Modbook® by Axiotron

The Modbook is the only Mac tablet available and a fully functioning computer on it's own. Working in Mac OS® X, Modbook users can draw on the screen using popular applications like Autodesk, SketchBook, Express and Photoshop — or any other Mac-based application.

It has an etched ForceGlass™ screen to simulate paper, giving a natural experience when using the included digitizer pen. Its magnesium frame and top shell give it superior structural strength, yet it is only slightly heavier than its original MacBook base system — a 100% mobile creative tool. www.axiotron.com

Photoshop CS5

cs5.org shows a preview into the next generation of Adobe developments. Painter-style brushes and an advanced warp tool are a few of the new features of CS5 due to be released in 2010. A video shows ‘wet’ paints being smudged, smeared and blended. It also shows an on-screen representation of the 3D properties of a brush, being twisted to lay down different stroke types. read more...

Robin Hood Trailer

Universal has just debuted the first international trailer for Ridley Scott's Robin Hood starring Russell Crowe and Cate Blanchett (via ComingSoon). The first official photos from the film are postet at couriermail.com. More information on the movie and a plot summary has comingsoon.net. Some more photographs and behind-the-scenes footage can be found on this blog.


RobinHoodthemovie.com

more tutorials

characterdesigns.com and cgarena.com both have various tutorials online. They are a 100% free of use and cover traditional and digital working techniques such as 3ds Max, Photoshop, Maya, After Effects, ZBrush etc.

www.characterdesigns.com
www.cgarena.com

15th Conference on Animation, Effects, Games and Interactive Media

May 04.-07.2010, Suttgart, Germany

FMX 2010 is a non-profit event by Filmakademie Baden-Wuerttemberg in cooperation with VES Visual Effects Society, AIAS Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences, ACM Siggraph and 5D Conference. It is funded by the Ministry of State and the Ministry of Economics Baden-Wuerttemberg, MFG Baden-Wuerttemberg Public Film Fund & Public Innovation Agency for Information Technology and Media, and the FFA German Federal Film Board.

Artists, specialists, scientists, producers, and other key people give presentations on their latest projects and challenges in the conference. Top names in the industry show their solutions on the trade floor or share their special knowledge in the workshops. Companies look for new employees seeking a job in the industy. New talents and the most interesting film and animation schools present themselves in the Education section and top films of other events will be featured in the screenings. www.fmx.de

call for entries

Ballistic Publishing is now calling on artists to submit digital images for consideration in EXPOSÉ 8. Images can be created in any 3D or digital illustration application. Photoshop and digitally manipulated photography is also welcome. There is no cost or limit to enter work for inclusion. Each artists with work published in EXPOSÉ 8 will receive a complementary copy of the book. Submissions can be entered here: www.ballisticpublishing.com

graphic design contest

7sins contest is an international contest, aimed at visual artists, either individual or collective.

The art work presented must be related directly or indirectly with all or each of the 7 deadly sins. Each artist may submit as many pieces of works as they think appropriate. The style and technique are free.

There is an only prize of € 3,000 for the best piece of art work. A further selection of the best works will be part of a collective exhibition that will travel through some of the main capitals and major cities worldwide in 2010 and 2011. The final Top 10 works will receive a free copy of the memorial book that will be published at the end of the call.

www.7sinscontest.com

new cg communities online

CG Hub is an online community where computer graphics artists share their latest work, tips, tools and network with friends. Registered members are invited to upload their work in their galleries and share it with the community for critique and inspiration. The forum offers also a job search function and a blog with news from the industry. cghub.com

CGheute is the new CG and VFX community website covering the German VFX market. On a daily basis they provide industry news, reports about events, the latest making-offs, Tutorials and what is going on in the German CG and VFX Scene. The team consists of two artists working in VFX for more than 15 years and extended contacts to the German VFX industry. The Artist-Profile-Pages give opportunity to present oneself, especially to German companies. www.cgheute.de

Cover Art Competition

ImagineFX is 50 issues young. Following a string of awesome IFX covers from the likes of Android Jones, Bao Pham and Stanley Lau, they are now opening up the front cover spot to the public. Artists from all over the world are invited to submit their cover designs until January 10th 2010. The winner will be awarded with a one year subscription and a Wacom Cintiq. More details about the competition in the ifx-forum:

community.imaginefx.com/

The Artistic Anatomy Blog

Those who are interested in figurative art are invited to check out the Artistic Anatomy Blog.
This web-page has been built up as a resource site which provides images and links to figurative art and artistic nudes created by some of the world's most celebrated artists. All works presented on this site are fully credited according to their respective owner.
www.artisticanatomyblog.com

new books

Ballistic Publishing releases two new books this week:

EXOTIQUE 5 is filled with 342 pieces of character art in a wide range of genres. Including a Camtasia video walkthrough of the back cover artwork painting of Wizards of the Coast's fantasy character Naya Battlemage. Featuring the work of artists from 44 countries, EXOTIQUE 5 is a uniquely international collection of work with successful entries equally spread across North America, Europe and Asia.

