X3 Studios Blog

I know I speak for the entire team when I say that we’re very happy to see our projects have such a resonance for others. It is well known that the highest form of appreciation is copying somebody - so we can only be flattered in this situation. As designers, we always wanted to become role models for others to follow - and as it turns out, our wish came true ;).

PS: Fellow creators, we would be happy to give you our source codes for other projects we’ve created, so you don’t have to bother with printscreens, or those messy SWFdecompilers…

On the 18th and 19th of July we were very lucky to attend the 23rd edition of the International Biennial of Graphic Design from Brno. This Biennial is the oldest from all the similar events hosted in Europe, being well appreciated for the approached subjects, with a strong emphasis on typography, the foundation of graphic design. The special guests of this edition were Andrew Altmann (UK), Otakar Karlas (CZ), Zuzana Lednická (CZ), Daniel Van Der Velden (NL), Jonathan Barnbrook (UK) and Fumio Tachibana (JP). The book design gallery showcased extensive and innovative examples of printing techniques, type and paper (or other printing support), binding, which will most certainly open new communication channels in book design.

On one hand we were very impressed by how seriously design quality is treated in Europe, but on the other hand we were disappointed because we can’t attend such conferences and galleries in Romania. We can only hope that in the nearest future we, as a nation and industry, will also be able to appreciate and host similar events.

After Eulda, Logolounge, CG Chosen and VFXTalk, Sorin has also been mentioned in two online/offline magazines NewWebPick and Digital Arts.

You can read an interview with our Art Director in NewWebPick #15, along with the showcase of some of his work. You can also read a second interview in Digital Arts May edition.

You can also see his work/experiments on his personal website, Behance gallery or Flickr.

Enjoy!

The short reel was created for a contest initiated on VFXTalk.com. The theme of the contest was to recreate the famous Oracle scene from the movie “300“, starting from a video stock that was available for all participants.

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Matte paintings are used to create “virtual sets” and “digital backlots”. They can be used to create entire sets, or to extend portions of an existing set. (Wikipedia)

The image from above, a digital matte painting, created by our colleague and Art Director Sorin Bechira, is the result of a challenge launched on CGTalk, one of the biggest digital graphics community. The work was well appreciated and ended up quickly on Spotlight on mattepainting.org in the 5^th edition of CG Chosen Magazine, and the people who received our 2008 Calendar can also see it being featured for the month of October.

Usually we can only see such images in their final stage, the question that still remains being: “How did he/she do it?” Fortunately enough for all of us Sorin also wrote a very comprehensive tutorial for 3DM3.com where he explains all the steps he took to create the work.

The tutorial has three steps:

• plate restoration
• plate extension
• digimatte

If you liked this work you can download it as wallpaper from cgwallpapers.com.

Congratulations , Sorin!

Unirii Square is the oldest square from Timişoara. Lately the square became the favorite meeting place of young people. Together with the guys from D’arc, we added on www.darc.ro a live webcam from the Square.

After Epica (Calin), Charlotte (Andreea) and Bumblebee (Catalin), it was time for Sorin to receive his car, named Rudolph (don’t ask). And to blow the horn a bit: all these cars are part of the benefits program offered by X3, and they will eventually become private property of each of the guys. . And here are the pictures from the event.