Editorial
Welcome to Issue 51! If you’re feeling that Christmas spirit already and you’d like to buy a friend or loved one a subscription to 3DCreative as a present, please email jo@3dtotal.com and she’ll be happy to help. Or why not treat yourself (go on, you know you want to!)? If you purchase a 12-month subscription this month, you’ll also receive $50 USD worth of Gnomon tutorial content with your subscription – for free! This comes courtesy of Alex Alvarez, the president of Gnomon and director of the Gnomon School of Visual Effects in Hollywood, The Gnomon Workshop, The Gnomon Gallery, Sketchtheatre, Gnomon Studios and CGChannel. We interview Alex in this month’s issue as not only is he the founder and director of the before-mentioned, but he is also an accomplished 3D artist who continues to work on both personal and profession projects despite his extremely busy schedule. You’ll find behind the scenes photos from the Gnomon School as well as Alex’s portfolio of artworks on p.8. The subscription offer is for one month only, so purchase your subscription today to take advantage of the free gift from Gnomon.

We’re tackling the texturing of our Next-Gen characters this month in chapter five – the penultimate part – of 3DCreative’s tutorial series for 3ds Max/Maya/LightWave and modo. Joseph Harford, Gavin Goulden, James Busby and John Hayes are all back and in top form to take you step-by-step through this leg of your character creation journey. These artists all work in the industry and know their stuff, so be sure to follow the tutorial for great techniques, tips and advice (if you’ve missed any of the previous chapters you can grab them at here) and create a next-gen character for your portfolio! (p.86)

Our front cover image was created by Andrzej Sykut, who is not only a talented 3D artist but also a great photographer – I’ve seen the proof! He has a wonderful eye for composition and detail, and as you’ll see from the cover, a fantastic imagination to boot! Andrzej is with us to talk us through the benefits of using Layer Masks and Adjustment Layers in Photoshop to improve our 3D renders. Not only does Andrzej tell us what each Adjustment Layer is good for in our 3D workflow, but he has also kindly provided the PSD of his final image for you to dissect at your will. You can learn a great deal by looking at the structure of an accomplished image’s layers, so we hope you’ll find it
useful and a great accompaniment to this month’s chapter of the Photoshop for 3D series on p.40.

This month’s Manimal comes straight from the mind of Polish 3D artist, Tomasz Kwiecinski. Tomasz has a great sense of humor and we love working with him and seeing what he comes up with when we give him a brief as strange as “Reptilian-Man”. Check out his interpretation of such an amalgamation on p.50, and don’t miss the free time-lapse movie with his tutorial for further insight into his ZBrush workflow. This is in fact the final chapter of our Manimal series, so we hope you’ve enjoyed the weird and wonderful creations over the past months! And as one good thing ends, another begins; we’ll be bringing you a brand new series next month, so stay tuned to 3DCreative!

Talking of brand new tutorials, we’d like to announce the first chapter of a new five-part series on Creating a Fantasy Scene Using 3D, Photography and Post-Production. Richard Tilbury, our resident artist, is inspired by the local architecture of our hometown, Worcester (U.K.), and knocks up a concept for a fantastical scene using photographs of his chosen location in Photoshop. We’ll introduce 3ds Max next month when we get to the modeling and lighting installment, but for now enjoying some good ol’ concept art creation on p62.

Explore the gallery on p.28 and enjoy Andrew Finch’s first making of project on his recent gallery featured image, Control Panel, over on p.72. We’ve been really impressed with Andrew’s work and we’re sure you’ll be seeing more of him in 3DCreative in 2010, so keep your eyes peeled. Happy reading! Ed.