D'Artiste Character Modeling 3 shows off some of the best character modelers and digital sculptors in the world. The modeling team of 'Killzone 2' headed by Guerrilla Games with Massive Black and Liquid Development.

international trailer for 'Prince of Persia'

From the team that brought the Pirates of the Caribbean trilogy to the big screen, Walt Disney Pictures and Jerry BruckheimerFilms present Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time, an epic action-adventure set in the mystical lands of Persia. The Film was shot on location in Morocco and Pinewood Studios London. It is based on the well known videogame created by Jordan Mechner who previously considered producing an animated film based on the games, but could not resist Disney and Bruckheimer's offer. Finally, after a couple of reshoots in London two official trailer were released by the Walt Disney Company. One seems to be for international use showing much more footage than the other released previously. The film is scheduled to be released on March 28th 2010

trailer 1, trailer 2

Outer Transport

Outer Transport is a new blog by Nicholas Bouvier, exclusively dedicated to his 'space related images'. Nicholas Bouvier, also known as 'Sparth' is a senior concept artist for the game industry and his work recently got published in a book called Structura. For an extended biography and for a massive gallery of Nicolas' works please visit the artist website, Sparth.com, sparthconstruct.blogspot.com or outertransport.blogspot.com

an interview with 'Darkwolf's fantasy reviews' is posted here

The Art of Sherlock Holmes

Accomplished visual development artist John Watkiss will be exhibiting original storyboards and concept paintings from the new highly anticipated film, "Sherlock Holmes" with actor Robert Downey Jr.

Watkiss is also known for his designwork and storyboarding on TARZAN, ATLANTIS, FANTASIA and SKY CAPTAIN AND THE WORLD OF TOMORROW. He has published several books on anatomy and drawing technique which can be purchased on his website.

www.gallerynucleus.com

The Lighthouse Keeper

The Lighthouse Keeper is one of the student films produced this year at the Gobelins School of Animation in Paris. It shows excellent animation and design throughout the picture. Some conceptual work, cg-models and animation-tests are posted on the blogs of the team members here, here and here. Watch the film here.

James Gurney is an artist known for his plen-air landscape paintings, as well as his award-winning illustrations of fantasy and historical subjects. He is also known as the author and illustrator of the best-selling illustrated book series, Dinotopia. On his blog, Gurney Journey , is an introduction to his technique and the way he achieves his "Imaginative Realism".

Phillippe Faraut

Philippe Faraut is a figurative artist specializing in life-size portrait sculptures and monumental stone sculptures. His media of choice are water-based clay and marble.

From his extensive research of the human face he developed a technique of modeling the portrait that he shares with his sculpting students during his numerous sculpting classes and seminars taught throughout the US. In order to assist his students, Philippe has created a set of sculpting supplies, an instructional sculpting video series and two sculpting books detailing his process for portraiture in clay. Artists in fields such as sculpture, forensic reconstruction, illustration, art education and film and theater utilize his three-dimensional masks as reference for the aging process and in-depth studies of expression.

As an award-winning stone sculptor specializing in representational art, Philippe feels that the renewed interest and willingness of artists to return to the study of the human form has the potential to bring back to our society an appreciation for traditional beauty. www.philippefaraut.com

Milt Kahl Celebration

The Academy celebration of Milt Kahl featured an insightful analysis of his animation drawings, rare film interviews with Kahl himself, and clips of his work from such Disney favorites as “Mickey’s Circus,” “Pinocchio,” “Bambi,” “Peter Pan,” “Sleeping Beauty,” “The Jungle Book” and “The Rescuers.”

The videos are online now at the official Academy website. The footage is interspersed with commentary from those who worked beside him and were inspired by him, revealing the rigorous process and fiery personality of a true animation legend. www.oscars.org

Illustrative 2009 16.10.-1.11.

Illustrative is the leading international forum for contemporary illustration and graphic arts. Established in Berlin in 2006, Illustrative has been held twice in Berlin (2006/2007), once in Paris (2007), and once in Zürich (2008).
Illustrative displays not only the quality and fantasy of the latest graphic arts but also shows how the visual effects of graphic design, illustration, book art, comics, concept art, and animation spill into and influence the field of art.
The exhibition is accompanied by the Young Illustrator Award.

