Parka Blogs: January 2009

Friday, January 30, 2009

Photos from Massive Black Workshop Jan 2008

Irene Gallo just recently blogged about the Massive Black workshop held in Seattle in Jan 2009 and has provided tons of great photos from the event.

Great stuff.

Book Review: The Art of Porco Rosso

Porco Rosso, the movie, is actually based on a 15-page water-coloured manga by Hayao Miyazaki. Included in the book are 3 pages from that manga and they look really fantastic.

The only one thing I don't like about the book is there are too much screenshots from the movie. The concept art consists of character designs, airplane designs, publicity posters and storyboards. I love that they included the film ending credit illustrations. Overall, the amount of concept art is still overwhelmed by the film stills.

Right at the end, there are over 60 pages of the screenplay, broken down to story beats with captions. There are also 5 full black and white pages from the original manga.

There's also not much writeup except to explain a little history on the story.

This book is still good just that it's not as great compared to the art-of books released for later movies.

If you like this book, you might also want to check out the other art-of books I have reviewed for Studio Ghibli's movies.

Visit the link beside to read more reviews on Amazon. If you buy from the link, I get a little commission that helps me get more books for review.

Country-specific Amazon links for this book:
Amazon.com | Amazon.ca | Amazon.co.uk | Amazon.fr | Amazon.de

Thursday, January 29, 2009

ArtOrder - Blog of Jon Schindehette

Today's featuring art blog, ArtOrder, belongs to Jon Schindehette.

He's the Wizards of the Coast’s senior Dungeons and Dragons art director.

I found the blog from ConceptArt, where Irene Gallo posted a link to an interview she did with Joe Schindehette.

So check out ArtOrder! There are lots of fantastic art featured there. Oh, he has a Flickr photostream as well.

Wednesday, January 28, 2009

Book Review: How to Draw Noir Comics

Shawn Martinbrough has illustrated comics for DC Comics, Vertigo, and Marvel Comics, ranging from Batman, Superman, and X-Men, to King James, based on superstar athlete Lebron James. He's an accomplished artist and it's great he shares his tips on drawing noir comics with this book.

Everything in the book is explained simply and clearly with lots of personal examples. He tries to address the many approaches to creating noir comics and does them well. For example when explaining the tools he used, he would talk on the type of ink to buy (fade and erase-proof), how to maintain them and choosing the right tools for the job.

The main bulk of the book deals with comic creation specific to noir style. He explains the ways to create mood, lighting and texture to aid the story. And also touches the comic creation part like paneling, pacing, creating drama, choosing backgrounds, using references and more. All the examples included are well caption to emphasis the techniques reviewed.

At the end of the book is a 16-page noir style graphic novel to show readers the finished product.

This book is a great introduction to noir comics and serves as a great reference.

You can view more of Shawn Martinbrough's work at Verge Entertainment, which is a company he founded with his partners.

Thanks to Kelvin Chan for providing the book for this short review.

Tuesday, January 27, 2009

Book Review: The Masters of Illusions

Here's another interesting book on optical illusions. It's sort of a catalog book that presents the illustrations page after page. The illustrations are only accompanied by a short caption on the facing page, which explains the illusions. There's also a short section on sculptures.

It's a visually entertaining book that will bring a smile of awe and wonder on the face.

If you like optical illusions, also check out Masters of Deception.

Monday, January 26, 2009

Comic & art book releases 27-28 Jan 2009

Here are some comics and art book releases coming up.

Among this seemingly random list you might spot the Massive Black Vol 1 art book. It's going for US$55 on Amazon via a third party comic book seller.

I encourage readers to support their local comic retailers whenever possible. Visiting comic shops is cool.

Sunday, January 25, 2009

For a war movie Rescue Dawn has almost no conflicts

I've just finished watching Rescue Dawn a few days ago. A few of my colleagues also watched it. Some liked it, others not too much.

For a war movie based in Vietnam, somehow I just can't feel the conflict and the OMG-what-are-they-going-to-do moments. While Christian Bale was tortured continuously, at no time did I think he was going to die. When he decides to escape, one of his prisoner friends threatens to tell on him. That's the only conflict in the movie. There was no tension anywhere else.

This is a very strange movie, especially when it's rated at 90% on rottentomatoes.

Saturday, January 24, 2009

Book Review: Graphic Storytelling and Visual Narrative

This is one of the three instructional books written by Will Eisner. The other two are Comics and Sequential Art and Expressive Anatomy for Comics and Narrative.

