Aždaja / The Dragon is Live on Youtube!

Finally, after completing a successful festival run, I am making the film available here for everyone:

Aždaja - The First Special Screening

Official movie poster

Quite some time has passed since Aždaja was first announced, so I am very pleased that it is finally finished and ready to devour the film festivals around the globe.

On 18th of June 2016, the first special screening for the crew and friends took place in Meeting Point Cinema, Sarajevo. Actually we had to make two screenings as the cinema was too small. I would like to thank every single one of 450 people who came to the screening for their love and support! Especially you, my hoodoo. It was among those most special and pleasant moments of my life.

Ever since I started doing animation I wanted to make something like this, and with this level of quality. I wanted to combine animation and live action in an epic short film. This film was a dream come true.

I will take this opportunity to share with you the first in the series of making-of Aždaja videos:

The Legend of Aždaja

Aždaja in the village Umoljani

One of the surviving legends about the Bosnian dragon in village Umoljani goes like this:

Once upon a time in a village far far away, a lot of people gathered to party. They partied for days and thus made such a noise that woke the Aždaja, a giant serpent that slept in the nearby canyon. Aždaja crawled out of the canyon and hurried towards the people to put an end to the terrible noise. As soon as they realized the danger, the people chanted their prayer which saved them by petrifying the Aždaja. The trail of Aždaja can still be seen today in a form of a winding creek leading to the village, and the beast itself petrified on a nearby cliff.

The village is situated near the canyon of river Rakitnica which is where the dragon lived. The creek leading from the canyon to the village is called Studeni potok or "The cold creek".
It is quite obvious the legend got skewed and deformed by the passing ages, turning the dragon (Aždaja) into a mindless beast that threatened the people. In fact, the opposite is true. That is why I made this film - to show the world the real dragon of Bosnia.

Here is a map showing the locations from the legend:

Two Faces of the Bosnian Dragon

Ancient legends speak of the Great Bosnian mountain dragon that dwells in faraway forgotten lands of the Bosnian empire. Through the ages a few shamans from the remote mountain villages have mastered the craft of summoning this dragon.

The dragon shows up as two parts - the black and the white. Only when two parts intertwine, they form a magnificent creature in perfect balance and harmony.

The Black Dragon

Takes up the form of a great serpent composed of black stone plates with dark smoke pouring from within. He is the darkness, the powerful masculine physical manifestation. Without thoughts or reason, the black dragon, will devour anything in its path as he is the embodiment of destruction and chaos. He is the powerful force of entropy in nature. This dragon brings thunder, earthquakes and raptures the volcanoes. The shamans know he can only be tamed with the help of the white dragon.

The White Dragon

She is the faint and fragile spiritual dragon, the light. She is the brightness of the sunlight, the reason and the force of life. Whenever she appears, she spreads joy, happiness and harmony among all earthly creatures. She knows no size, thus sometimes appears so small she can fit on a daisy flower and twirl between leaves of grass. Other times the white dragon creates the most intriguing cloud shapes as she swings her tail through the skies. The people say she brings the purest of love.

The Inspiration for the Dragon

Two intertwined dragons on
stećak in Brštanica

The dragon in the film is comprised of two opposing yet complementary parts - the light and the dark. They intertwine and balance each other, forming the perfect dragon, a protector of the village.

The concept was directly inspired by the particular symbol found on mysterious stećak tombstones reliefs. The relief shows two serpent-like dragon creatures facing each other while their bodies are entangled. Only four tombstones have this symbol and I was lucky enough to find them all and make some photos, along with a selfie, of course.

Tutorial - How to export stretchy bones from 3ds max to unity

Stretchy bones used to squash this chubby low-poly frog named Arnold
from our free android game JuJu Frog made in Unity

In this quick tutorial I will show you how to set up 3ds max stretchy bones (with squash and stretch) and properly export them to Unity game editor.

JuJu Frog - the game

Hello people!

I'm happy to announce our new free game for Android - "JuJu Frog" by AI Interactive. It was developed during the period of two and a half months with my friend Amar from Gamedev5 blog. More details and making of coming soon!

Download it here and enjoy:

Village Umoljani resurrected

Umoljani in all its glory!