Online CGWorkshops

CGWorkshops are online courses that run for eight weeks at a time and are designed by professional artists for the creative computer graphics industry. Students are drawn from all around the globe and can participate from the privacy of their own home. All you need is a web connection. Run securely over the web, CGWorkshops give everyone the opportunity to learn specific skills and be tutored by leaders in all areas of CG design. The forum environment allows direct communication and assists students and Instructors to collaborate at any time anywhere in the world.

Weekly sessions commence with a tutorial that is presented as text, video or both followed by the distribution of an assignment. Assignments assist students apply skills learned from the tutorials as well as receive guidance and coaching from the Instructor and other students in the group. View the complete list of courses available here

www.cgsociety.org

Guild Wars 2

The Art of Guild Wars 2 is a hardbound book packed with 128 pages of eye candy by award-winning artists. The vivid collection of concept art offers a long-awaited glimpse into the world of Guild Wars 2. A trailer for the game can be found on youtube.


www.guildwars2.com

CFSL Ink.

Café Salé and Ankama Editions have released another book in the popular series of the CFSL-artbooks.
The community founded in 2007 has published several books on comic, concept art and speed painting.

L’artbook CFSL.
Grenouille Noire # 0
CFSL Shuffle volume 1 Speedpainting
CFSL Ink.

www.cfsl.net

Lebbeus Woods

The work of Lebbeus Woods, currently a professor of architecture at the Cooper Union in New York City, has influenced the designs of many films including 12 Monkeys, Alien 3 or The Fifth Element. "His work is experimental architecture in its most powerful, and politically provocative, sense."(BLDGBLOG)

The majority of his explorations deal with the design of systems in crisis, visions of a possible reality, provisional, local, and charged with the investment of their creators and are best known for his proposals for San Francisco, Havana, and Sarajevo.

His website provides access to projects and writings of his own and his collaborators whereas his blog features the latest articles accompanied by extensive discussions in the comments sections.

lebbeuswoods.wordpress.com

lebbeuswoods.net

Call For Entries

And yet another community for digital artists has emerged from the abyss of the world wide web. The initial idea behind Art Squared was to produce an art book that was free to enter and provide a platform for artists to showcase their work. Now that this idea had proven itself to be successful, subsmissions were opened in regards of a second volume. www.artsquared.co.uk

Exhibition

A group of artists from a major video game developer gather to share
their personal work at Gnomon Gallery. Opening reception of "Cognosco" on Saturday, August 8th at 7:00 pm, 1015 N. Cahuenga Blvd, Hollywood Ca 90038 www.gnomongallery.com

TRON trailer?

Not quite an official movie trailer but a concept test created by the people at Digital Domain to give Director Joseph Kosinski an impression of what they are capable of. First presented at ComicCon 2008 now the trailer can be found on the Apple website.

The Walt Stanchfield lectures

Stanchfield’s work has influenced the top talent in the industry. For many years he taught an after-hours drawing class at Disney. Now his handouts are collected in a two-volume set of books released by Disney Producer and Animation Author Don Hahn. Sample pages and reviews can be found on Mark Kennedy's legendary blog and the books are now available at amazon.com:
Drawn to Life: The Walt Stanchfield Lectures: 1
Drawn to Life: The Walt Stanchfield Lectures: 2

new website

Concept Art World is a blog and a directory dedicated to concept art. Displaying the work of leading artists from all over the world. Tutorials show the process of how the artwork is created and where to buy a printed version of your favourit piece. www.conceptartworld.com

Underwater Wars

The guys from Biart Studio LTD. in Moscow have published some new concept art on their official website. U-Wars is a sci-fi tactical shooter for PC and Xbox360 with the action taking place in the near future. www.uwar-game.com

Star Trek Concept Art

Concept artist James Clyne has posted the work he has done for Star Trek and Transformers. Clyne started out doing conceptual designs and set designs for Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas, Titan A.E., Galaxy Quest, Mission To Mars, Minority Report and X-Men 3. www.jamesclyne.com

崖の上のポニョ

From the Academy Award®-winning director and world-renowned Japanese animation legend Hayao Miyazaki comes PONYO, a story inspired by Hans Christian Andersen’s fairy tale “The Little Mermaid.” Already a box-office success in Japan, the story of a young and overeager goldfish named Ponyo and her quest to become human features an outstanding roster of voice talent, including Cate Blanchett and Matt Damon
watch trailer

Gobelins School of Animation

Once a year the students of the Gobelins School of Communication showcase their work at the Annecy Animation Film Festival. The school has set up a website that features all of the entries of this year's festival. For more information visit www.gobelins.fr

EXPOSÉ 7

Ballistic Publishing showcases an international collection of concept art and illustration. With 391 inspiring images prepared by 288 artists from 51 countries, you will discover the very best work across 20 different categories www.ballisticpublishing.com