Telling a good story is an incredibly difficult. In this book, Will Eisner shares with readers some of things to be aware of when tackling storytelling using comics.

He talks about techniques to use to help build a more convincing story. This would include comic tools like lettering, building momentum, using visual clues and writing. Examples include how props (i.e. guns) are held to reveal human characteristics.

There are lessons on how to engage readers, how readers think and mistakes to avoid. These are followed with lots of comic strip examples — including a selection from different comic artists. Unfortunately, they aren't captioned page by page like it was done on his other books. The comic examples are great, you know it but you don't know why they work.

The book doesn't really go in depth into all aspects of storytelling. There's no talk on character development, story arcs, conflict management and specific story elements and tools.

Overall, this is still a very useful book for anyone who's just starting out and thinking of drawing their own comics.

Will Eisner Graphic Storytelling and Visual Narrative

Book Review: Comics and Sequential Art

This is one of the three instructional books written by Will Eisner. The other two are Graphic Storytelling and Visual Narrative and Expressive Anatomy for Comics and Narrative.

The book focuses on the creation of comics and the various techniques one can use. Specifically, it talks about the why the techniques work and the concepts behind. The various lessons touch on timing, framing, composition, expressive anatomy, writing for comics and other application of comics.

Every page of comics included that serve as examples come with captions. They explain the effect to achieve on readers. One example would be to tilt a composition of a moving train to simulate the rocking on the tracks.

How Will Eisner uses his panels and framing is amazing. He can use doorways or windows on a plane as frames, and he can so easily blend his panels together using the environment. Paneling and pacing when done right really just enhances the story. You'll see and understand why it works. It's all explained.

This book will serve as a very good introduction to comic artists. Professionals might learn some new ways of doing things too.

Friday, January 23, 2009

Northlanders Vol. 1: Sven The Returned

Northlanders tells a savage tale of a warrior, Sven, returning back to his homeland to take back what belongs to him, or whatever that's left. In his path, he looks at his exile, sleeps with ridiculously beautiful enemies, and takes down all who opposes him, of course. The plot's written by Brian Wood, straight forward, well paced.

I like the artistic style for the comic, particularly the stylized character designs, paneling and colouring. The illustrator is Davide Gianelice.

And since I don't usually buy comics nowadays, this copy is from Kelvin Chan.

Thursday, January 22, 2009

Shane Prigmore

Wednesday, January 21, 2009

Book Review: Swede Illustrations

This is essentially a catalog book to advertise Swede illustrators and their work. Each artist or design firm comes with contact information and a small sample of their work.

There's a great variety of artistic style showcased, ranging from collages, political cartoons, vector, fine art and other forms of digital art. There is no common motive or concept since this is a catalog book.

Oh, the price is pretty hefty as well, published by Page One. Not sure if it's worth the money unless you're in Sweden looking for local artist.

Monday, January 19, 2009

Book Review: Watchmen (Absolute edition)

Seeing that the Watchmen movie is coming out soon, I figured I had to put up a review on the book. It is the first time I'm reading the Watchmen and it took me 2 days.

Alan Moore, Dave Gibbons has created a wonderful dark mystery thriller. This isn't really a superhero story since only Dr Manhattan has supernatural powers. That really surprised me a bit because why are there costume adventurers? The best part has got to be the storytelling, unveiling of events and character interactions. At the end of each chapters includes back stories like letters, biography (The Owl), newspaper reports from inside the comic world.

For the Absolute edition, John Higgins is colorist and he has done a superb job at recoloring the whole series. The atmosphere created is really great and feels like the war is looming all the time.

So what's different about the Absolute edition, compared to the hardcover or the paperback? Well, this book is huge and that makes the panels easier to read. The paper quality is thick, white and reproduces the colour brilliantly. Right at the end, there's lots of extra goodies like writeup on the creation process of Watchmen and its characters, some pages of scripts and rough panels developed for them, unpublished promotional posters and other stuff.

Comic readers should seriously consider getting the book. It's currently the top seller on Amazon.

I would recommend reading the book first before watching the movie. It's really hard for movie adaptations to be better because books offer subtlety so much better.

Oh, and check out Watching the Watchmen, which is making-of for this book.

Special thanks to Jonrob for providing the book for this short review.

Comic & art book releases 20-21 Jan 2009

Here are some comics and art book releases coming up.

