Digital Fantasy Painting: A Step-By-Step Guide to Creating Visionary Art On Your Computer [Paperback]

Michael Burns (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0823015742 | ISBN-13: 978-0823015740 | Publication Date: October 1, 2002

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.

Editorial Reviews

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.

Product Details

• Paperback: 160 pages
• Publisher: Watson-Guptill (October 1, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0823015742
• ISBN-13: 978-0823015740
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 0.5 x 9.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,029,111 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

30 of 33 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars A Mediocre Book of Pretty Pictures No Substance, December 11, 2002

By 

ufobooks (Plano, TX USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Digital Fantasy Painting: A Step-By-Step Guide to Creating Visionary Art On Your Computer (Paperback)

This book is full of nice images, if I can say so it is more a gallery of Digital Fantasy Art then a training book, the editorial review is a little misleading. It is not a training nor lesson book, it is a Tip book only. For instance, there will be a picture on the page and the author will explain 1-2 tips on how they created the light for that particular piece, nothing extraordinary. Not only that, but most of the images and "tutorials/tips" can be found on the internet. All you have to do is do a search on Epilouge or search other digital art sites etc. and you will find many of the images that are in the book.

The author's details about hardware and computers are mundane and "filler up" material. The target of this book is for beginners only. Other skill levels will want something of more substance.

If you are wanting a book that will learn you how to digital paint try Don Seegimiller's books. If you would like to learn how to create compositions and/or image effects you will not receive this from this book, only a smattering of tips (which are good, but not detailed enough). Books like these should be giving tips that are rare and unknown, not re-hashing tips the reader already knows.

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Good for beginners, September 12, 2003

By A Customer

This review is from: Digital Fantasy Painting: A Step-By-Step Guide to Creating Visionary Art On Your Computer (Paperback)

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.

9 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A great starting point!, July 11, 2005

By 

Eternaldark 112 - See all my reviews

This review is from: Digital Fantasy Painting: A Step-By-Step Guide to Creating Visionary Art On Your Computer (Paperback)

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!