Resources for Students
This is absolutely perfect for my graphic design, 3d and gaming students. It’s an online portfolio site specifically for artists without web skills. It’s sleek and clean, and I’ve had one or two students submit their portfolios by sending me the URL (which is how I found it). I’ll be suggesting it as part of your final portfolio project!
(Plus, it’s pretty and a good example of webdesign.)
Amazing (and prolific) series of concept art for Warhammer Online. Characters, weapons, maps & locations are shown in different phases, from concept through to cinema renders (top image).
This is a find by Evan and I pounced on it to show you. It looks like it might be as useful as Muybridge’s freeze-frame photos in terms of reference. The fact that the 3d models are shown without skin is something you should exploit in order to learn muscle definition and placement. This could be a huge boost in learning anatomy for concept art, texturing, modeling and animation.
I was not aware that this type of revolution in X/HTML was taking place, but it’s VERY exciting. The top image is your basic site as it stands now with web standards. The second image is what they’re proposing - actual semantic tags to describe your content. Then your CSS would just have to define the header, the nav, etc.
Beautiful work, I can’t wait for it to implement!
CGSociety has announced the winners of their latest challenge, “Strange Behavior”:
‘Strange Behavior’ - “The unexpected can delight or shock. It can be exciting or frightening. It’s often funny. It’s never boring!”
Pages of beautiful entries, including Modeling, Texturing, Lighting, Visual Effects, Art Direction, Cinematography, Matte Painting, Compositing & Editing and Screen Play adaption.
Make extra effort to watch the animated winning entries. I’m having trouble deciding between the black-and-white stripes of Polkarella, and the beautiful purples of Spaced Out as my favourite. Also make sure to click on the Challenger Page for each of the winners, because you’ll get a behind-the-scenes look backwards through the process of creating each scene.
It’s a LOT of eye-candy, folks, don’t overload yourself but make sure you take it all in eventually!
Donated by designers and artists around the globe, posters sold here raise funds for victims of the wildfires that devastated Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside, and San Diego Counties. All proceeds will be given to the Salvation Army, for the 2007 California Wildfire fund.
Beautiful, and poignant.
For those of you who aren’t sure, this is what a bleed looks like. Wikipedia defines bleed like so:
Bleed refers to printing that goes beyond the edge of the sheet after trimming. The bleed is the part on the side of your document that gives the printer that small amount of space to move around paper and design inconsistencies.”
There are a couple of examples I want to show you today. One is from PrinterInternational.org, which gives a pretty good description, example, and exactly how to set up bleed in InDesign.
The second is from Veerle, whose blog is one of the most beautiful I’ve ever seen. She explains a way to setup bleed in Photoshop that is almost too simple - make sure to read the comments as well!
NotCot.org has put together a great collection of images from illustrator Koren Shadmi. His official site is here, but as noted at NotCot, his LiveJournal, packed full of the process it takes to get a finished piece together, is much more interesting to me - but we all know I’ve got a bit of a soft spot for in-progress pics!
I’m not sure how I didn’t know this project existed until yesterday, but here it is.
The Sphere Project is a website dedicated to the evolution of technical and creative 3D sphere design. The purpose is simple; to create the most captivating and visually appealing sphere from our provided scene using your 3D program and renderer of choice.
I wanted to give our 3D students some inspiration, so the examples above were created using 3dsmax and Photoshop; the first two are very highly rated, and the third is from the middle of the pack. Each of these are possible with the skills you’re learning! A lot of the realistic CG images you see look so realistic because of the lighting, so make sure to practice, practice, practice!
CGSphere –> [via notcot.org]
LogoLounge looks at logo trends each year, and 2007 has some interesting ones. Helix, rubber bands, hubs and dots are all here. This is an EXCELLENT place to go for logo ideas - either for a place to start when you’re stuck, or what to avoid in order to stand out from the crowd. It can also give you an idea of what trends might be out-dated, because you can view each year’s trends back to 2003.