I encourage readers to support their local comic retailers whenever possible. Visiting comic shops is cool.

Sunday, January 18, 2009

Book Review: Japanese Comickers 2

This is the 2006 sequel to Japanese Comickers that was published in 2003. Featured here are Shigeki Maeshima, Tatsuyuki Tanaka, Waka Miyama, Lily Hoshino, Jeong Juno, Hyung-Tae Kim, Kuroboshi Kouhaku, Haccan, Kaouru Yukifuna, Shukei, Chen Shu-Fen & Pin-Fan, and Noa. Some are from Taiwan and Korea if you actually know the artist.

Although the subtitle says "draw manga and anime like japan's hottest artists", this is not strictly a tutorial book. It shows you how these artists create their work rather than show you how to draw them. Still, a lot of techniques and tips can be picked up from the captions as they go through the working process.

Each artist comes with a few pages of full page art as their gallery. There's also a short introduction and bio looking at their tools, favorite artists and published work.

I guess this book would be useful for artists who already know anatomy and are looking to learn some additional drawing tips.

If you like this book, check out Comickers Art too.

Special thanks to Kelvin Chan for providing the book for this short review.

Saturday, January 17, 2009

Paul Lasaine

Paul Lasaine is a production designer working in the film industry. Looking at his blog, I would say he's more in the animation industry.

He has work on a few films which includes Surf's Up, The Prince of Egypt, Shark's Tale, Lord of the Rings and many more. On his blogs, he post a generous amount of concept art from these films. They are mainly on environment paintings. Additionally, he shares a few digital painting tutorials as well.

I'm glad to say that I've the art book for Surf's Up, which I like very much.

Link: Blog of Paul Lasaine

Book Review: Sketches of Daphne Yap

Daphne Yap is a freelance artist working in Los Angeles doing concept design.

As this book is on sketches, don't expect anything polished, although some of the details are intricately rendered with pencils. There are concept designs on fashion, creatures, insect ladies (no typo here), sea creature ladies (no typo here as well), toy designs and other sketches.

The theme throughout has a heavy focus on surrealism and fantasy.

The pencil sketching style might not appeal to everyone. I personally prefer pen and ink sketches more.

Thursday, January 15, 2009

Pictures of Absolute Sandman with Slipcase

I love looking at people's bookshelves and see what they've got. So today, I did a search for Absolute Sandman on Flickr. All pictures shown in this entry are from Flickr and will link back to their respective owners.

Absolute Sandman is actually a 4-volume hardcover compilation of all the Sandman issues. It comes with a slipcase. You can read more about Sandman and its history on Wikipedia.

Notice how the Absolute editions have more colours added on.

Oh, and notice the size difference too.

Wednesday, January 14, 2009

Book Review: Shadowline: The Art of Iain McCaig

Iain McCaig (wikipedia link) has been in the art industry doing work for movie studios for a long time. In this book contains illustrations created for Star Wars prequel, Harry Potter and his concept art for other projects. Most of his work are belong to the fantasy genre.

In this book, a fictional interviewer called Bryon is created to introduce readers to the artwork and bring them into Iain McCaig's imaginative world. It's pretty amusing and reads like some fantasy adventure. My minor quibble would be that there isn't a biography of his illustrious career.

Insight Editions is the publisher of this thick and big book at 240 pages. It's hardcover with a beautiful matte dust jacket.

Inside are lots of glorious concept art, mainly to character designs. They are made up of paintings and sketches. Each is reproduced brilliantly on the glossy paper, showing intricate details of ink, pencil or colour strokes as well as the texture of the medium. The large pages enhance the viewing pleasure.

While there are some digital paintings, most of the illustrations featured are done using traditional medium, showing texture and grain.

This book is highly recommended to fans of Iain McCaig, fantasy artists, concept artists and character designers. It's very inspiring and overflows with creativity.

Special thanks to Kelvin Chan for providing the book for this short review.

Tuesday, January 13, 2009

Book Review: Comickers Art

For anyone who's just starting out drawing manga style, this book provides useful information on colouring.

Different colouring tools are introduced. Each are explained on their characteristics and tips on using them.

The featured artists in this series are Saya Iwasaki, Hiroki Mafuyu, Ayumi Kasai, Hamlet Okinawa, Renji Murata, Kim Jyung-Tae and Houden Eizo. These artists goes through tips on their colouring process with their tools: markers, coloured ink, water colour, acrylic paint and digital colouring. These are step by step tutorials with detailed captions.

