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!