I ditched Octopress and completely redesigned my website.

I've been thinking about doing something like this for quite some time and I finally got an excuse to do it.

Believe it or not, I am still in college, working on my masters degree. Not that I really need it but it doesn't hurt to have one. For example, if one day I decide I want to teach, I will need a masters degree at least. Moreover, immigration procedures are much easier if you hold a paper in your hand. So I'm going forward with this and if everything goes according to plan, I will earn my MA in Interactive Design and Game Development at SCAD by the end of this year.

This quarter I was in an online web development course (the irony). We were supposed to make a website using Adobe Flash. But since Flash and me separated few years ago (it wasn't Flash, it was me) I wanted to try out something new.

I wanted to attempt to integrate a 3D scene with 2D HTML content. I haven't seen many examples of people doing this and most of them try to force the 2D content into becoming 3D. This usually leads to distorted 3D planes flying around which is interesting but not ideal for content consumption. With that in mind, I decided to present all pages flat, facing the camera.

The second challenge was designing the 3D scene. I wanted it to be simple for both technical and aesthetic reasons. After a short sketching phase I modeled the scene in Maya and did some basic lighting using Mental Ray and voilà!

And last but not least, there were many technical challenges. Fortunately, Three.js library makes this job much easier. Most problems I ran into were related to CSS 3D transformations. If you wonder my all my pages have scroll bars, it is because if they don't, Chrome decides to hide them if you get the camera too close. I hope to make a more isolated test case and submit this as a bug but I've heard other people had this issue too so I wouldn't be surprised if they fix it soon. Anyway, I hope you like scroll bars.

From now on I work at the Data Arts Team in Google Creative Lab.

After a 6-week visit to my home city Belgrade, I returned to my new home in San Francisco. I wish I could have spent more time with my friends and family but at the same time, it feels so good to be back. I’m really excited about my new job and the life ahead.

At this moment, I don’t know exactly what I’ll be doing at Google but it will most likely involve use of the latest web APIs for all sorts of creative experiments. After a year in the game industry, I have to admit I feel like Im falling behind the web tech but fortunately, I have amazing coworkers to learn from. The first thing on my list is the angular.js framework

Tomorrow is my last day at LucasArts.

It has been more than a year since I joined the force and it was a great journey! I had the privilege to work with some of the most talented artists in the industry and take part in making of the upcoming game Star Wars 1313. Working at LucasArts made my childhood dreams come true to say the least!

Most of my friends know that I’ve been switching career paths between animation, visual effects, web, games and all sorts of creative coding fields. You would think that by now I should figure out what I want to do. But the truth is… I’ve been doing it all this time! I was incredibly lucky to have the opportunity to choose and be chosen so many times. I can say I am happy with every career decision I ever made. I learned so much, broadened my perspective and met a bunch of really, really good people. Now, it is time to move on.

In January 2013, I will start working for Google Creative Lab in San Francisco! I’m happy to say that I already know the team and I’m excited to work with them again! We will make all sorts of Chrome Experiments to help the web become a platform for the Future. I am stoked to become part of Google culture and work on something that has a potential democratize the software industry and promote collaboration on a global scale. I will write more about it in the upcoming posts.

And last but not least, I want to mention some of the amazing people I had the opportunity to work with at LucasArts: Anupam Das - Brady Parell - Brian Recktenwald - Chip Lipscomb - Cliff Ramshaw - Dan Roarty - Dave Smith - David Kury - Dominic Robilliard - Eric Hartz - Jacobo Barreiro - Jason Rosson - Jason Smith - Jem Geylani - Jerome Lim - Jerome Platteaux - Jonathan Tilden - Jon Robins - Kim Libreri - Lutz Latta - Marcus Ng - Matt Furniss - Matt Brudette - Matt Koehler - Mark Bergo - Michael Koperwas - Nigel Ang - Nikki Smith - Paul Moya - Peter Nicolai - Pol Jeremias-Vila - Polly Ing - Roger Cordes - Steve Lee - Tom Banker - Yoon Kim

Always in motion the Future is.
Sometimes, let a Jedi know what may likely happen, the Force can.
But show what definitely will happen, the Force cannot.
Perhaps take comfort in that I can.
~ Master Yoda

It has been almost a year since I started planning for this trip with my brother. Starting from South Carolina we will travel across the country visiting major cities and national parks. It will be an epic journey and it is starting today. No computer will accompany me on this trip but Im bringing a plethora of other digital equipment so expect lots of photos when I come back to San Francisco.

I have been thinking about rebooting my website for a long time. So here it is! Fresh and transformed. I took out the garbage, transplanted some of the old projects and I’m starting over.

Some of the biggest changes are:

• Format is changed to a blog. So far I haven’t been much of a blogger but hey… people change :)
• The website is no longer hosted on Slicehost and it is moved to open-source hosting service provided by GitHub.
• Static page generation is handled by Octopress and comments are powered by Disqus

I don’t have the project page yet, but most of my old projects are still there including:

• Old WebGL Jellyfish demo
• Malcolm Kesson’s Renderman course portfolio from SCAD
• My Gl64k demoscene compo submission based on The Origin of Mass
• Cityengine to WebGL geometry pipeline demo
• WebGL greeting card