 Once there was a guy called Jacob, and Jacob lived in a small house in a peaceful country with his two brothers and his father. And Jacob needed to take care of the cows. So every day he went to the meadown fields, bringing the cows there, eating grass, and he was sitting under a tree just waiting there till it was night and getting back home. He did it every day, again and again. But sometimes there was danger. A bear appeared trying to eat one of his cows. And then he grabbed his sling, grabbed a stone, and he killed the bear. Just one throw. It was so good at it. But sometimes there was war in the country where Jacob lived in. And two of his brothers were sent to the battlefield. They never returned. They died, killed in action. Then Jacob wants to go to the battlefield as well. And he asks his father, I want to go there. And his father says, but if you can't come back, I'm alone with the cows. He said, I will come back. Don't worry. So Jacob went to the battlefield. And when he arrived, he saw a huge army. But it wasn't at all. There was also a sort of a special weapon, a giant walking there, intimidating the whole army of Jacob. And Jacob went to this general. He said, let me fight. He said, you're just a kid. Go away. You make a laugh of this. Then the giant walked there saying, send me one man to fight with. If I win, you all get my slaves. But if I lose, we will be your slaves. And then Jacob asked his general again, let me fight with him. I'm not afraid. I will kill him. And he said, all right, just go there. Kill yourself. Jacob enters the battlefield and the giant was walking there. Is that you? And you fight with you? Go away. I'm not going to fight with a kid. Jacob walked there facing the giant. He said, giant, I'm not afraid of you. I will kill you. And the giant turned around, grabbed his sword, walked to Jacob, wanted to crush him. But Jacob was very fast. He moved, grabbed his sling, grabbed a stone, killed him. A stone hit his head. He felt on the ground, broke his neck. Jacob became a hero. Jacob was creative because he was so used with his sling, he could kill the giant easily. But Jacob is sort of a metaphor, of course. Jacob can be anyone, anything. Jacob can be an impressive artist, making amazing art like Rembrandt, doing things a little bit different, becoming a huge master. But Jacob can also be an indie company with just a couple of artists, developers, creating one of the biggest games in the world, Mojang, created Minecraft. Can also be software, open source software, creating free software for everyone, becoming one of the biggest players in the world, Blender. They share one thing, and that is extraordinary use of creativity. They're doing that in a very smart way, and making the difference. That's a great thing. Think about it, creativity. What is it? It's such a complex thing, sort of a chemistry in our head which makes us make amazing things. It's not always there. Sometimes when you are in a good flow and you like starting the day and create beautiful things, but sometimes it isn't there. You want it, but it's just you losing it. It's sort of a sixth sense. Yesterday I had a dream, and I dreamed about something that happens a long time ago. It was combining with something I had earlier that day, and it makes a sort of a story that was right. Creativity, creativity in your head. It's so beautiful. I love it. It fascinates me in trying to understand what it is. There's somebody in this room, knows what it is, you know what I mean, tell me exactly. I really wanted to know it, trying to reveal it. My first experience with creativity was 10 years ago. I was in a room with all sort of paintings, but it was one painting that was attracting me and was facing that painting. And I walked closer and it was really fading in that image, really an inviteable world. It was so beautiful. And in Flesh's, I was there. It was just a painting, a flat canvas, but it did magically things with me. Again, my brain did something with chemistry, and I joined it. I thought, this is sort of magic. I love that. When I went home and were thinking about this, I thought, you know, one day I want to be as that artist, being so good, creating something really special. I want to become one of that. Let's start using free software, because I thought I can use oil and canvas, creating oil paintings, but I want to do something new, something from this age with modern technology. I started creating paintings like this. And if I watch it nowadays, I think these are silly images. But then when I started creating these, I loved it. I thought, I can create my own worlds. That's so cool. I started doing it again and again. And over the years, I learned new things, new methods to improve my worlds. And that's great. You know, when you see development in your scene, it's not always the same. Creativity joins you, helping you to improve your scenes. That's sort of a great process. It helps you to keep on working on it. Over the years, I worked on it again and again, and someone came to me and said, you'll like to expose your work. So you make digital works, digital artworks. We put them on 3D televisions. So you can, oh, that's one slide too fast. Yeah, go back. Yeah, that's me. So you can expose your work on 3D televisions so people can see it. And we did. We launched a Golden Age 3D, and people went there and they gave me feedback about my worlds I created. It motivated me again so I could improve it and work on it. And after the Golden Age 3D, I started the Golden Age experience as a project where I started to make movie sequins. I wanted to make a 3D movie. And I worked one year on it, and then something happened. I got in contact with VR. It's me working on it. And when I got in contact with VR, something changed. Something changed inside me. I was so amazed that I was in a room with just a cube. I could move around and things were moving real-time. Something explodes inside me. For some reason, I wanted to change all these artworks in real-time worlds. I'm really obsessed about it. And I went to my client and said, we should go make this into VR. And he said, oh yes, I like it. Just try it out. And I worked one more year on it. And I had so much struggle. I worked in a small group of artists, character artists, environment people, making assets. And I didn't have any experience with game engines, but for some reason I wanted to make this happen. Technology took part of me. And I was fading away, creating my CG scenes. It must be real-time. And in the end of 2014, we released the Golden Age VR on 32 VR machines. It should be a great success. We had news articles and newspapers and television, and a lot of people were talking about it. It should be a success, but it didn't feel right. Technology changed my focus. The goal I set that I wanted to make beautiful CG scenes was far away. I was remembering I was in that room