image resource

Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer. A great source of inspiration and excellent reference material can be foumd in the archive. www.nasa.gov/

Festival

The Pictoplasma Berlin Festival brings together an international scene of artists, directors, designers and agencies, offering a unique forum for all those working with - or simply loving - the visualisation and application of contemporary character design.
At the heart of the festival is an exhibition which explores the huge diversity of the character universe. Additionally, the festival's program incorporates the 3rd Pictoplasma Conference, which, since its first incarnation in 2004, has been setting the benchmark for a playful and equally focussed handling with figurative design. Over the course of 2 days, an international line-up of artists such as Luke Ramsey, Nina Braun or Peter de Sève, will present their work in concentrated lectures.

April 9. - 10.2010, Kino Babylon, Berlin pictoplasma.com

Moebius, Boucq and others showing off their skills at 2010 Comic Convention in Angoulême, France. All images created digitally in less than one our at the WACOM booth.

SPEED PAINTING MASTER angouleme2010
Hochgeladen von pixeltv. - Sie originelle Web Videos.

Rage Publishing

With the success of the first book, "Art Squared – digital painters 2" is the second in the series of books produced by the team at ArtSquared.co.uk. Throughout this edition you can enjoy a selection of more than 70 of the worlds best digital artists, showcasing more than 130 images, spread over 172 diverse pages of artwork. Preorder your copy here

latest web finds

Superfreedraw is a non commercial art project and a platform that facilitates a new form of expression and communication on the web. Draw whatever you want, wherever you want. Waste all the space you need - it`s free! no regulations restict your drawings - create, destroy, modify.

The storyboard paper pdf generator doesn't draw storyboards but helps you to create the perfect layout for 4:3 - TV, 16:9 - widescreen HDTV, 1.85:1 - 35mm cinema widescreen. Many other free graph/grid paper styles are available here.

Retro Image Archive

Plan59 is a great resource of retro commercial illustration. It bills itself as a ‘museum dedicated to the art of mid-century America’. Vehicles, interiors, ad's and industrial propaganda are the main themes of the images.

trailer released

The trailer for Tron 2 - now called Tron Legacy - previously released at Comic Con 2009 has been officially released. The sequel is scheduled for release in the US on December 21 this year. The cast includes Jeff Bridges, John Hurt and Michael Sheen. Here’s the official website with more info and preview pics.

brushes, tips & tutorials

If you are a web designer or someone who works in the designing arena, smashing magazine is the ultimate stop for all that skills. With about 200,000 subscribers and many more stats, its a website which is full of great information matters to all the designers. Forum with job offers included.

Fudgegraphics can be described as a design inspirational blog. It is a source of freebies such as photoshop brushes, textures and vectors, aiming to improve quality the highest possible and provide free resources for like-minded people.

Vectortuts+ is a blog of tutorials, articles and more on all things vector! Tutorials on techniques and effects help to make vector graphics in programs like Adobe Illustrator and Inkscape. The authors work all over the industry. Most of the content is free, but a premium membership will get access to extras and source files for tutorials.

Pixey is a blog for web-designers and graphic artists. On a regular basis you will find news, tutorials and links to helpful resources. Many freebies are available in the download section such as photoshop brushes, scans and vector graphics.

Australian Tour 2010

Syd Mead is one of the most celebrated concept artist in the world today. He was the artist behind some of the most influential science fiction of the 20th century such as BLADE RUNNER, TRON, ALIENS, STAR TREK and more. The tour is being organized in conjunction with the CG Society. On the night of Thursday the 18th of March, the premiere of the award winning film, Visual Futurist: the Art and Life of Syd Mead, will be screened at the Hayden Orpheum Picture Palace in Cremorne. The screening will be followed by Syd Mead live on stage, interviewed by Jamie Leonarder. The second event will take place in the RMIT University, Melbourne. Tickets are now available.

UNESCO poster competition

The United Nations General Assembly has proclaimed 2010, International Year for the Rapprochement of Cultures, and calls out a design competition for the official poster. From 50 selected posters, 30 posters will be printed for an exhibition to be held at UNESCO Headquarter in May 2010 in the framework of the International Festival of Cultural Diversity. The official brief and the rules are posted here.

Jean-Francois Lepine

Jean-Francois Lepine works as Lead Character Artist for a game development studio in Foster City, California. Some of his personal work is posted at CGSociety. He discribes the walk cycle (image above) as follows: "Technical Animaton in XSI using mostly curves as trajectory. Skin muscles and face expressions are a combination of shape keys, plotted deformation, SDKs and other blended deformations. Rendered in mental ray..."

just released

The Art of How to Train Your Dragon

This Book is a spectacularly designed, full-color insider’s guide to the creative process that went into turning Cressida Cowell’s popular book into a feature-length, animated film. Featuring more than 350 pieces of development artwork, including early character designs, story sketches, and concept paintings from industry veterans such as Pierre-Olivier Vincent(cover), Nicolas Marlet(below), Zhaoping Wei, Kirsten Kawamura and Simon Otto. The Author, Tracey Miller-Zarneke, is the former Production Department Manager for Walt Disney Feature Animation and author of The Art of Kung Fu Panda. More preview pics and a little movie, flipping through the pages on ParkaBlogs.
available now at amazon.de

Perspective

Perspective Magazin is the bimonthly journal of the Art Directors Guild - the international union representing employees in the entertainment industry. The Magazin takes a look behind the scenes and the creative process of film making with a focus on Production Design. Featured articles introduce the leading artists in this field today and applied techniques such as concept art and storyboards. A free download as PDF-file of the journal is available on the web-site at www.artdirectors.org
design sketch by Stuart Craig, Production Designer for Harry Potter

