EDITORIAL

Welcome to our issue of beauties and beasts. Within the pages of this month’s magazine, you’re going to stumble across the devilishly handsome and the beastliest beauties, as we have packed 2DArtist with stunning content across the board, with contributions from Don Seegmiller, Kekai Kotaki, Nykolai Aleksander and many, many more. And to illustrate the theme of “beauties and beasts” for us quite perfectly this month, we have our first artist interview with 2D artist veteran, Don Seegmiller (p.7), whose portfolio demonstrates a range of stunning realistic character portraits, to weird and wonderful cartoon illustrations. We’ve also interviewed cover artist, ArenaNet concept art lead Kekai Kotaki (p.23), who continues the theme exceptionally with his inspiring character concepts that will, quite simply, blow your mind. So there you go: 28 pages of stunning art by two of the industry’s greats – enjoy!

This May issue also presents the penultimate parts of not one, but two of our fantastic tutorial series: Vehicle Painting by Dwayne Vance and Hoi Mun Tham, and Space Painting by Chee Ming Wong. But do not fret, for we’re on the case and we have lined up for you some real treats for July. And because I’m not really one to keep a secret (oops), I’ll let you in on what’s to come… First up, we have a series that we’re all really excited about here at 2DArtist: Dynamic Characters – Enhancing your Character Concepts. We have some great names working on this series already, with more to come! And for all those budding artists out there who follow 2DArtist but have not quite got the hang of painting in Photoshop just yet, we’ll be bringing you a Beginners Guide to Digital Painting in Photoshop in July, with another top artist signed up to teach you all they know and how to get started. So no excuses! I think we’ll even find some twitching Wacom tablets in the office here once the series kicks off, as we can’t wait to learn some tips from this pro.

But back to this issue, we are of course sad to see the last but one of two of our series, but what great chapters they are! Chee Ming Wong is mining the asteroid fields (p.95), whilst Dwayne Vance is driving his sleek, futuristic vehicle into the desert sands in the final rendering of his awesome car concept (p.75). Not only this, but we have the talents of Nick Oroc and Nathaniel West in the Speed Painting tutorial section this month, where they both fight out the theme, “The sleepy village never saw the horror approaching” (p.85). And, as an extra special treat for you all, we have a bonus article from Nykolai Aleksander where she discusses the anatomy of a painting, using a new painting created especially for this article to demonstrate, so do check that out and get yourself inspired (p.109)!

What else? Well, we’re talking centaurs and cyclopses in the Stylised Challenge section; our centaur entries blew us away – one of the best challenges yet (p.61)! Follow those beasts with another two stunning beauties in our Making Of section, by Sara Biddle (p.119) and Dmitry Grebenkov (p.125) – one a realistic character portrait, the other a stylised beauty. And wrap up this month’s ever-so-chocker issue by checking out Ivan Kashubo’s sketchbook on p.39, and discovering some real treats from Loic Zimmermann and Cynthia Sheppard (plus more) in the Gallery.

Enjoy! Ed.

Product details
Author: 3DTotal.com Ltd
Format: DOWNLOAD ONLY PDF
Size: 147 MB
Pages: 134

Interviews
Don Seegmiller - Freelance illustrator
Kekai Kotaki - Concept art lead for ArenaNet

Article
The sketchbook of Ivan Kashubo

Gallery
10 of the best 2D artworks

Challenge
Stylized Character - This month's finalists and last month's making ofs

Tutorial series
Vehicle Painting - Part 4
Speed Painting - Topic: The sleepy village never saw the horror approaching
Space Painting by Chee Ming Wong: III - Environments - Part 11: Mining the Asteroid Fields
Anatomy of a Painting: Different means to one end by Nykolai Aleksander

Making Ofs
What a Shame - Project Overview by Sara Biddle
Black Project - Project Overview by Dmitry Grebenkov

Promotion
Digital Art Masters: V3 - Free book chapter promotion