Additionally, there are Q&A interviews with some of the artists.

Right at the end is a gallery containing illustrations created from a variety of medium. These are from other manga artists.

This book is a great book for beginners. Experts might learn something new too, especially on exploring new colouring techniques and medium.

If you like this book, check out Japanese Comickers 2 also.

Comic & art book releases 13-14 Jan 2009

Unfortunately, I'm unable to list every single comic or art book release due to lack of information and resources.

This list below is my quickest way to show you visually what's coming up.

In any case, I encourage readers to support their local comic retailers whenever possible. Visiting comic shops is cool.

Monday, January 12, 2009

Open Season 2 and Shrek straight to DVD

Do you know that Open Season 2 is a straight-to-dvd (Amazon link)? Or do you even know it exists?

The trailer doesn't look very good.

By the way, they have a straight-to-dvd addition to Shrek as well, called Shrek The Halls (Amazon link). And they are selling that for $12 for a 22 minutes video. Not really worth the money.

Sunday, January 11, 2009

Coraline, Gundam, Tim Maughan Books and stuff

Coraline the movie

It's coming out in February this year. Coraline is based on a book written by Niel Gaiman, and the movie is directed by Henry Selick.

There are already a few Coraline books released as promotional tie up to the movie. The one that's on my shopping list is the hardcover Coraline movie visual companion (Amazon link). Notcot has two fabulous entry on Coraline as well. They look like props from the movies. Read here and here.

There's also a graphic novel version which was released in June 2008 (Amazon link). linesandcolors just had a short writeup about the Coraline graphic novel.

Gundam's 30th Anniversary

This year is also Gundam's 30th anniversary. It seems that there will be two art books released to commemorate the anniversary. Both are in Japanese though. I hope there will be English translations.

Massive Black art book

It seems that the Massive Black art book vol 1 would be out on 13 January 2009. Not sure if the source is accurate because there's still no news from Ballistic Publishing.

Tim Maughan Books

This blog by Tim Maughan is actually very similar to Parka Blogs. Instead, he reviews mainly Japanese art books, anime and other stuff from Japanese culture. There are lots of great reviews and plenty of pictures to see.

Animation books preview for 2009

This animation books preview is done by Amid Amidi of cartoonbrew.com.

The few books that caught my eyes are Two Guys Named Joe: Master Animation Storytellers Joe Grant and Joe Ranft. I've heard much about the two Joes but don't actually know anything more other than the fact that they used to work for Disney and Pixar. Both have, sadly, passed away. Hopefully the book would be a good tribute to them and their work.

Book Review: d'artiste Matte Painting

Matte Painting is the third book in the d'artiste Digital Artists Master Class series. The series is actually a look at the process of creating art in tutorial style. This book presents Alp Altiner, Dylan Cole and Chris Stoski.

Each artist has a biography written by themselves on their beginnings, education, inspiration, life and career in art. The tutorials that follow are very well captioned. They explain the style, idea and the execution. Each comes with a still from the work in progress. There are lessons on using photo reference for compositing and texturing, fixing perspective and other useful tips.

Right after the tutorials is an invited artist gallery. That's where the 4 artist choose some of their favourite paintings from other artists and talk about them. This gallery is impressive. Let's just say talent shortage in the art industry is not a big problem.

This book is fairly pricey, as with all Ballistic books. I think it's pretty worth the money, considering that finding tutorials like this on the Internet is nearly impossible.

Saturday, January 10, 2009

Book Review: d'artiste Concept Art

Want to paint like the pros? There's nothing better than learning from the pros themselves.

Concept Art is the fourth book in the d'artiste Digital Artists Master Class series. The series is actually a look at the process of creating art in tutorial style. This book presents George Hull, Andrew Jones, Nicolas Bouvier and Viktor Antonov with a total of 12 tutorials.

Each artist has a biography written by themselves on their beginnings, education, inspiration, life and career in art. The tutorials that follow are very well captioned. They explain the style, idea and the execution. Each comes with a still from the work in progress.

Right after the tutorials is an invited artist gallery. That's where the 4 artist choose some of their favourite paintings from other artists and talk about them. This gallery is impressive. Let's just say talent shortage in the art industry is not a big problem.

This book is fairly pricey, as with all Ballistic books. I think it's pretty worth the money, considering that finding tutorials like this on the Internet is nearly impossible.