Soy tu aire

Paint your own music video. soytuaire.labuat.com is a beautiful designed interactive website. Hit 'play' and give it a few seconds to load, then move the curser as you wish. Enjoy!

new release

Exodyssey is now available at DesignStudioPress. The book contains 176 pages filled with art and concept, created by six artists from Steambot Studios. For more information and preview pictures visit their website steambotstudios.com, the blog, exodyssey.com

Two visual books for the movie Terminator Salvation were released on April 28th: The Art of Terminator Salvation (read review) and Terminator Salvation: The Movie Companion.(read review)

The books cover production design, concept art, costume design, storyboard and visual effects. You'll find reviews and preview pics at parkablogs.com. Both books are published by Titan Books and are available at Amazon at a fair price point.

cinema design

"...CinemaDesign is a project that aims to gather exceptinal information that the internet has on film, TV, web, video and all forms of art in motion, and relate them to the wonderful world of design." Mainly interesting movie posters, fan art and concept designs can be found on this blog. Unfortunately only in Portuguese language but worth a look since the site offers a great number of image material.

cinema-design.blogspot.com

concept ships

conceptships.blogspot.com is an animated online aircraft art magazin. Containing probably the greatest collection of spaceships on the internet. The site is related to conceptships.org, a forum dedicated to sci-fi-fans and a platform for posting pictures concerning the subject.

Edward Carrick

The book consists of thirty one short chapters that summarize the work of film art directors working in Britain during the preceding 20 years. Michael Hirsh has posted the images and the accompanying biographies of these artists on his blog. Read more at articlesandtexticles.co.uk

Art&Design in the British film; A pictorial directory of British art directors and their work, Dennis Dobson Ltd, in 1948 by Edward Carrick

A New Deal for Artists

An Exhibition at the Smithsonian American Art Museum
February 27, 2009 - January 3, 2010

In 1934, Americans grappled with an economic situation that feels all too familiar today. Against the backdrop of the Great Depression, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt's administration created the Public Works of Art Program—the first federal government program to support the arts nationally. Federal officials in the 1930s understood how essential art was to sustaining America's spirit. Artists from across the United States who participated in the program, which lasted only six months from mid-December 1933 to June 1934, were encouraged to depict "the American Scene." The Public Works of Art Program not only paid artists to embellish public buildings, but also provided them with a sense of pride in serving their country. They painted regional, recognizable subjects—ranging from portraits to cityscapes and images of city life to landscapes and depictions of rural life—that reminded the public of quintessential American values such as hard work, community and optimism.

1934: A New Deal for Artists celebrates the 75th anniversary of the Public Works of Art Program by drawing on the Smithsonian American Art Museum's unparalleled collection of vibrant artworks created for the program. The paintings in this exhibition are a lasting visual record of America at a specific moment in time. George Gurney, deputy chief curator, organized the exhibition with Ann Prentice Wagner, curatorial associate.

click here to visit the 1934 flickr set, americanart.si.edu

...and a few more links to outstanding concept art

http://www.paperblue.net/ | http://www.leventep.com/ | http://www.area-56.de/ | http://www.labluna.blogspot.com/ | http://www.thomlab.com/ | http://turleysketch.blogspot.com/ | http://mattpostsarthere.blogspot.com/ | http://tychoi.blogspot.com/ | http://www.tychoi.com/ | http://www.blancfonce.com/ | http://www.johnwallin.net/ | http://davidsketch.blogspot.com/ | http://www.gonzalogolpe.com/ | http://www.danblomberg.com/|http://www.thunig.com/ | http://ryandemita.blogspot.com/ | http://www.greensocksart.com/ | http://peterkonigart.typepad.com/ | http://samuraicop.blogspot.com/

Cannabis Works

Tatsuyuki Tanaka made his reputation with his masterful animation of Tetsuo’s mutating arm in Akira and since has split his time between animating, anime layout, conceptualization and manga. He worked on the image boards for Fushigi No Umi No Nadia (The Secret of Blue Water), character designs for the video game Linda Cubed, and tons of storyboards for Studio 4C, famous for it's work on Animatrix, Spriggan, Memories, and Vampire Hunter D, as well as Grasshoppa and Vermilion Pleasure Nights.
Scans of his graphic novel called "Cannabis Works" can be found at Digik Gallery.

His style of drawing is known as 'Superflat', a postmodern art movement founded by the artist Takashi Murakami, which is influenced by manga and anime. It is also the name of a 2001 art exhibition, curated by Murakami, that toured West Hollywood, Minneapolis and Seattle. The term is used by Murakami to refer to various flattened forms in Japanese graphic art, animation, pop culture and fine arts, as well as the "shallow emptiness of Japanese consumer culture."(espvisuals)