Links
Recomended Reading
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Drawing On The Right Side of the Brain:
If you think that only "Gifted" people can draw, you are wrong! Anyone can draw and draw well. This book proves it! It uses a system that's been developed over 30 years, Dusty highly recomends this book!
Fantasy Genesis:
I LOVE THIS BOOK!!! It's so much fun, a great way to come up with unique ideas and a really great place to get past your artists block!
50 Robots to Draw and Paint:
Sounds like a kids book don't it? But this is a really great book on how to draw matte or hard surfaced creatures.
Anatomy for Fantasy Artists: An Illustrator's Guide to Creating Action Figures and Fantastical Forms:
Does exactly what it says in the title. GREAT BOOK!
Drawing and Painting Fantasy Figures: From the Imagination to the Page:
Another great fantasy art book. With a less digital and more painterly approach to creating fantasy art.
Drawing & Painting the undead: Create Gruesome Ghouls for Graphic Novels, Computer Games and Animation:
This is an amazing book for those who want to create the darker side of fantasy art.
The Fantasy Illustrator's Technique Book: From Creating Characters to Selling Your Work, Learn the Skills of the Professional Fantasy Artist:
This is another GREAT book on creating fantasy creatures, people and places using more traditional methods of drawing and painting.
Mechanika: How to Create Science Fiction Art:
One TRULY stunning book!!! If you want to create images with hard surfaces and SciFi themes, THIS IS THE ONE FOR YOU!!! Love it!
50 Fantasy Vehicles to Draw and Paint: Create Awe-Inspiring Crafts for Comic Books, Computer Games, and Graphic Novels:
This book is soooooooooo good! If your looking for ideas for unique and strange vehicles, this is a perfect book to help you learn to think out of the box!
The Fundamentals of Drawing: A Complete Professional Course for Artists:
This book is pretty much where it all started for me! Some of the exercises from this book were used in the Graphics Tablet Tutorial on this site. I love this book so much, I'm going to be working through it again this year!
How to Draw Comics the "Marvel" Way:
Ok ok!! So now I'm really showing my geekeness!! But I love this book!! It's simply laid out, but tells you everything you need to know to becoming a marvel style artist! LOVE IT!
Hellbeasts: How to Draw Grotesque Fantasy Creatures:
This is a very well presented book that gives a lot of ideas on coming up with unique and scary creatures! It lacks in the colouring department, but is still a worthwhile study.
Digital Painting Techniques: Masters Collection: Volume 1:
There has never been a book that I have opened and found my jaw hitting the flaw more than this one! This book is simply a MUST for all aspiring digital artists out there!
The Fundamentals of Drawing: A Complete Professional Course for Artists:
This book is pretty much where it all started for me! Some of the excers
Inspiring Artists
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Craig Thomson:
A brilliant concept and product artist, who has become a good friend and mentor over the year. Cheers dude!
Chriss Calf:
Another awe inspiring artist who can creat photo real level art with Photoshop! And a nice guy to boot!
Daarken:
This young man has me utterly green with envy!!! I have witnessed some of his tutorials and he features in Digital Painting Techniques Vol 1. MAN I WISH I COULD CREATE LIKE THIS!!
Vitaly S Alexius:
Just makes some of the most epic artworks I have ever seen!
David Revoy:
An amazing artist, and one who uses free software to make his creations. Just proves what you can do with a lot of talent and some freebies to help progress it!
Mark Harrison:
A legend in the industry of art. 2000AD artist, AVP game concept artist.... need I say more?
Swoop:
A loooooong time ago I stumbled across a 3D Palace tutorial video by this guy on creating a sci fi city in Corel Painter. That video single handedly set me on the road to become a digital artist as a hobby! I owe this guy a lot! Really!
John Strieder:
John is a very talented 3D artist and good friend. He has had his work featured in Exposé 6, It's Art and the ZBrush Central gallery. He's also been very encouraging over the last year or so to yours truly. Thanks John! :)
Ryan Church:
Ryan Church, concept artist for Star Wars eps 2 and 3, and war of the worlds. Nuff said!
Feng Zhu:
Another master concept artist! Feng is awesome, especially at creating robots!! ;)
Andrew Jones:
Another Great Artist. One word, dedication. This guy has done over 1000 self portraits, that's one a day for almost 3 years!
Gregory Callahan:
Fast becoming one of my favourite artists, this guy has an awesome sense of humour and great skill with pencil, paint and 3D.
Dan Scott:
One of my favourite artists. This is guy is seriously good! And a really nice guy to boot!
Dan Milligan:
Dan is held in VERY high regard by many concept artists out there.