Preview pages for The Wonderful Wizard of Oz

Here are some page previews from The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by Skottie Young. Nice

Notice that you don't get to see Dorothy's face? Strange.

Friday, January 9, 2009

Comic & art book releases 8 Jan 2009

I'll be listing new releases for comic and art books from now, as and when I have information on new and upcoming books.

Since Darkstalkers is on the list, I'll like to mention that Udon is calling for entries for their new art book called Darkstalkers Tribute. Doesn't that familiar to some Street Fighter Tribute book?

Anyway, here's the page to the Darkstalkers contest.

I read this on Udon at deviantart. By the way, they have a stunning art gallery, of course, so check it out.

Ok, here's the list for comics and art books for 6-12 Jan 2009.

Book Review: Masters of Deception

This book is a delightful treat to anyone who loves optical illusion.

Here's a quote from the author, Al Seckel, in the introduction:

In researching and presenting optical illusions to wide audiences, I have found that their effect on people is very primal. It does not matter how old they are, how artistic they are, how intelligent they are, what their background or culture is; people just love optical illusions and enjoy being deceived in a delightful and surprising way.

He has done a terrific job at research on the subject, collecting over hundreds of paintings all the way back from the 16th century. Many of the optical illusions found on the Internet are just extensions or interpretation of these masterpieces.

There are 20 artists featured in the book. Every one comes with a well written introduction and a gallery of their best work. While the book can't print all the art work for each artist, it has packed enough to entertain for hours. Each is also captioned to explain the idea and inspiration behind.

There's an incredible array of artistic style used in creating optical illusions. There's Escher who plays with perspective, Shigeo Fukuda who works with light and shadow and many more.

This is a very entertaining book.

Thursday, January 8, 2009

The Running Jetsons

A fun piece. Colouring in Illustrator isn't very time efficient.

Book Review: Tapestry The Paintings of Robert E. McGinnis

I've no idea who this guy is. When I first flipped open the book, I was like, "Wow, this guy is good!"

Robert E. McGinnis (born 1926) is an amazing painter. He has drawn over 1200 book covers. This book contains a selection of those covers, together with movie posters, landscape paintings, western art, ladies and miscellaneous paintings. He has done film posters for Breakfast at Tiffanys and James Bond just to name a few.

Why is this guy so good?

He can draw women very well. So well that each is termed 'The McGinnis Woman'. His understanding of the female form, and human anatomy is unparalleled. Every lady looks carved out on the paper. The style and elegance are stunning.

His paintings on landscape and cowboys are out of this world good. The composition and the style is just so right.

This book was published in 2000 and will be hard to find. But it's one hell of a book, if only to look at his painted women.

Links:
Robert E. McGinnis Wikipedia entry

Visit the link beside to read more reviews on Amazon. If you buy from the link, I get a little commission that helps me get more art books for review.

Country-specific Amazon links for this book:
Amazon.com | Amazon.ca | Amazon.co.uk | Amazon.fr | Amazon.de

Wednesday, January 7, 2009

Shane Acker and Tim Burton's 9 Coming on 9.9.09

Directed by Shane Acker, produced by Tim Burton, 9 is looking great. You can check out more of 9 on wikipedia. So far there's very little on it, not every an official movie website.

Here's the original same name short film it was based on. It was created by Shane Acker.

No news on any books coming with the movie as yet.

Book Review: Star Wars Panel to Panel

This book has plenty to like even for someone who has never read the original Star Wars comics from Dark Horse Comics. The glorious covers are printed on thick white low gloss paper. It's strange that there isn't a hardcover version of the book.

While some comic panels are included, the bulk of the book are on cover art, glorious cover art. Every piece is reproduced brilliantly. Lots of artists have contributed to make for a wonderful variety of artistic style. Every page is captioned.

The illustrations are categorised as follow: Heroes and Allies, Villians and Rogues, The Jedi, Spaceships, The Worlds of Star Wars. At the back is the list of artists involved.

This is a visually tasty art book.

Sketch of a camper

It has been a long time since I did any sketches. This was done in Adobe Illustrator.

Tuesday, January 6, 2009

Book Review: The Prince of Egypt: A New Vision in Animation

When The Prince of Egypt came out in 1998, it featured some spectacular visual effects ever used in animation. In this book, it shows the art and research done for the movie.

It includes set paintings, storyboards and character designs. The production design is excellent. The mood of old Egypt is recreated perfectly with the amazing use of lighting and restricted colour palette.

