Tomislav Todorovic

Tomislav Todorovic - Zrenjanin - Serbia

VOTY 2014		Giffer Flag

     I live in Zrenjanin, Serbia and was born there in 1967. After having graduated in electrical engineering from the University of Novi Sad, I have had several temporary working engagements, mainly in education area (teaching secondary-school students the basics of electrotechnics and/or computing), and my permanent job since 2006 has been in a designing company, where I work on designing the electrical installations for a variety of objects.

     My interest in flags began to emerge when I was nine years old, in form of hand-drawing the flags, mainly national, which I was seeing in printed sources and on the television. By the time I was eleven, I began to develop the interest in heraldry as well, which emerged from another hobby of mine - collecting pins and badges, many of which were displaying the arms and emblems of local government areas in the then Yugoslavia, but also in other countries as well: my collection of pins and badges displaying coats of arms from Poland was also my first exploration of heraldry. Next important moment was in 1982, when I bought Croatian edition of Whitney Smith's "Flags and arms across the World" [smi82], which was not only the birth of my collection of books about vexillology and heraldry, but also the beginning of a systematic approach to the subject. When the multi-party political system was introduced in Serbia in 1990, I discovered the political logos and flags as a new interest, having collected a large number of logos through the years, using them later to make the flag images as well.

     Everything expanded with my first access to the World Wide Web in 1999, one of my first discoveries being the FOTW website, which I have immediately started to visit regularly. At that time, I began moving from hand-drawing to computer graphics, making my first contributions to the FOTW in 2004 and fully joining the mailing list in 2011.

Tomislav Todorovic, 22 December 2014

Favorite Illustrations:

Toma has more than 510 images on FOTW covering a wide range of subject matter. Here are six of his favorite FOTW challenges.

1. Flag of the Šumadija Coalition (Koalicija Šumadija)		2. Flag of the Republic of Siena (from the painting Guidoriccio da Fogliano by Simone Martini)
3. Flag of Doctor Schwarz´s gang (from the movie "The Vampires Are Among Us")		4. United List of Social Democrats (Združena lista socialnih demokratov - ZLSD)
5. Proposal for the Union Jack - 2008 (redesign by John Yates)		6. Serbian State Flag and Ensign Detail 1838 (Principality of Serbia Coat-of-Arms)

7. Tudor Naval Streamer from 1520

1. Flag of the Šumadija Coalition:  One of my first computer graphics, and also probably the most complicated one to make: each pixel of the anti-aliasing was painted by hand via the mouse - lots of work for a beginner, since I was still using very simple graphics tools.
2. Flag of the Republic of Siena:  Not a complex image (and even not converted to GIF by me), but my first successful use of transparency and part of my first complete flag essay.
3. Flag of Doctor Schwarz´s gang:  Making of this image brought me as much fun as watching the movie in which the flag appeared.
4. United List of Social Democrats:  Although vectorized from a computer desktop wallpaper, the amount of work in order to make it look exactly like the original bitmap was near drawing it from the scratch - the most complex image so far I made that way.
5. Proposal for the Union Jack - 2008:  A design which turned to be very difficult to reproduce correctly, even with tools for vector drawing, and converting to bitmap required additional work to make it artifact-free.
6. Serbian State Flag and Ensign 1838:  Although composed of several existing images parts, the creation of this image required much more work than might be expected; it greatly enhanced my skills in the use of the layers, an image editing tool I was previously barely familiar with. From this image, several others were derived, all of them making a series of flags which played an important part in completion and clarification of the FOTW presentation of an important part of vexillological history of Serbia.
7. Tudor Naval Streamer from 1520:  The most complex image of a streamer (flag type which is not easy to reproduce at all), as well as one of most complicated images in general which I made so far.

Past Projects and Honors:

• Essay "Flags of Croats in Vojvodina since 1990", which was published in May 2009 in Grb i zastava, the journal of the Croatian Heraldic and Vexillologic Association, No. 5.
• Editor, illustrator, and contributor to Historical Flags of Our Ancestors.
• Chosen as Vexillologist of the Year for 2014: For his helpfulness and willingness to work quietly behind the scenes on others' projects, seeking little recognition for his assistance while doing so. His work was and is consistently of a high standard, scholarly, helpful, positive, and he is always courteous and respectful when dealing with others on the list. He has been, and remains, a positive addition to our vexillological community.

Contact Information

• Any of the following e-mail addresses: tomislav.todorovic.rs@gmail.com or tomtodyu@yahoo.com