Editorial
Welcome to the first issue of 2009 – Happy New Year! This month, keeping with 3DCreative tradition, we have our two artist interviews, the first of which is with the one and only David Giraud, possibly best known for his work as senior character artist on Assassin’s Creed at Ubisoft Montreal, and who is currently working on the upcoming game based on the 3D science-fiction film directed by James Cameron, Avatar. Check out page 007 for our interview with David, and then, because one is never enough, flick to page 019 for our interview with movie monster genius Aaron Sims of the Aaron Sims Company, whose company creates concept art through to fully rendered 3D models for the film, TV and videogame industries. With work on recent titles including The Incredible Hulk and The Golden Compass under his belt, we find out a little more about what happens at the Aaron Sims Company in this issue of 3DCreative. And whilst on the subject of feature films, we also introduce an article this month on the 3D animated film, Igor. Find out more on page 027 about how Autodesk Maya was used in the bringing of Igor to life.

Our tutorials this month see the end of another 3DCreative era, as we welcome the final instalment and wave farewell to the mega tutorial series for 3ds Max, Cinema 4D, LightWave, Maya and Softimage XSI: Creating a Complete Scene from Concept to Render (page 083). I’m sure you’ll agree that our artists have done some fantastic work on this series over the past few issues, and for those of you who simply want more, more, more, then stay tuned for the February 2009 issue of 3DCreative where we will bring to you the first instalment of a 6-chapter series on creating a gothic church interior scene for 3ds Max, Cinema 4D, LightWave, Maya and – new to 3DCreative’s tutorials – modo! Yes, that’s right: modo will be amongst the tutorial line up in the February issue, so we hope you’ll all give a huge welcome to our new modo tutorial artist next month. Also to be expected in the next big series is a chapter on ZBrush, and the final chapter will be an in-depth look into post-production in Photoshop. There’s lots more to come from us this year – so stick around!

Our ZBrush tutorials this month include the speed sculpting of a space ninja by Jesse Sandifer and Dalton Alves Muniz, and Rafael Ghencev talks us through the creation of a character that he’s badly beaten up – for purely artistic purposes of course (please note that no people were hurt during the making of this issue of 3DCreative). Check out page 055 for Rafael’s sculpted and textured character created entirely in ZBrush, and page 045 for this month’s speed sculpting challenge.

To round things up, we have two making of articles for you this month, the first of which has been created by Nicolas Collings on the creation of his Orc Maori character image (page 063), and the second is a wonderful living room interior created by Felipe Lobo (page 069).

As a final note, I hope your New Years have all kicked off well and we look forward to bringing you many more issues in 2009. Thanks for your support, and keep those gallery images coming in! Best wishes, Ed.