The text throughout explain the process of making the animation. For example, it talks about the difficulty in portraying Moses, on how costumes had to be designed to look Egyptian, on looking for the right actors for voice acting and more.

At the back of the book is the summary on all areas of production. It includes, the story structure, design, layout, voices, animation, backgrounds, music and effects.

This is a great art book.

Some of the artists involved:
Richard Chavez
Paul Lasaine
Darek Gogul
Ken Harsha
Lorna Cook
Luc Desmarchelier
Carter Goodrich
Christian Schellewald
Ron Lukas
Mike Ploog (wiki)
Carlos Grangel (wiki)
Kevin Turcotte
Sam Michlap
Simon Wells (wiki)
Guillaume Bonamy (blog)
Nathan Fowkes
Donaldo Yatomi
Bari Greenberg
Armen Melkonian
Kelly Asbury
Steve Albert
Kelly Kimball
Alexandre Puvilland (blog)
Mick De Falco
Armand Baltazar
Tianyi Han
Hani D. El-Masri
Bill Kaufman
Kathy Altieri
James Fuji
Rick Farmiloe
Paul Shardlow
Ruben Hickman
Gary Perkovac
Wade Huntsman
Marcos Mateu-Mestre
Bruce Zick
Joty Lam
Cathy Jones
Todd Kurosawa
Karl Wehrli
Ronnie Del Carmen
Barry Jackson
Zhaoping Wei
Barry Atkinson

The Prince of Egypt: A New Vision in Animation

Monday, January 5, 2009

Book Review: My Italian Sketchbook

My Italian Sketchbook is a travelogue made with watercolour paintings. The illustrations are drawn by Florine Asch for her Grand Tour of Italy. Included right at the start are two well written stories on the history of Grand Tour, and on Asch's work.

The Grand Tour was the traditional travel of Europe undertaken by mainly upper-class European young men of means. You can read more about the Grand Tour on wikipedia.

Covered in the book are places such as Milan, Venice, Verona, Florence, Tuscany, Rome, Naples and Sicily. Captured in watercolour are the amazing architecture of Italian buildings, their people and way of life. The paintings are captioned with personal notes and sometimes with quotes from Asch's favourite books.

The hardcover is actually clothed cardboard with a white textured paper pasted over it for the cover art.

If you like this artistic style, also check out My Paris Sketchbook by Alain Bouldouyre.

Sunday, January 4, 2009

Book Review: Mas Creaturas: Monstruo Addendum

Mas Creaturas is the addendum for Monstruo, an art book Carlos Huante published in 2004.

This book contains additional illustrations on character designs and monsters. Carlos Huante has also included a short introduction on how he uses storytelling to aid in his character design. There are no captions also.

It's a small thin book with only 54 pages. I certainly think that publishing with so few pages is a mistake. After reading his book Monstruo, it left me wanting more. After reading this book, it left me wondering why Carlos Huante didn't choose to wait for more materials before sending to print.

Saturday, January 3, 2009

Disturbing anime live action movies coming up

I've read some scary news on the web. Some of them have already came true. Here's the list.

1. Dragon Ball Evolution

Seriously?

Oh yeah, it's serious enough. They have the Dragon Ball Evoluvation website for it as well.

You can already check out the cast from IMDB. It's not looking good. Not looking good at all.

I can imagine doing a 3D animation movie on Dragon Ball easily. There are countless 3D Dragon Ball computer games available and they show viability. But live action? Seriously? Why would anyone want to take a highly stylized comic and turn it into live action? Because they can?

2. Cowboy Bebop (live action)
When I first read it on conceptart.org, I was stunned beyond words. Cowboy Bebop is one of my favourite anime.

There can only be two outcome to this. It's either going to amazing, or it's going to stink so very bad.

3. Akira (live action)
Warner Brothers has acquired the rights to make this masterpiece anime into two movies. The news might be from Feb 2008 but it still sends chills down my spine.

Book Review: Character Modeling 2

Character Modeling 2 is an art book at heart with an in depth look at the 3D production process of 3 different artists. It's part of the d'artiste series where artists are featured with their tutorials.

The featured artists in this issue are Kevin Lanning, Timur "Taron" Baysal and Zack Petroc. Each of them comes with a short biography on their life and career in computer graphics.

