EDITORIAL

Better late than never, welcome to the 43rd issue of 2DArtist! We’re really sorry for the delay this month. One word: Siggraph. So much to do, so little time… If you’re at Siggraph this year, drop by booth #3719 to meet Tom Greenway from the 3DTotal/2DArtist team, and hopefully if you time it right you’ll also be able to meet some artists who are featured in our latest book, Digital Art Masters: Volume 4, who’ll be doing some book signings!

Well, it’s halfway through the year already so we thought we’d celebrate the halfway point by kicking off some brand new tutorial series! We’ve packed the first parts of three new tutorial series into this July issue, starting off with a series aimed to teach the power of 3D in 2D painting, showing you how to create depth and achieve a sense of scale easily in your paintings by utilizing the free and easy-to-use software, Google SketchUp. So don’t be afraid of the third dimension, simply check out p.64 to see just how easy it is to apply 3D geometry to your 2D paintings to get some rather impressive results!

Our second new tutorial series begins with Darren Yeow, full-time concept artist in Melbourne, Australia, who introduces us to Dynamic Characters: Enhancing your Character Concepts. We wanted to put together a series not like your usual anatomy teachings, but something a little more special and focused on helping you to achieve the very best of your characters. We’ve therefore asked industry professionals to take us through several stages of character creation. In this first part we look at thumbnailing (p.88).

Our other new series for July is one that we hope will be useful to those of us who browse 2DArtist and can only dream of understanding Photoshop like a pro. Well, wish no further: we have Photoshop guru, Nykolai Aleksander on hand to teach us how to start painting in Photoshop from scratch, taking us through the tools and techniques we need to know to get started. I’m pretty sure this in-depth series will also teach some of our hardened readers a thing or two as well, and if you’ve ever seen any of Nykolai’s stunning paintings at high resolution then you will understand why the setting up of your Photoshop before you even start to paint is so important. So follow Nykolai’s handy guide to painting like an industry professional. We start off by looking at graphics tablets and brush dynamics on p.96.

We interview two talented artists this month: Nicholas Miles, insect-loving concept artist based in the UK (p.6), and Viktor Titov, hamster-inspired concept artist and illustrator from Russia (p.23). Both are featured in Digital Art Masters: Volume 4, and when we stumble across talents as great as these we just want to know more, more, more! So join us as we learn all about Nick’s Insect Dynasty, and how Viktor plans world domination through outsource company, Grafit LLC!

Our making ofs this month feature the exclusive making of Aretha Franklin by Jason Seiler (p.106), Yang Xueguo welcomes us to his world with a walkthrough his painting, Concrete 7 (be sure to check out his free brush set!) (p.114), and Alex Heath teaches us how to recycle while we paint (p.120).

Well, I will leave you to enjoy your magazine with what July has left to offer. We’ll be back in full swing next month with more great stuff and yet another new tutorial series for you. Till then, stay creative!

Ed.

Product details
Author: 3DTotal.com Ltd
Format: DOWNLOAD ONLY PDF
Size: 150 MB
Pages: 128

Interviews
Nicholas Miles - Concept artist
Viktor Titov - Concept artist and illustrator

Article
The sketchbook of Alex "Rhino” Voroshev

Gallery
10 of the best 2D artworks

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

Tutorial series
Using 3D as a base for 2D painting - Part 1
Speed Painting - Topic: The waves slammed against the cliffs
Dynamic Characters: Enhancing your Character Concepts - Part 1: Thumbs and silhouettes
Beginner's Guide to Digital Painting by Nykolai Aleksander - Part 1

Making Ofs
Aretha Franklin - Project Overview by Jason Seiler
Concrete 7 - Project Overview by Yang Xueguo
Gross Worm - Project Overview by Alex Heath

Promotion
Digital Art Masters: V3 - Free book chapter promotion