with a painting. It was impressing me so much. And this was what it was right now, a real-time scene. And I didn't want to do that. So I thought, you know, I'd drop this whole VR process. Just get away. I wanted my focus back again and create the worlds that I want to create. Improving my CG art, but the big question was, how? How can I do this? It's really easy to say, I'm going to improve it. But how? So I went outside, out of my cave, going to new cities in Holland, studying, making photographs, really trying to understand this world that I wanted to create. And then I went back home and I thought, you know what I'm going to do? I will start a class. I will teach Blender users how to create environments. So all the things I learned, I wouldn't learn that. And teach them creating 3D environments. So I teach them how to create buildings, how to work with notes, materials, working with lighting, atmosphere. But I wanted to do one special thing, something different. The final chapter shows the creative process, showing the little bit of creativity and the magic, what sometimes happens when you're doing the right thing and you create the scene. So I had to capture five more lectures and I was putting everything together and I created this scene and I was watching it and I thought, no. This is what I am always doing. I'm always creating these kind of images and I want to do it differently. I want to make a new step and I thought I learned it by learning myself new methods but it was just this and thought this is not an infightable image. It's just this. So I thought, no. This is not going to be the thing I want to create. I thought, I need to clear my mind. Having a break, doing something different. For years I was only working on fear stuff, CG works, improving myself, improving, but I needed to take a break. I never did that. So I thought, you know, I will call my brothers. We go on a short vacation to Scotland because it's always raining there. I was unprepared. We should go there for two weeks just hiking around. But it was storm, like thunderstorm, breaking me. I was getting depressed. I was sleeping in wet tents and it was horrible. I was just broken. I was dying there. So after eight days I thought, okay, it was worth it but we should go back home. And we did. We went back to the Netherlands. And when it was back, I opened my mailbox, reading everything. And then I saw an invitation. I thought, oh, that's great. What is it all about? It was an invitation for an exposition. An exposition about my favorite environment master and they collected all of his work and they called the exposition through the eye of the master. I thought, this is great. So cool. So I went there and what I did, they collected all of his work in one building by time. So in every room you could see his development, the first artworks, his first creations. It was so interesting seeing everything he did till he died. He became 80 years old. He never stopped working. But then I entered a room and I saw two sort of paintings. One sketch and one final artwork. When I was looking at it, he created when he went to a scene and created a sketch. It could be a photograph, but it wasn't yet there. And he created this. And then back in his room where he created paintings, he started removing stuff, adding characters, new props, new stuff, new lighting. Everything needed to change till he created the perfect world. He created the perfect illusion. It was just right. It was an incredible world, a world where you could join. And there were more samples like this one. And the more I was watching these world, I thought, it's not just about creating something, making a good composition, but the world needs to be the perfect illusion. So if I can take just a little bit of that and chasing my scene in the final chapter where I had so much struggle with, I think it maybe will work out and can finalize this course and putting it online. So I was watching it. I thought, okay, I record this and I want to just record the creative process right now. And I moved stuff, I added some stuff, so I thought, yes, now it's right and we make a render. And when I was watching it, I thought, yes, it's just a bit closer to the perfect illusion. This is what I want to show people who want to learn creating environments. There's something of a creative process in this, of the perfect illusion. But it's now time to keep continue working. New experiments. It's not about creating a new successful scene that people like, but trying things out, making mistakes, that's not a problem. So using the same setting with just different buildings, chain stuff, a new city scene to see what happens with volumetrics and sunlight. And after a couple experiments, I thought, okay, I think I get used to this creating the perfect illusion. It's just a matter of working more and more and more to get better at this. But I want to do now something special. You know what I would do? I use concept art of my favorite environment master. And I would like to make a transition of this to a digital artwork. So this artwork was good. I mean, he did just the right things and so I thought I want to change this. And I worked on it and I created Germania. And Germania became one of my popular artworks and that was great. I mean, it was featured on ArtStation and in the gallery of 3D artist magazine and even my cat liked it. And I thought, yeah, now we're getting a little bit more to the core. And if I'm looking at myself thinking where am I now in this creative process? I think I'm just starting. I'm 30 years old. But I feel like I can learn so many new things. It's a big adventure and I love that. And these people, environment artists, they started to make the most impressive work, the massive pieces in the age of 50 years old. After having a lot of experience creating hundreds of artworks, they started to make these brilliant artworks that's impressive. You need all these years. Of course, if you are very talented you can create beautiful things. But the more you do, you will create magic in the end. But 3D artworks are not all paintings. That's something I had to think about. What I'm doing or what we do is we create an artwork and posting that online or we put it in a frame and putting it on the wall. But we're now living in an age where a cool things, new technology is appearing in real reality. And I think we need to think about this. Finding new ways to show our world to make that world that people like to join. And I think if we are all just be a little bit like Jacob entering the battlefield starting a project starting something creative fighting the giant using your creativity to make something extraordinary. Or the general of the army saying you'll kill yourself. The people were saying it's not going to work out. Just start something and try to make something and that will work out. That's it. Thank you.