I’ve written before about ImagineFX, a UK based magazine devoted primarily to 2D digital art (“digital painting”) for the fantasy, science fiction and concept art fields.
Almost every issue of the magazine I’ve every seen has had articles of interest to me, (and ImagineFX is one of those magazines, like Illustration magazine, in which even the ads are relevant and interesting); but I found Issue #60 (September 2010) to be of particular interest for a number of reasons.
In addition to the cornucopia of news from the field, pointers to interesting topics on the web, artist questions and answers, reviews of computer graphics software and hardware, how-to workshops, and the discovery of at least two artists new to me that I will be profiling in the future, the issue includes several feature articles about (or by) artists I’ve previously featured here on Lines and Colors.
William Stout is profiled in a several page article, illustrated with art from his beautiful new book Hallucinations (which I reviewed here) and his previous recent book Dinosaur Discoveries (which I reviewed here), along with other work from his illustrious career.
Goro Fujita, who I profiled here, contributes a three page article on Digital Painting on the iPad with the Brushes app.
James Gurney, who I have featured in several posts on Lines and Colors, highlights the Workshops section of the issue with a terrific 6 page article on The Science Behind Visual Perception, that is alone worth the cover price of the magazine. This includes material adapted from Gurney’s upcoming book, Color and Light: A Guide for the Realist Painter. There is a post about the ImagineFX article on Gurney’s always fascinating blog, Gurney Journey.
There are good-size digital files of the images from the articles by Gurney and Fujita on the DVD that accompanies the issue. This also includes a ton of resources, including images from other articles and workshops, a hi-resolution texture pack, over 700 female figure reference pose photos and trial versions of Painter 11, ZBrush 3.1 and ArtRage 3. (I’ll be reviewing ArtRage 3 in an upcoming post.)
As part of a nine page “Back to Basics” section on topics like Texture, Digital File Formats, Layers, and Figure Drawing Basics, Justin Gerard, who I profiled here, contributes a short article on Composition for Beginners,.
Oh yes, and as part of that same section, yours truly contributes a short column on Art Terms and Questions, in which I explain some commonly misunderstood art terms like “chiaroscuro”, “negative space”, “simultaneous contrast”, “chroma” and “lost and found edges” (page 61, right column).
ImagineFX #60 is currently on sale in the U.S. and Canada (in the UK, it’s last month’s issue, which can be purchased from the website as a back issue).
The ImagineFX website is also a huge resource of archived articles, galleries, workshops, forums, reviews and downloads.
