Product Description

There's a powerful fascination in creating fantasy characters and their bewitching environs on the computer screen. Written for anyone who works- or plays-in 3D graphics, Digital Fantasy Painting supplies a treasury of tested techniques that can be applied to any illustration software package. This extraordinary resource is packed with dozens of step-by-step exercises for designing photo-realistic 3D creatures and their strange worlds. Readers will see how to produce simple human skin and bone textures, as well as an entire host of ethereal creatures such as ghosts, spirits, robots, and cyborgs. They'll discover how to design realistic atmospheric effects as well as capture the surreal world of nightmares, futurescapes, and planetscapes. Computer artists will also find tested techniques for modeling, surfacing, staging, and lighting as well as creating water, glass, and other true-to-life motion effects. Digital Fantasy Painting features a dazzling showcase of the very best fantasy artwork, complete with dozens of tips, examples, and shortcuts that help put the creative process on the fast track. Plus, a special section outlines the myriad software illustration packages available on the market today. For graphic designers, fans of fantasy and science fiction art, and anyone else who wants to try their hand at creating incredible creatures on their computer screen, here is a definitive one-stop resource.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #332269 in Books
• Published on: 2002-10-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 160 pages

From School Library Journal
Adult/High School-Lavishly illustrated, this volume begins with a survey of available software programs, such as Adobe Photoshop and Corel Painter, and then discusses how to render skin, hair, landscapes, etc. Printed on high-quality, glossy paper, the book offers a host of spreads that show how various effects were created, often taking readers from initial sketch to final artwork, with the techniques of a variety of professional artists presented. The computer is not held up as a substitute for drawing ability or hard work honing artistic skills, but the information given will be useful to a wide range of skill levels. The author showcases a remarkable variety of programs, many of which are quite expensive, but most of the examples are easily translatable to cheaper and more widely available software. The full-color art is beautiful and inspiring, and even those who don't aspire to create computer art may find the book worthwhile for its display of fantasy and science-fiction art. The glossary has complete definitions, and links are provided to software publishers and other places of interest to fantasy artists.
Paul Brink, Fairfax County Public Library, VA
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About the Author
Michael Burns is a writer and journalist who has worked on many leading graphic and digital magazines. He was editor-in-chief of Computercreative, editor of CGI magazine, and is a regular contributor to CreateOnLine, Macworld, and Computer Arts. He lives in North London, UK.

Customer Reviews

Long on Art, short on tutorial
I bought this book impressed by the variety of digital art reproduced within it. However, I also expected that there would be some helpful tutorials discussing how to achieve the effects in the artwork. While some tutorials are included, they are hardly of the helpful, step-by-step variety - the eager learner is given short-shrift and the tutorial explanations are very shallow and less-than-helpful. For those looking for some nice art to look at, certainly pick this book up. However, if you want a book to learn from, go somewhere else.

A great starting point!
Hello there. I am a 3D artist and a wannabe indie game designer. A year or two back I had no clue how to start on making art and or what to use. I didn't know what NURBs meant, I didn't know about rigging, texturing, animation, rendering, anything like that. Well, this book isn't going to tell you how to do that but it certainly helped me start out. This book contains breath-taking art from a massive amount of programs and tells you a short walkthrough on how they made it. This is a great book for beginners to get started on, learn some technical terms, know the names of these programs so they can do a little research on them, and get inspiration. This book is amazing! Even if you are an artist you should get this book. It's great!

Good for beginners
This book mostly contains some step by step screen shots. The book talks mostly about using photoshop as a tool for texturing, and painting. It goes a little bit in other 3d programs such as Maya, 3d max, and Poser. But only covers a few modifiers or special effects. There is no real indepth explanation. As someone who works with 3d max and photoshop, I only recommend it if you are a beginner. The instruction are more like tips here and there.