Comics, animations, Games!I wanna do it all

I would say Pete Hines is more culpable and at fault for the mess regarding refunds of 76, the nylon bag issue of the power armor edition. And So On.

There are artists who like videos and there are artists who love books. 

In the previous post (here) we gave you a list of helpful and inspiring YouTube channels, so today we are going to share the best books we know about digital art!

First thing we want you to know is about the existence of two great art magazines, ImagineFX and 2DArtist. These magazine focus both on digital and traditional art, sharing guides on programs like Photoshop, Painter, ZBrush and traditional tools. There are two other magazines about digital art, PainterMagazine and Photoshop Creative - though these two are a bit more expensive and much more focused on their software (Corel Painter and Photoshop), while the first two can give you general ideas about art and specific tips and tricks on digital programs as well!

Mind that this list doesn’t have an order of importance, and if we have pro and cons to share, those are written in each book’s description (:

1. Digital Painting Techniques

This is the third volume of the series created by 3dtotal Publishing - you can find all the volumes here.

This book features many illustrations and tutorials done by famous digital artists like Chee Ming Wong,  Robh Ruppel and Ignacio Bazan Lazcano. These artists will share their knowledge on concept art, matte painting and digital painting in general.

This book is presented for artists of all levels, from students to professionals. The tutorials are easy to follow, though the theme is quite specific: if you are into sci-fi, fantasy and concept art, well, then this book is for you!

2. Beginner’s Guide to Digital Painting in Photoshop: Characters

Another guide created by 3dtotal Publishing.

This guide is for all those artists interested in creating detailed characters. Two of the featured artists are Charlie Bowater and Derek Stenning.

Despite the title, though, this book isn’t for beginners at all - the artists share tips and tricks, but a basic understanding of digital painting is needed.

The main program used by the artists is Photoshop.

3.  The Digital Artist’s Survival Guide

Created by ImagineFX, this is a complete guide for digital artists, be them beginners of professionals, full of advice and inspiring tutorials to paint amazing environments, characters and creatures!

4. Digital Painting

Another great issue created by ImagineFX, Digital Painting is a guide for digital artists who want to learn a bit more of how to paint from life. The book features workshops and video lessons too.

5. Fantasy Art Essentials

If we can say it, this book is our favourite. Not only it contains 228 pages, so more workshops and advices (+ a DVD), but it features both digital and traditional tutorials about fantasy art. So, our blog is about digital art, but this is a hell of a volume with artists like Andrew Jones, Marta Dahlig and Adam Hughes!

6. d'artiste Digital Painting 2: Digital Artists Master Class

The second volume of d’artiste series created by Ballistic Publishing. This book is a must-have masterpiece for digital artists. It features workshops from top artists like Mélanie Delon, Don Seegmiller and Marta Dahling and tips on apps like Photoshop and Painter. The subjects of the book are character and creature design and environment painting.

7.  d'artiste Matte Painting 3

Another series from Ballistic Publishing, this time dedicated to matte painting. Have you ever seen those incredible landscapes featured in colossal movies or videogames? This book’s going to explain how top artists David Luong, Damien Mace and Milan Schere can paint such masterpieces.

With this guide you can learn about composition and how to start painting from concept to the final artwork. 

Be aware that the three masters of this books have worked for World of Warcraft, Game of Thrones, Avatar, Harry Potter, Sherlock Holmes and many other films!

8. d'artiste Fashion Design: Digital Artists Master Class

Let’s face it: if you are an artist and you need help, you can’t say that Ballistic Publishing is useless. On the contrary, we can say that it presents the most complete series of volumes for any digital artist in need (or any art lover who likes his collections thorough and perfect).

This volume is great for character designers and it features a lot of tips and different approaches to the artwork. That means the reader is able to compare different art styles and be inspired from them!

What? NOT Mega Man cels?!

While I’ve spent enough on Rockman animation over the years, other than having a Mario cel or two, I haven’t really branched out to purchase much else from other fave shows. So I felt like changing things up and got a few non-Megaman cels last week. 

While I suppose you can technically connect The Big O to Rockman, since Ariga worked on manga for both, I loved the artistic style and smooth soundtrack of the anime long before I knew of Ariga’s version of the series. 

So here’s the first half of Big O art I’ve added to my collection. Starting off with a couple nice pieces of Angel, that came on non-matching backgrounds. The first one is from Episode 3, as she pulls Roger’s sunglasses out of her…*ahem*…catsuit to return to him. It definitely wasn’t a bright and sunny yellow background though, being underground at the time:

The genga that came with it is headless, and also at a totally different frame, with how her hand and the glasses are posed. 

The second, stuck double-layered cel is from Episode 7, had no genga and was stapled to the background. The background stylistically feels like the wooded outdoor scenes from Episode 3…:

…even though the cel came from a scene where the background was in a building underwater, and she was running by windows:

I mean, I don’t think that’s really an outfit to be running in, when it’s snowy and cloudy in the woods…XD You’re such a louse, Rock Miyabi. It’s still a uniquely painted, beautiful background, though!

After Angel, there’s a single genga piece of Roger stylin’ in his shades that just looked dang cool. Sadly didn’t have a cel with it. Also from Episode 7 in his casual jacket, a trio of smaller busts of Roger that came along for cheap. The final one was stuck to the genga really good, and I wasn’t about to try separating it more than I tried. Thankfully the others had their genga flipped on the opposite side. 

The second half of Big O cels begin with another bunch of Roger Smith pieces, starting with a nice one of him operating Big O. I didn’t go through and source any of the ones in this set, yet, but might go looking for the actual scenes later.

The second cel has Roger calling, “BIG O! Shooowtiiime!” from his wristwatch. It does have a matching genga, but I hit the image cap at 10 for this photoset. So here is that genga:

The one of him crouching and marked A12 is another piece that is stuck to the genga really good, so it’s a no-go on separating that. 

And to round it out, two cels and genga of Dorothy at the end, for a little more variety.

When I was in school and wanted to work in animation, there was very little information about how cartoons are actually made. Even my professors at college knew very little about the industry as it is today. I’m sure it would’ve been better to study somewhere in California (like CalArts) to be better informed about this stuff, but I didn’t have that opportunity.

Nowadays, many kids in school have a dream career that they don’t really know much about. There’s a lot of missing bits of information and a lot of straight up lies that get circulated as fact as people try to scramble to put the pieces together on how cartoons for television are actually made.

I’ve been storyboarding for television for a while now, and there still aren’t clear resources for those wanting to get into the industry. I wanted to make the basics available to everyone, so here’s a quick rundown through the TV pipeline. Please note: all studios and productions are different. Even cartoons made within the same studio could have wildly different production guidelines. This is not a concrete explanation of how every cartoon is made; this is simply a generalized look at the “typical” television pipeline.

**DISCLAIMER** All images in this post have been sourced from blogs, twitters, scribd and flickr pages are publicly available, and no internal studio materials have been used that have not been already published publicly online. This post is influenced heavily by my own individual experience, as well as friends’. 

With that said, this might be a lengthy read, so let’s go!

Chapter 4 of Asadora, the newest series by Naoki Urasawa is out now!

Read it on MangaDex

 Stan Lee passed away earlier today at 95 years old. Thank you Stan for creating stories and characters that have touched the lives of millions. Rest In Peace

The end of an era is gone with him, and there’s no beginning for a new and bright one anymore.