something about me

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My name is Mihail Popov but most people know me as Bethoven, since this is the nickname that I use in internet forums. I was born on 31 May, 1981 in Sofia, Bulgaria.

One morning, in 1991, my parents woke me up late in the morning, just before noon. It was strange because I had to be at school early in the morning and they just let me sleep. Later I found out that they wanted to take me to the cinema. But it wasn’t just going to the cinema and it wasn’t just a film! It was the premiere of Terminator 2: “Judgment Day” in Bulgaria. This film became very important to me. I never missed anything that was shown about it on TV. I watched it many, many times and also other films such as Stargate (1994), True Lies (1994), Aliens (1996). I became very keen on cinema. Firstly I was extremely impressed by the logos of the films and of course I started drawing them wherever I could. Because of this after some time my friends and schoolmates gave me the nickname Lost in Space, after the film.

My parents bought me a computer, which eventually had very bad influence on my studding but at the same time increased my passion for films. Very quickly, not to say immediately, I started making my own “creations” with the first graphic program that I found- Corel DRAW 7. I was wrong but also very enthusiastic when I thought that every animation of a game or a film was made frame by frame on Corel.

And so I started to make more complicated images with Corel and even animations with up to 200-300 frames. Of course all of these animations were very plain but this was what Cornel allowed. I don’t remember how, but it was pure luck, that I came across the website of Blizzard. It is certain that I have watched

the animations of Star Craft many times and I deeply admired the people that made, drew and moved everything so well in Corel. It was then that I saw the advertisement on their site for a “Cinematic Animator” and their demands. I was very surprised to find out that Corel was not among the programs they required. I saw things like Photoshop and 3D Studio MAX. And after that I put rel a little bit aside and started working with MAX.

With a lot of persistence I managed to find a job as a designer of discs for PC Club magazine. It was the job I have always dreamed of. I had the freedom to do whatever I wanted and it was spread all over the country. Great! With a good friend of mine, Peter Ivanov, who is a very good programmer, we created 5 very successful disc designs. We thought that the design had to be different every month. We just wanted the magazine to have no competition as far as it depended on us. But for one reason or another we had to part from the people in the magazine.

After a few months, again with Peter Ivanov, but also with Ivo Delin and Nikolai Popov, we decided to create a computer game. An internet game with its own interface. Something that nobody seemed to had done till now. Everything turned out very well at the beginning. We made up an interesting and original story, that has a lot of potential even today, and perhaps the game will be finished with the same enthusiasm with which all begun. I believe that the story that we created will become a terrific film one day, definitely!

And so, the work on the game stopped. Everyone began to spend less time on it. We even rented an office where we could all work together, but things just didn’t turn out as they were supposed to be and eventually everyone started looking for a new job.

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