Sidebar Nation runs a great series of hour long podcastes aiming to present entertaining, informative and art-literate discussion on comic pop culture. The show features articles and interviews with top artists of the entertainment industry, such as Adam Hughes Jean Paul Leon, Neville Page, James Jean and others. Find the complete list of all back episodes here. www.sidebarnation.com

Six of the best visual arts podcasts have joined forces on VAPN to keep you informed, inspired, and entertained with hours of valuable content every week. On top of that, you will find articles, tutorials, and other useful resources on this site that you won’t find anywhere else. visualartistpodcastnetwork.com

Moebius

Jean Giraud came to public attention in the USA in the 1980's after his work was published in the science fiction magazine "Heavy Metal", an American version of the French publication "Metal Hurlant". Since the '60s he published more than 25 graphic novels including strips such as Blueberry, Arzach, or Silver Surfer. In addition, Moebius (Jean Giraud) has contributed to the set designs of numerous film productions, including Alien, The Abyss, Dune and The Fifth Element.

Moebius Redux (video) takes extraordinary visual paths in documentary filmmaking and goes on a mind-bending tour of imagination past, present and future.

15th Conference on Animation, Effects & Games

FMX is an event in cooperation with VES Visual Effects Society, AIAS Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences, ACM Siggraph and 5D Conference.

The recruiting section is growing constantly. So far Animal Logic, ARRI, Black Rock Studio, Cinesite, Double Negative, Framestore, Pixomondo, Red Vision, ScanlineVFX and RTT have confirmed their participation.

May 04-07, 2010, Stuttgart, Germany, www.fmx.de

online Master Classes

Due to popular demand, The Gnomon School has extended it's online Master Classes event! Each 2-3 hour lecture focuses on a different element of the VFX & Games industries in a private forum where the instructors have shared a variety of insights and answers to previous attendee’s questions. Lectures will be give by industry veterans such as Feng Zhu, Neville Page, Iain McCaig and others. Renowned digital painter Craig Mullins (image below) shares how he applies the timeless values behind traditional art to digital art.

2010 Adobe Design Achievement Awards

The Adobe® Design Achievement Awards celebrate student achievement reflecting the powerful convergence of technology and the creative arts. The competition - which showcases individual and group projects created with industry-leading Adobe creative software - honors the most talented and promising student graphic designers, photographers, illustrators, animators, digital filmmakers, developers and computer artists from the world's top institutions of higher education.

Contest ends on June 4, 2010. adaa.adobe.com

FZD School of Design

FZD School of Design caters to both professionals looking to further their skills and to students who want to break into the entertainment industry. The courses cover a wide range of design topics such as video games, feature films, theme park designs, consumer products, toys, TV commercials, and set designs. FZD focuses heavily on the importance of fundamental skills and the proper ways to develop design abilities. The aim is to mold students into elite designers with a broad range of skills and graduate with a top notch portfolio.
www.fzdschool.com
www.fengzhudesign.com

Alchemy.008.BETA.release

Alchemy isn’t software for creating finished artwork, but rather a sketching environment that focuses on the absolute initial stage of the creation process. Intentionally reduced to a level of functionality there are no undo, no selecting, and no editing features. Interaction focuses instead on the output of a great number of good, bad, strange and beautiful shapes.

Alchemy is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation. A download is available for Mac 10.5, 10.6, Linux and Windows

A quick demo showing how an Alchemy sketch can be used inside ZBrush. Using the Alchemy sketch as an alpha mask, flat shapes are explored in 3d for a helmet or mech head concept piece. al.chemy.org

call for entries

The deadline for subsmissions is January 22, 2010. Spectrum is open to every artist who wishes to participate: students, fine artists, and illustrators are all treated equally. There are no limits on the number of pieces an artist can submit and there is no pre-screening prior to judging. Spectrum is sold in the mass market through all the major bookstores. Copies are also sent to many art directors and publishers to maximize exposure for the artists featured in the book. Submissions for Spectrum 17 are now being accepted. Visit their website for an application and download the entry form here.

Painters Wheel 1.0 for CS4

A color picker resembling closely Corel Painter's color wheel is now availabe for Adobe Photoshop CS4.

The application can be downloaded at lenwhite.com and supports Mac OS, XP, Vista, 7, 32, 64 bit. The download is for free.

lenwhite.com
Painters Wheel 1.0

Android

As a co-founder of conceptart.org, Andrew Jones works closely with the developers of emerging digital technology to create software that gives artists new tools. Most recently, he began teaching art students all over the world and performing live on-stage as a digital painter. His experience and style made him a leader of the avantgarde in the digital art community. See samples of his work on his relaunched web-site. In the video section are a few very interesting clips showing a detailed painting process of his images.

androidjones.net

AVATAR

James Cameron’s long-awaited follow-up to Titanic, the most successful film to date, is immense in every way: from the ambition and scope of its vision, to the ground-breaking technological wizardry, to the staggering size of its budget(...)

Scott Patton started working on Avatar 3 years ago and was part of the group of artists that designed the Na'vi characters. Some of his images are posted @zbrushcentral. He explains the way he works on his tutorial DVD available at Gnomon Workshop.

theshowreel.tv is a site for creating professional showreels streaming in the highest quality possible. It is a subscribtion based service with a user friendly drag and drop function that has been custom built for TheShowreel. The included software compresses and uploads all formats of quicktime automatically to high quality H262 FLV. www.theshowreel.tv