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Some of my work on Terry Pratchett's Troll Bridge - A Discworld Fable. Click the big link up here to see more of what's behind the images below.

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The next chapter

With Troll Bridge finally out and on the big screen, my next big thing is the world's first holographic book. It'll be our late summer 2020 and exclusive to the Tilt Five platform.

Years in the making

It's a project about 6 years in the making. I had to end various iterations because the platforms just weren't right for it. Closest I ever came to something that wasn't a crap experience was the iBook on iPad. The result was a semi-working interactive book that crashed way too many iPad models. It was all JavaScript which has to be dumped regularly or it'll gunk up the system. With an iBook that wasn't possible, so the devices got slower and slower until the iBooks app crashed. Wrong platform. It was way too modal anyway. You would have needed two iPads with the book synced between them to even make it useful.

Holography first

With Tilt Five all of that is gone. A clean slate and finally I can do it right. A vast open space that doesn't require modality at all. I can format and shape it the way it needs to be and not be constrained to some fixed way of doing something. It's immensely liberating.

It'll also be a whole lot more work, but that's always the case for the good stuff. Nothing of value is ever going to be easy.

Interested enough to help?

If you want to help this project along, there's a way! I set up shop with Bonfire. You can read more about it here. Why this and not Kickstarter? If I don't trust Kickstarter, how can I expect you to trust me using them to raise money? With too many projects, backers never receive anything. That's not tolerable. If you have my back, you have to have something in your hands ASAP! That's non-negotiable.

You can subscribe to the newsletter on the Silverball Tactics website to be kept up to date for more news and exclusive deals.

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Explorations into Clarisse iFX. Learning it by taking apart the assets provided by Isotropix. It’s been pretty neat to dress the existing city in a way that tells a story, bring life to it. It’s quite fluid to use. I’ve done some extra textures so it fits the story better: The error message, the engineer (2D plate, lit via hand painted normal map in Nuke). The volumetric objects are from OpenVDB.org, some re-shaped with a fractal texture, stretched and sheared to become engine exhaust light traps.

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The official trailer! It's been nothing short of fantastic working on this and to see all the work from all the artists come together. Just wait till you get to see the whole thing!

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Troll Bridge

(A Discworld Adventure)

Nice feature on Troll Bridge over at the Foundry's website.

It's a good read on what makes it so rewarding to work on this show.

So far I've done:

Logo Modelling (Modo, Pixar Subdivs)

Logo Texturing (Substance Painter)

Logo Sculpting - Unreleased (ZBrush)

Compositing - In Progress (Nuke)

Who knows what's next, it's an exciting ride!

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An horizon's worth of alpine green

Alpine Victoria, Australia. Home to myth and legend. Mountain ranges surrounding the township of Mansfield often involved with the escapades of the infamous Ned Kelly. It is not hard to imagine why bushrangers often set their hideouts atop the myriads of hills and mountaintops in the area. Today the scenic landscape is featured mostly in tv shows and movies as well as alpine sports activities.

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(As with anything on 500px, hit 'M' right away when on the page to avoid eye strain from that garish white background)

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A Solitude of Sunlight on Golden Hills

Approaching Mansfield Township, Victoria (Australia) by car.

This was never intended as a panorama, I just shot two images in sequence while in the backseat of my uncle's car, driving to the farm. Just to capture the breathtaking scenery for myself as we couldn't stop long enough to make a memory. Affinity Photo made some crazy bad panoramas possible before, so I gave it a shot. This worked a lot better than it should have.

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Sky and atmospherics

More Terragen work.

via Instagram

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Testing Terragen

Did a quick test to see whether Terragen is for me or not. Took me about an hour from fresh install to this. Super resource hungry but relatively approachable when it comes to digital nature.

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Some bits about Troll Bridge

What a ride so far. More soon.

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Treasure within Darkness

Handheld panorama shot in the bowels of Eberbach Monastery, the location of the 1986 movie "The Name of the Rose".

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Cliffs of the West

The West Cliffs in Lamington National Park - Queensland, Australia. This view is from Pat's Bluff on the West Cliffs overlooking the lush hills of this volcanic range.

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Hidden Vale

Deeper into the woods, moss lands grow far and yonder. The yellow slash marks on the trees mean the’ll get chopped down soon. Let’s hope they won’t bring the giant machines from my other pictures.

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The Mossy Realm of Dewclover

The moss-lands reclaim their roots and grounds. Fostered by mist and moisture, with the morning dew they expand.

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Into the Treelands

In the dark of the woodlands, hidden paths of wonder are but for the smallest creatures. Treasures or treacherous trails, what awaits the daring?

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A Tree of Darkness and Light

December woods, light and dark split at the eve fell, as did the trees.

My first panorama 100% done (stitched, colours, etc.) in Affinity Photo.

The image was shot on an iPhone 5s using ProCam 3 in 5 parts to maximise the iPhone’s resolution by getting closer to the subject as the trunk was fairly small. By using the iPhone with it's 4.15mm lens the stump looked quite a bit larger than it actually was. Which opened up some interesting perspectives.

Would I do it again? Sure. The iPhone can go places where you just can’t put a camera and handle it as well. For this I was on my knees in naturally formed drain in between branches, hunched under another tree’s wind-ravaged roots. Using ProCam’s manual-ish focusing I could maintain a rather stable focus plane while shooting all 5 parts. The resolution was set to maximum which meant a 4x3 aspect ratio. Also good, the closer you can get to a square without cropping, the better the stitch will be in any stitcher. Cropping the image can throw off the de-lensing process that straightens up the image before it gets projected into one for merging. Always pick the maximum natural image size, never one that crops into the image.

It looks reasonably decent on screen. I just ordered some 20 x 37cm prints at Fuji’s Pro store, we’ll see how well the process holds up in the end.

More on 500px.com

The shot up on 500px has solarisation issues, I asked 500px to replace the image with the one I supplied. A bit strange that I can’t do this myself, considering I pay for the service.

Update

On 500px

They don't really care much about paying customers, the only way to get some service is if you're posting to their Marketplace. Even then, it's sparse. So no-go on the updated image there.

On Fujifilm Pro

The pearl paper stock is stunning. The glossy surface is less fingerprint prone than other glossy stock I had in the past. More durable, but don't over do it. I like the pearl a little better than Kodak's Metallic. It's different. For these shots it worked well. The Pearl gives a little coloured iridescence to side lights. Metallic adds a silver-ish shimmer to your image's colours. For nature with thick green tones I find the Pearl to be nicer, for metal and concrete it's Metallic. And then again it's like colour, what do you want your image to feel like. It's cheap to test, so go ahead, the water's nice 😋.

Sidenote: For the Fuji Pearl at Fuji Pro Labs, lift your blacks just a touch, not more than 2-3%, it likes detail and it's very contrasty.

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Twins In The Golden Forest

Surrounded by radiant colours of autumn's golden gown, the twins emerge from a fallen branch.

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