Sretan Božić/Merry Christmas

Čestit Božić i sretna nova godina/Merry Christmas and happy new year!

Darksiders challenge finish

I made it.
It was a tough race till the very end.
Couple of hours before the challenge officially ended I managed to finish my entry and submit it to the challenge gallery.

Main reason for being so late was cos I started the image two-three days ago, and main reason for that was cos I was pretty busy with other projects, and the lack of good ideas on how to approach the challenge.

Finally I figured I'd recreate the Watcher, the character from the game, with some of my add ups to the original design, originally from the people of the Vigil games.

Here are the links to the image, and one turntable sheet in the gallery, hope you likes!

As you can see from my previous blog entry, I thought I have an idea, but that turned out to be overly complicated and might be miss understood in accordance to the challenge guidelines.

tc!

Darksiders Challenge start

I had to give it a go.
Wanted to start working on the challenge last week, but had some stuff that had to be done.
Now my hands are untied.
The challenge is about "your last days of earth" and what would you do during those last days.
So I had couple of ideas swarming, but now I have figured out what would I do if there's no tomorrow, and what's more important, I figured out how would I depict that.
In short, my image will be titled, I'd get a tattoo"
I will let it to your imagination till I get it done.
As soon as I'm done I will submit the link to the image , predicting 2-3 days of work, hope it will take less cos the challenge deadline is 17th this month.

tc!

Avatar

I just cant wait for Avatar to hit the cinemassss!

Im looking forward for this movie for two years now.

Ever since I came across first rumors about it I knew it is going to be fantastic, cos face it, James Cameron is a master of sci-fi.

I wont even try getting into commenting all the mean and hating comments towards Avatar of those few people on our planet, without ever having a decent argument why the hate it without even seeing it( blue cat people, they don't even look believable and so on).

But the most saddest thing of all is that most of the trash talk comes from so called sci-fi appreciators and moviegoers.

I guess everyone is entitled to his/her own opinion. Just feel bad for all those people who wont be enjoying this movie in about 10 days from today as I am going to, or am I feeling bad :D.

Even if the movie turns out to be mindless special effect porn, I will most certainly walk away with a smile and positive experience. I mean, if I managed to enjoy Transformers II(most of the visuals, kudos to cg artist colleagues), who are total hardcore cg porn, I guess there shouldn't be any grounded fears for Avatar.

The single fact that the story takes place on a distant lush green planet is pretty much enough to satisfy my appetite even if the story takes fall.

Anyways, of to keep counting days till the "unrealistic blue cat people" hit cinemas xd!!

Here's the trailer for all you sinners who might not even know what I'm talking about :)

take care!

click for full size

Official Avatar Movie

Website uploaded

The website is up and running!

There are couple of things that are unfinished.

So if you click some of these links, you will end up on a black empty page with small note saying "under construction" or something like that. Please don't get pissed of cos of it :)

These things are 2d gallery and 3d models, and I hope I'l get it done in next two three days.

Tutorial part is also under construction. It will take few days to get it done.

I have everything, I just need to put the pieces together.

Tru' time I will be adding new tutorials, mostly related to 3d, zbrush and modeling.

As soon as I get it done I'l commit myself 100% to making stuff, loads of it.

anyways, you can check the web on the link above, top of the page, under the page banner, or just click here:

www.damirgmartin.com

take care!

wacom cintiq

Wacom Cintiq 12 inch is a brilliant gadget and worth buying if you are one bit serious about computer graphics.

Working in Zbrush with this piece of equipment is really special experience, and once you try it, you are most likely not going back.

Natural feeling of being able to work directly on the surface is way batter then using classical tablet,

and as I tried both, I concluded that this is the way to go, for me that is. Next thing would probably be diodes attached to your head, closed eyes, REM state of mind, and dreaming your stuff into computer :)

Seriously tho', this hardware offers some really neat features and really speeds the workflow up weather you use zbrush, or photoshop, or painter.

Handy express keys, five of them on each side, when customized can drastically increase your productivity, and not to mention all the joy it gives...err, at least in the beginning, later you forget about it even exists.

Materials are tough, pen is solid, not like the other ones I had, that would snap in my hand eventually. It feels durable and lasting thing.

All in all, I love my Cintiq, and S.Sejic, our comic book God xd

take care!

Web page update

I've finally uploaded my renewed web page.

It still has some things that aren't finished, around the gallery in particular, but this is whole lot better than it use to be. Im now in phase of optimizing stuff, making it load faster and what not.

I just realized that I made mistakes.

For instance, I have 5 or 6 separate links, index, about, contact, tutorial, gallery and so on..

Each of these have the same exact menu bar and layout with mini banner with my name and title on it. What I did is, I uploaded each repeating item several times, and now, after I realized it, I made some changes, so, now, every element that is repeating anywhere in the web site is loading from one place, index_files folder.

The time of wacom and zbrush exploiting are getting real close :)

later dudes!

Zbrush

Zbrush 3.5 R3 is awesome!

I had my hands on as soon as I got the update link from Pixologic.

I love what the guys at pixo did with this update, especially in regards to 3.5 R2, which in my case had few irritating bugs.

For example, my smooth brush was not working properly.

I posted the issue in troubleshooting thread at zbrush central, but no one knew what was it about, and few people reported that same smooth brush issue like me.

And there were some strange glitches when I was modeling part of geometry in situtations when I had other piece of geometry in perspective behind the mesh I worked on, and the brush focus point, as if zbrush would lost focus, and jumped to the background geometry instead of what was in front.

But never mind that, cos 3.5 R3 works like a charm till this point, and I hope i wont be stumbling on any new bad surprises.

There are couple of insane new and enhanced features, but I'l refer to them later on..

still getting used to this blog thing..

Image

Im just checking how does the image adding stuff work, isn't it nice? :)

Work in progress

I'm in the middle of remaking my old web page,

I so don't like web design. I recognize the usefulness of it,

and I can appreciate good web design,

but I don't like to be involved in it the way I am now..

In all that changing I decided I'l start a blog, or g-log, g is for graphic,

as I'l try to write about computer graphics, my projects,

and things related to that subject. I like writing,

but I was never that well organized or disciplined to do it.

Anyway, my web page is almost finished.
As soon as I upload it, I'l get back to what I like,

modeling, painting and being super creative.

I'm not even sure, how does one get people to read it's blog entries :D
I guess I'l have to be super creative to find out that answer xd

take care!

Ok.

So I started a blog.

I never did this for real, the blogging thing.

I guess I will suck at it for the first couple of weeks, until i figure out what and how I want it to be about.