Welcome! This is essentially a blog with the sole purpose of showcasing professional and personal art works created by Marko Ljubez. Furthermore this space serves as a trackback diary, displaying random thoughts, things that inspire me, movies and music I like, food I enjoy and more. This blog is in development. More to come soon.
The following is one of the matte paintings I created for the Ilta-Sanomat spot. The art direction called for a Victorian-type industrial building. A 3D model of the scene was modeled, shaded and lit. This material was used as a base for the matte painting. The 3D model also served as a guide for the green-screen shoot in order to extract correct camera angles. The greenscreen shoot itself resulted in filmed "workers" which were later composited over the matte painting. Moving machine parts were rendered as separate passes and inserted into their respective positions at the compositing stage. This saved time as we only rendered animated parts and did not need to calculate the heavy 3D scene for each and every frame throughout the animation.
This is a recently completed project for Radiotjänsten, which is part of the swedish public service with the task of collecting TV Licence fees nationwide and verifying payment of them. This was a full on campaign intended for showcasing on the internet, tv and cinemas around the country. Stopp offered full service assistance throughout all media-departments. The interactive movie, featured on the campaign website offers the visitor the chance to upload their own pictures and have them automaticly inserted into the movie content. So far the movie is a success generating over 5 milion unique views in just about 3 weeks time. My work included helping director Max Vitali to extend his plates with help of matte paintings. The movie was shot on Canon 5D Mark II by several small crews around the world and proved itself to be a challenge at the compositing/tracking fase due to the shearing and compression of the material. The following images are just some of the matte paintings i created for this show.
Trying to keep the wacom pen going and putting some of my personal ideas on "paper". This concept was made to pre-visualize a possible matte painting. My main concern with these sketches is the overall composition, mood and atmosphere. Details are secondary. The second one shows a view from a lower angle, different time a day and other atmospheric conditions.
The short movie "Herr Rodebjer" is the first in a series of creative and interactive editorials from Rodebjer, aimed to further emphasise the strong vision of the Rodebjer brand. The premiere editorial "Herr Rodebjer", a short movie directed by Mattias Montero, has since its premiere won the Public Prize award at the A Shaded View On Fashion Films Festival, held at Centre Pompidou in Paris. My work included rebuilding almost all of the environments, originally shot in Paris, with help of matte paintings according to the Directors whishes. A high contrast silhouette appearence was applied to all the skylines in order to achieve what Mattias was striving for, with the intention to resemble surreal theatrical side-scene flat sets. Further compositing work was done by Crawford Reilly, Linus Eriksson, Julius Denizhan and Peter Marin. For a sneak peak watch the trailer bellow...for full movie visit Rodebjer (Editorials).
A small update before i head on home. The following matte painting was a Vue experiment, trying to see if i can combine some of the features this software offers with my own way of working. The entire image (except for the balloons) is a 3D generated model, including procedural terrain, spectral atmosphere and volumetric clouds. The advantages of this software are huge especially in the conceptual stage of a project. Hopefully I will have some time over to render a full on 3d-camera move but as for now here is a still frame. Enjoy!
The following cover art was developed for the band Bolywool and the official release of their first album Through a Century. Bolywool is Calle Thor, Oskar Erlandsson and Cristian Ekman. The concept for the design was inspired by the music itself but also Öland, the place where I and some of the band members grew up. Through a Century will finally be released on October 14th.
"For those who are not familiar with the history behind the title, Through a Century, you are in for a treat. Once upon a time, in a kingdom not far from here, in a city by the sea, two lads sat in their living room and recorded demo songs in Cubase with the worst karaoke microphone the world has ever seen. It was the very same session(s) that spawned songs like In a Dreamer's Dream of Dreams, Sleep Today Away, So Low Down and The Origin of Nothing to name a few. On a cold February day, Century Blues was written, and the lyrics featuring the repeated stanza "through a century". As some of you might have noticed, the thematic canon of Bolywool, besides playing on intertextuality etc, is the notion and concept of time in relation to variable x (and sometimes even y). Thus, this title is, from our point-of-view, spot on since it sort of encompasses all these extended symbolisms and metaphors in only a mere three words."
Below are some of the earlier concepts for the cover art.
or those who are not familiar with the history behind the title, Through a Century, you are in for a treat.
Once upon a time, in a kingdom not far from here, in a city by the sea, two lads sat in their living room and recorded demo songs in Cubase with the worst karaoke microphone the world has ever seen. It was the very same session(s) that spawned songs like In a Dreamer's Dream of Dreams, Sleep Today Away, So Low Down and The Origin of Nothing to name a few. On a cold February day, Century Blues was written, and the lyrics featuring the repeated stanza "through a century". As some of you might have noticed, the thematic canon of Bolywool, besides playing on intertextuality etc, is the notion and concept of time in relation to variable x (and sometimes even y). Thus, this title is, from our point-of-view, spot on since it sort of encompasses all these extended symbolisms and metaphors in only a mere three words.
The following is a music video by Martin de Thurah for Fever Ray, featuring Karin Dreijer Andersson. Martin is the same director responsible for yet another of my absolute favorite music videos for Röyksopp- What Else is There. Have a look and get inspired!
This is a personal project of mine that I've been working on and of on since late 2008, wanting to create something for myself. I am very proud to present Wintermoon, a project that was born out of the dark Scandinavian winter. The movie itself does not have much of a story or purpose but was rather created to reflect a moody atmosphere and surreal scenery in combination with a time sliced camera effect (but with a small twist). This project was heavily inspired by Magnus Engsfors's piece "Suddenly". The difference lies in the technique used to create the effect as the entire movie is made up of still photographs combined with stylized backdrops animated with help of 2D and 3D graphics.
The workflow throughout the project was very much a result of insufficent economic and technologic resources. The project was put on hold a few times due to problems with collecting base material, since I lacked the resources (as stated before) to photograph or shoot the initial footage myself. Luckily I came accross Sarah Lee's Flickr portfolio where she had uploaded high resolution images of girls in dresses much like the ones I needed. Since this was intended strictly as a personal experiment, I decided to work on from that set of photos, retouching them to my desire and further creating styleframes in Photoshop of every shot. Once styleframes were in place I started 3D modelling the girl and the environment for each and every angle in Softimage. Many thanks go out to Johannes Carlsten who helped me with the modelling. The still pictures were then used to texture the 3D models in order to extract correct parallax. Models were also animated using lattices in combination with animated ICE systems . I would then normally render out 2-6 separate passes including the girl, the background,particles and smoke. These passes went on to become composited, a phase where I tried to recreate the image as it was in the styleframe. Wintermoon serves as a "proof of concept" for future projects. Working on it was tons of fun! I hope you enjoy it! Below are a few images showcasing the different stages of the workflow used for the project.
The following is a set of images that are part of some older Photoshop Fresstyle sessions I had, pretty much reflecting my mood at the time. Thats the beauty of these sessions as they do have a therapeutic effect, helping me to wrap my head around things. Some people do sports to clear their mind, others maybe go for a long walk. I make images.
The following photos are a part of the Gucci Fall/Winter 2008-2009 ad campaign. This bohemian inspired set of images is some of my favourites to date. Photographed by Inez van Lamsweerde and Vinoodh Matadin.
