Artist: CGExperience

A brief note from Ol_Blue

3D-Palace is pleased to award this month’s ARTIST OF THE MONTH award to CGExperience –
Salko Safic. His work on the 3d-palace WIP and Finished Works forums has been consistantly
excellent and inspiring and it is great to know that he is also making tutorials for his own site www.cgexperience.com too! I asked him a few questions about himself and about being a 3d
artist.

What is your name and age?

My name is Salko Safic and I am 39yrs old.

Where are you from?

I live in the sunshine state of Queensland on the Gold Coast in Australia

What made you decide to become a 3d artist?

I was inspired by the fantastic showcase and tutorials provided by Autodesk, back then there
was 3ds max 6 and too me it was the most sophisticated, elegant and the most challenging bit
of software I had ever come across. I was just amazed as to what max was capable of doing
I had never seen anything like it before. So I took it upon myself to learn max in the hope that
one day I too would be able to model something I would be very much proud of. Since I have
discovered that learning max is a never ending process and that you can never truly master.

What are your influences as a 3d Artist?

My influences would be my tutorials that I have provided to thousands of people around the
world over the last four years free of charge. I have received many inspiring emails from grat-
eful students who have benefited from these tutorials. My tutorials are also greatly used at
the Colchester College in England I would say these are my proudest achievements and contri-
butions I have made back to the CG community.

What is your favorite piece that you have created?

I don’t have one some I like and some I don’t, you see I still haven’t produced that ultimate
perfect model that you could just stare at it for hours and a week later still say this is bloody
good.

What is your favorite 3d piece of arwork?

I have many favourites some are still lurking around forums and some unfortunately are gone
forever but one in particular that sticks to mind is by Luciano Neves you can find it at the follo-
wing link http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?f=121&t=128965. It’s not the scenery
but the actual model itself the level of details that Luciano has invested in his model is truly a
work ofart. Even Leonardo Davinci would gaze in awe at this wonderful model.

You do a lot of maritime pieces – what are your plans for future models?

Ah ships yes they are my favourite but at this point I’m strapped for time finishing off the Bis-
marck. I would like to model another historical ship but one maybe say out of the 17th century
engaged in battle perhaps.

As a tutorial author for your own site – www.cgexperience.com – do you
think that actually producing tutorials has helped you to understand more
of the process of making detailed pieces?

Oh definitely, teaching is also about learning something yourself along the way and discove-
ring new methods of approach. I believe making tutorials has taught me many different types
of modeling methods and techniques but one most important lesson of all I have learned is that
there is no right or wrong way to model. So long as your piece turns out the way it’s supposed
to then you have achieved your objective and I think this is where many artist are held back
believing that there is a right and wrong way to model where in actual fact there isn’t.

[View with PicLens]