im sittin and tweakin stuff on ravine as stuff is in motion finally and im all fantasy inspired snd so z put a lord of the rings extended trilogy to watch.... id is an awesome listenin material while im workin... and then a stupid thought crawls into my mind..... how do u call a perverted hobbit



dildo baggins...


nothing like sharing the wisdom in a journal XD

heres a short and a funny thought, never have there been two so similar characters.....

for all of you who dont know either one or the other or both.... google them, wikis are filled with facts


and my claim is this, those guys could easily be brothers

1 both are mammas boys
2 both are utterly demented
3 both have this affinity to chopping stuff and are insanely powerful
4....... both..... have.... their ....mothers.... HEADS

theres a thought for ya, now can u think of more similar characters ?

let it rip

ok so i ve been spending last 8 years polishing on my fantasy story ravine.... and while working on it i decided to steer away from the cliches that have been overused o the point of insanity...
and it hit me,

why does every friggin fantasy story have a prophecy, i praise the rare ones that dont...


i mean if u take a look there is a prophecy that either a villain wukll appear or be reborn

or a chosen one will come

you must have a prophecy, cause thankfuly that will keep the characters flying straight, Heaven forbid they would think for themselves and their actions would then be their own responsibility, hell even lucas put in a prophecy in the new star wars.. i guess if ur gonna ram something ram it all the way

yes btw i hate star wars, not the old ones , the new ones, and not cause of cg or the bad acting, i ve seen worse, the thing that really ruined it for me, was the mere fact ther jar jar binks was the one who kickstarted the empire... talk about ruining the grendeur with a crappy decision...

but i digress

i ve seen a buttload of patternwriting in the world of fantasy, books are being written with less skill than an average rpg videogame, dont get me wrong im a huge fan of those, but books are supposed to be something more


characters are being displayed as flat little pawns in some big prophecy and their believability is used thru puns, im sure you have read books like that or seen movies like that,


the really funny thing is that the fantasy genre can be so much more

ah well , cell me disgruntal but this is my opinion, prophecies tend to ruin characters

aand journal nr 2


so till now we learned im a fast worker, really fast, wee brag stjepan brag....XD

what is the slowest part of digital work?
color blending, it is slow and tesious work that takes alot of time and effort to make it look just right


it was thew same for me till a few years sgo i went on my experimenting spree and in an effort to create some sort of a waterfall brush thru use of smudge i found the secret to color blending. it took some time to make the settings work just right and now i got a tool that speeds me up massively


yaay stjepan u dick...u stupid douchebag wtf is this a bragfest


no cause that blender brush is gonna be uploaded now in my gallery for everyone to use, ignore the old blending tutorial i did as that was the crappy version this is the real one, upgraded, it will take a really short time to get used to it it can blend huge surfaces and the strenght goes from supperstrong to incredibly fine and gentle blend


this one is for photoshop cs2, tho u can just copy the settings into cs or cs3, unfortunattely i dont know how to set it in 7 as it doesnt have the scattering option under smudge tool


now here is a little advice, the secret of brushes is


1 when creating the brush the black areas are the ones thet leave a mark, play with shades of grey to make some really cool brush matrixes


after u draw a brush go under edit and define brush preset


now comes the fun part


upper right corner of the screen holds the options, like spacing this determines the spaces between the repeatings of the matrix u made

shape dynamics- massively important- not just for the size bur even more for the angle jitters, and controls like setting the brush angle jitter to direction so it follows your stroke, also really cool are flipx and flipy jitter, thesy rendomise your brush giving it a natural and non repetitive feel, that combined with size jitter gets u awesome results


scattering- cool and important tho a little hard to control option


opacity, and color....play with them...

and dual brush..when u master the beforementioned go wild on dual



thats it for now look for blander in my gallery

so here i was sittin around minding my own business when it hit me, im gettin a bunch of questions about this thing i do, the whole digital painting stuff . how do you do it how long did it take you, what program what method etc.


so..( btw im not that illiterate, i DO know sentences begin with a capital letter, but im just lazy so bare with me!) .... i guess its best to get some misconceptions out of the way , i believe others have stated them at any given time before too.

misconception number 1- talent, got none had none, in my book its just an extuse for lazyness and the human inefficiency in actually going thru with an idea, what do i mean by it.... well ur beginn ing to nurture this interest in art, and its all nice, and at a certain moment, you kinda like your stuff, but then you go and see that there are people with monstrous skills... what do you do

whoa - in a keanu reeves way and kick asses like neo?

rare people do that, thoe are the people that suceed, the ones that persevere in their efforts,

unfortunately most people do this:


weel that artist is talented im not...and theres a lovely excuse to give up. seen it happen on a great number of occasions


misconception number 2 learning



so you think a college will teach you to do art, or a school or a teacher or tutorials.... aaah yes tutorials i find these to be a cancer to an undeveloped mind


how so? well here is an example, somebody sees an anime.... simple drawing so that someone begins telling him/ her self that thats the direction they wanna gp ( im not a manga anime hater , far from it, i read m angas like a maniac) this situation could also have been ordinary comics or and other " style" driven stuff


so that person, without andy definite knowledge of anatomy starts working on their manga styleafter a while parts of it become relatively good looking, but the lack of anatomical knowledge kicks in and from that itr becomes noticeable, hiding the tough parts, weird stiffness , the works, as i said same applies to any field


now that person sees some cool effects on some skilled persons work and wants a tutorial for those to apply on their poor based work, and that just looks like putting a gold rooftiles on a crickety shack it doesnt work


here is the bitter truts about learning, it is hard if it wasnt everyone would know everything, it takes time for the brain to recognise the subtle laws of form, light shadow colors and lines , so if you havent covered your basics dont delude yourself, fancytexturing, or shines or reflections wont help cover it, instead it makes the lack of knowledhe all the more obvious

at this point i can imagine people saying ok mr wiseguy, then gow do we learn,..... by watching, doodling from life, from photos, whatever works for you, we live in the time of the internet and informations are more available than ever in the history of mankind, use the resources, cause lets face it whatever u see can be drawn



misconception 3 i draw here and there but i want to be a pro


no.... you dont


you either do it all the way or quit bugging people for attention

its simple, dreams take perseverence, to advance you need to work, ALOT!!!!

personally my schedule has been 6 to 10 hours a day for ten years now

but you have to understant, i wanted to make something of myself by doing what i truly love
so what you really have to ask yourself is do i really want to do this, is this my dream

i had a simple one, ... to be the best, its an incredibla tough dream but if it wasnt it wouldnt be fun and exciting

im 26 years old going 27 i started this stuff in high school

and ill stop when im dead



here is a little incentive for you, get a job, a really lousy one, get a feel of the real life, i did, and didnt like it, that draw, and whenever you get all whiney about how its tough.....remember that job


just a little note for the end of the first journal, .... experiment, trying stuff out on photoshop, pain ter, or whatever your prefered weapon of chaoice may be wont make it explode, and it just might make you discover some things on your own, made me discover quite a few nifty tricks