identical to it. So the grand-sheep are here instead. UPDATE: Apparently Piper had at least one fan: it has been resurrected by the server acolytes as sheep 7242 on the new server.

Spiders from Mars
Alien and arachnoid, and a tip of the hat to David Bowie.

Fuzzy Gray Light
This one also looks very alien to me. After giving some consideration to Sunset on Planet X and things like that, I settled on the more literal/memorable nomenclature. The last edge goes to a distant descendant of Cat's Cradle.

Golden Vortex
The spiral on the lower left looks like it's slipping into a funnel and back out again. This was originally the same color as Through the Ice.

Seader
In contrast to the Dragons, I put this one up mostly just to see the animation at full resolution. Much to my surprise, it is by far and away the most popular of any of my sheep: topping out the scales with a peak rating of 73. It reminds me of both cedar and seaweed, hence the name. The first edge goes between Seader and one of the descendants of Cat's Cradle.

Seaweed
Basically a variation on Seader, with ribbons rather than threads. The first edge goes between Seaweed and one of the descendants of Cat's Cradle.

The Path
I'll be the first to admit that this one makes a better still image than animation. Perhaps I've been staring at my screen too long and am prone to being overly metaphorical, but I like that all paths lead to all other paths, and there is more than one possible end.

Van Gogh Dragon
This triplet of sheep (dragons, whatever) started with a sort of red spiral that I really liked, but had lousy motion. So I crossed it with a sheep that had an interesting sort of quivering motion, like strumming guitar strings or tickling jello.

Dragon Runes
Surprisingly, it did exactly what I wanted it to do. A little further fiddling generated about 10 sheep that I liked, which I narrowed down to 3 for posting. The first edge goes between Jeweled Cyclone and this one.

Dragon Tail
I had named the red spiral Dragon Tail, so it made sense that its children should all bear dragon names too. This one is closest to the prototypical Dragon sheep, so it inherited the name. I think they're some of the most interesting sheep in the bunch, and naturally they drifted through the popularity contest, mostly in the single-digits.

Chris's green fractal

Chris, the lead singer of Gaia Consort, had been working on the song The Green when I was first starting to make sheep. He saw my screen capture of sheep 17746 on my mandalas page. He wanted to use the green fire as lighting for his spring concert. I figured we needed to re-render the sheep at more than 72 dpi, so I found the parameters for the sheep... but I couldn't help but think it would be better if we recolored it...

Vitus Dance fractal

... and then I decided to just Photoshop it a little bit... so of course, by the time I was done messing with it, it looked rather different from the original.

Vitus Dance cover

But Chris liked what I had done with it so much that he decided to use it as the backdrop for the cover of the new album! So, now it's famous. Sue used a version of the Ravens fractal for a couple of the booklet pictures too. The album is fabulous - I couldn't be happier!