Henning Ludvigsen:
This guy is amazing! He has a ton of tutorials on his website and has writen articles for many art magazines. I first encountered him in ImagineFX
Deke McClelland:
The layer masking master of Photoshop. He offers many free Photoshop related videos and tutorials on his site.
Scot Drake:
Another photoshop artist who I'm utterly jealous of ;)
Mike Corriero:
Mike is a very talented concept artist who works for many companies, and has featured in Ballistic Publishing books more than once! He also taught me a very cool technique to get past artist block in an article for ImangineFX.
Aaron Sims:
An amazing concept artist who has worked on many hollywood blockbusters!
Simon Dominic:
This guy is a true Painter X and ArtRage expert. And he says on his site he's only been practising art for 5 years!!!
Nico Di Mattia:
When I first encountered this guy, it was on you tube with his amazing speedpaints. I kid you not this guy is officially one of my all time top 5 artists! He is amazing! Just check out his Megan Fox to what I mean!
Tim Jessell:
This is one of the most talented artists out there today. He uses Corel Painter to make the most amazing images!
Rebecca Kimmel:
An amazingly talented artist and quick to offer any information on how to draw, especially anatomy!
Alex Grey:
A friend showed me this site. Some of the most amazing anatomy work I have seen to date!
Ralph Stumph:
I love this guys work! His art is crisp and clean. I envy him totally! :)
More Ralph Stumph:
Some more of Ralph's work in the ZBrush Central Forums.
Sebastien Legrain:
Photo real barely comes close to describing this mans work!
Krishnamurti Martins Costa aka (Antropus):
Another truly talented artist! Photo real 3D is this ones talent too!
Steve Jubinville:
Another well respected artist in the 3D world and very keen to teach others.
Mark Nelson:
An awesome and creative sketch and paint artist. I'm green with envy at his skill and he's called Mark so that makes him cool! :)
René Blom:
A wonderful artist who has a number of great tutorials on their site.
Fave Arty/Forum Sites
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ImagineFX Magazine:
In my humble oppinion, the best magazine out there for the aspiring digital artist. The main site has forums, workshops, reviews and much much more. Of course if you get the magazine you get tons more, and I mean tons! LOVE IT!!!
CGSociety.org:
A great place for all things CGI. The best in the world go here!
ZBrush Central:
My favourite place to hang out in the world! :)
Blender Artists Forum:
The best place to go to learn and talk all things Blender3D
ConceptArt.org:
A massive community of artists, and I do mean MASSIVE!!! And they are all very nice people. :)
DeviantArt.com:
A great website for artists of all mediums and skill levels! And some really crazy people live there!!! I mean it! ;)
Gnomon Workshop:
Great place for industry standard art training DVD's, mostly digital.
PoseManiacs.com:
This is a great website for speedy practice at anatomy and to get pose references! You should try the timed random pose excercise! Can you draw an entire human in less than 30 secs?
Sijun.com Forums:
Another Great Art Forum
The Drawing Board:
Loads of discussions and examples here too!
SubDivisionModeling.com:
A stunning resource for all 3D artists who work from low poly to high poly meshes. There are some truely helpful tutorials here!
Tutorial Sites
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Adobe TV:
Learn all about the latest Adobe products, hints, tips, tutorials and more! and... FREE!!
DrawSpace.com:
A great site for people who want to learn to draw. One of the best in fact. Her books are great too!
W3Schools.com:
Full of all sorts of web site creation tutorials! VERY comprehensive!
Painting & Drawing Exercises:
Some basic art tutorials I found.
ConceptArt.org Digital Tutorials:
Conceptart.com tutorials section for, Corel Painter, Photoshop and others.
ConceptArt.org Analogue Tutorials Forum:
Still cannot believe this info is free. A must for all artists!!!
Conceptart.org Wiki:
Conceptart.org just has loads of stuff, and this wiki is MASSIVE!!!
Utility/Tools Sites
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Bluehost Webhosting:
The best website host you can get for the VERY reasonable price they ask. And they host this website too! :)
Notepad++:
FREE: This is one of my most used tools in my software development job. And it's free! Loads of features and supports many different languages and script types!
WinMerge:
FREE: This is a great application for comparing text files. Works as a plugin when using SVN in Dreamweaver CS4
CCleaner:
FREE: CCleaner is a great maintenance application for cleaning the crap (yep that's what the C stands for) off your PC. All tempory system files can be removed, or just ones you choose.
Defraggler:
FREE: Works better at defragmenting your hard disk than windows native defragging tool IMO.
WinDirStat:
FREE: Wanna know what's taking up all your space on your hard drive. This reporting tool is fantastic! Seriously, just try it out!
SyncToy:
FREE: Great application for syncronising your folders and files. And you can set up batch files that will kick off automatic syncs, if you add them to Windows scheduled tasks!