I'm very excited to share this picture of the Bosnian dragon village - Umoljani. The scene is set and everyone is waiting for the mighty mountain dragon! The eclipse is near.

Tremble Smaug, for the Dragon of Bosnia is Rising!

The first glimpse of the black dragon

The unexpected turbulence that was... well, not so unexpected, took its toll keeping the Dragon of Bosnia from exiting his cave all these months. Fortunately, the elements have come to rest, allowing the dragon to finally open his eyes.

The Game - the first level is online

Screenshot

CLICK HERE TO PLAY

A long awaited first level of the game is ready for you to play in your browser. As is known, this epic film will be accompanied by a short browser puzzle game.

Trailer is online!

The first trailer for this epic Bosnian movie is available on Youtube. Feast your eyes on this animated/live-action wizardry.

The small nebula did turn out to be a full sized galaxy composed of about 20 million particles, taking 350mb of cache per frame! That is a lot of disk space, but luckily my good friend, the computer, managed to crunch all the numbers.

The village appeared out of smoke as planned, but I still see some houses hesitating to materialize. I'll have a conversation with them for the final film.

The dragon specifically asked me only to show tip of his head for now, so I had to follow his wish. You know the dragons, they can be quite thick headed.

Oh, look, there is a galaxy in my stećak!

An epic nebula hoping to become a galaxy

Every epic film should contain at least one epic outer space shot. So, I cooked and steered a few particles and voila - here it is. The thing is 3D and is moving, but I won't reveal the video yet since it's the part of the upcoming film trailer.

This newborn puff of dust is a bit wild at the moment but the taming process is going well, so expect it to become a nice spiral on the face of stećak tombstone. That is, unless it starts doing the Harlem shake.

A smokey village

Yes, the final film will look like this. Trust me.

Another concept painting. The idea has evolved and I think I'm settling with the final look here. My recent trip around the great Bosnian Kingdom brought me to the old fortress of Ključ which inspired these changes to the village in the film.

Dragon of Bosnia, the game teaser is online!

Live action frame of Soraki, the main character in the game

Happy November 25th, the National day of Bosnia and Herzegovina! Being fashionably late is always a good idea. Or maybe it isn't. Anyway, I'm happy to say that the preview of our game based on my film is waiting for you and can be accessed on the following link: Dragon of Bosnia

Dragon, the game announcement

In-game screenshot

Every epic film has an epic game happening in the same universe and setting, so I felt obligated to venture to that direction too. The screenshot illustrates the enormous complexity of this side project which will serve as an introduction to the film.

The Dark Dragon

A concept of a black dragon

Quite a few days have passed with this image creeping in my head, but for some reason it didn't come out until now. Well, maybe a bit of laziness is to blame.

I'd say this is a natural progress of the earlier concept sketches for this half of the dragon. I want to go more with the smokey not well defined shape which is constantly changing. These spikes will continuously grow and break apart. I am thinking of using coal as the reference. It will be quite tricky to get right, but hopefully some early animation tests are coming soon.

It is such an amazing thing to do both the concepts and the final animation yourself - you keep thinking about the technical stuff from the very beginning, so there are no compromises in the end. You know exactly what can be done and how. So, let me hit you with some technical stuff: I will try making a few spikes growing out of the head, break them using 3ds max RayFire plugin, add more little pieces with PFlow and of course complete the effect with some nice FumeFX smoke.

Keep your fingers and tentacles crossed. The Bosnian dragons are coming.

Shooting finished

Since this is half live action and half animated film, there was a real shooting (dooh!). And, yeah, it was epic (not only because we used the "RED epic" camera). I'm happy to say that the weather was exactly as I wanted it to be during all five days of filming and that everything went according to plan. Here's one photo for start.

You can see two common Bosnian guys chasing a white dragon on a beautiful highland, hoping to get some usable footage.

And, please Peter Jackson, stop asking me to mention your little film "Hubbit" on my blog. This is not the place to ask for free views!

Every film starts with the first frame

Ok, well.. here's the first, of hopefully many interesting posts. It is one of the first concept drawings for the film featuring one peaceful Bosnian dragon in one ordinary Bosnian village. It's a common sight here, so I decided to make a film about that.