Audacity:
FREE: A perfect working sound and music editing suite, and FREE!!
Auto Hot Key:
FREE: Ever wanted to set up a keyboard short cut that would perform a ton of comuter tasks? You can record actions and play them back..... oh there is just soooooo much you can do!!!
Free Clip:
FREE: Now you can store multiple items in your clipboard and access them at anytime!
FileZilla:
FREE: The best FTP application in it's price range!!
GNUCash:
FREE: Accounting software that is VERY powerful! Using double entry, billing, credits, invoices, client/customer information, supplier information...... and much much more!! LOVE IT! Helps me out with my freelancing no end!
Fast Image Resizer:
FREE: Ooooooh! This is soooooo handy!!! You simply run it, then just drag and drop your selected images into the little box, and..... BANG!! instant resized images suitable for the web and photo sharing websites!
Text Aloud:
Simply put, this is one the best applications I own. I get the AT&T Natural Voices plug-in for it, and I can then turn any text into an audio book or spoken word! I've been using this for years and love it!
Unlocker:
FREE: Handy little tool that when you get a file lock, say by attempting to delete a file, it will find the process locking it and allow you to remove the lock. Very handy!
SMPlayer:
FREE: Don't you just hate it when you want to watch a downloaded video, but don't know the format of the codec? Or it just wont play properly? Well SMPlayer is by far one of my fave media players and is VERY automated at getting the codecs you need! Love
FireFox:
FREE: IMO this is the best web browser out there today! You can get thousands of pluggins for it that do all sorts of handy things, from FTP client to tab window splitters! LOVE THIS BROWSER!
PrimoPDF:
FREE: A pdf printer that is just awesome! And a free version too!!
Jing - Screen Capture:
FREE: Well.... there is a free version that is simply AWESOME!!!! You can screen grab, add comments and arrows to the screen grab, then just dump it to your clip board!
HTML to BBCode Converter:
Very handy for converting HTML to BBCode for forums!
Blender3D - FREE!!!!:
I've been using this almost non-stop for a year now and I have to say I am amazed by it! This thing can do pretty much most things much older versions of 3D Max and Maya can do, and it's catching up to its modern counterparts, fast!! Also with a VERY reas
ZBrush:
No kidding, this is my favourite software to date! Imagine working on 3D models of up to 1 billion polygons! Phew! And you can paint directly on them!!!
Corel Painter:
The best graphics package to replicate real-life mediums!
Adobe - Photoshop, Dreamweaver, After Effects, Illustrator..... and loads more!!!:
Adobe is bloody good at what they do.... they have simply tons of professional applications for development and production.
Wacom - Graphics Tablets:
The best graphics tablets around! Dusty recommends Intous3 or Intous4
Anim8or:
A free bit of software! If you want to try your hand at 3D modelling but don't to spend hundreds on a 3D modelling and animation suite, check this out! And it's written by just one man!!!
Ubuntu (Linux):
One of the best operating systems around, and FREE too! I just wish more people would make their software for Linux. I'm looking at you Corel, Pixologic and Adobe! ;)
Koolmoves:
A great, cheap alternative to making Flash movies on your website.
3D Studio MAX:
Not free! But still one of the most widely accepted applications for creating 3D images and game models.
Maya:
The film and movie industry accepts this a the best tool for creating 3D animations.... but others are catching up! Again not free, but still amazing.
Programming Sites
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Ogre3D:
A free set of game libraries for C++. Including graphics, sounds, physics and much, much more!
Auto Hot Key:
FREE: Ever wanted to set up a keyboard short cut that would perform a ton of comuter tasks? You can record actions and play them back..... oh there is just soooooo much you can do!!!
Visual Studio .NET Express:
A free version of the famous visual studio. And, surprisingly, you can program pretty much anything with it.
Panda3D:
Another free 3D game engine. Simpler to use than Ogre 3D but very powerful. It uses both python and C++
General
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My Church:
Narborough Congregational Church is a wonderful place, with some of the kindest and nicest people on the planet! This church has done so much for me and my family. Thank you to it's leaders!
Cube Craft:
I love this site! I have tons of little guys I can print, cut out, glue and then stand on my desk. Love it! Just for fun!
Shadowrun 4:
Shadowrun! The PNP RPG I grew up with and still one of the best!
DumpShock.com:
Forums for Shadowrun, where you can meet other players and play in games.
Eve Online:
The best Sci-Fi MMORPG out there! Wish I had enough time and money to play! :(
Magic The Gathering!:
Yes I am proving my geekyness on this one! But I REALLY love this game. Again I don't have the time or the money to play it these days! Sigh! :(
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Durian