This is not strictly a tutorial book even though it might look that way. It's a "making of" book that provides multiple screenshots of work in progress. The accompanying captions describes the workflow and techniques used. Different 3D software packages are used, such as Lightwave, 3ds Max, Maya, ZBrush, Mudbox, etc. The workflow and techniques presented are universal and can be applied easily to other software, even if the controls are different. That being said, the book provides very useful information and look into different workflows of professional 3D artists.

These guys have been in the computer graphics industry for a long time. Each artist has a gallery included, which showcase the 3D models and projects they have worked on. Each artwork is captioned. It's nothing less than impressive.

Here's the list of "tutorials":
High-poly workflow
Low-poly workflow
Rip and process workflow
Box modeling
ZBrush and texturing
Character creation
Workarounds

This book can be found on Amazon or from Ballistic Publishing.

Friday, January 2, 2009

Parka's goals for 2009

Here are some goals for Parka Blogs and me in 2009.

Do more art book reviews

Let me start with a short history on how the blog suddenly took the art-book-reviews route.

You guys might have noticed that I've accumulated quite a number of art book reviews so far. In fact, I've only started doing art book reviews more seriously in August 2008. As far as I can remember, my first review is actually The Complete Calvin and Hobbes in 2007.

In August 2008, I came across halcyon realms, a blog by Vong yonghow — Singaporean too! I was searching for some Inoue Takehiko stuff or something. Then I saw a review of The Art of Ponyo on the Cliff by the Sea. I thought that was pretty helpful and exceptionally cool. That's when I took out my art books and started reviewing them.

Since I work in a newspaper art department, I'm lucky enough to be surrounded by other artists, among them are two other art book collectors, Kelvin Chan and Jonrob. Jonrob collects comics, design and art books. Kelvin collects toys and art books. Here's a hilarious quote from Kelvin I found on his 10 Dec 08 Deviantart journal entry:

I'm nuts over 'em to a point of needing medical attention.
I think the word is ADDICTED.

So some of the books you see on the blogs are provided by them. Those are the ones with a thanks and link back to their blogs at the end of the reviews.

And then there are those that I borrow from the library. The library is great for finding interesting older out-of-print books.

In 2009, I hope to review more art books. That's dependent on my wallet actually. I'm not particularly rich so I buy mainly CG movie art books — think Pixar and the likes.

Highlight more art blogs

I'll try to post more links to blogs of artists in the art books reviews.

Additionally, I'll also highlight more cool art blogs. I've seen plenty of great ones from my blog followers' blog list. I always check out my follower's blogs and their links.

San Diego Comic Con 2009

I might be heading down to Comic Con 2009 at San Diego in July. It's mainly to take a holiday and if possible, cover the event at the same time. If this actually materializes, it's going to be fantastic.

The air tickets are still insanely expensive. Aren't they suppose to fall with the oil prices?

Draw more

I've been slacking off from drawing last year. I shall draw more cartoons and stuff this year. Can't put those instructional books I bought to waste!

Get more readers

Hopefully, this should play by itself with more content coming up.

Currently there are 300 visitors per day on my blog with 41 Blogger followers. That's really amazing compared to negligible last year, which I won't even bother to check the stats.

It will be great if you guys and gals post a link back to the art book list on your blogs. It should be helpful for your readers too.

Book Review: Luminair: Techniques of Digital Paintings From Life

More accurately, this book should have been called Luminair: The Art of Nick Pugh. Luminair, as I learned, is digital painting with a computer on location.

To include "techniques of digital painting" in the title is deceiving. There are only two short tutorials on digital painting. One is about an outdoor scene painted during the day, the other is an indoor scene painted at night. The screenshots, if they are provided to explain the text, aren't really helpful because they are a bit small. Oh, this book is rather small in size also, maybe about a palm's size — I've a small hand.

Skipping past the lessons is the art gallery. These are paintings drawn in Los Angeles, New England, New York and other places. The art is great, especially the colours. There are no photos to compare so I don't know if the place is really that beautiful. The captions provided are those you would expect from a travel writer instead of an artist.

In the last chapter are 4 paintings from guest artists.

You can see more art of Nick Pugh on his website, Nick Pugh Studio.

This book is more of a personal sketchbook. It's recommended only to people who like Nick Pugh's style of art.

Luminair: Techniques of Digital Painting from Life

Thursday, January 1, 2009

Happy New Year 2009

Happy new year 2009!

I hope to do more art book reviews and draw more cartoons. Stay tuned.

Book Review: Counterweight: The Art and Concepts of Rick O'Brien

Counterweight is a collection of images, observations, and concepts by artist/creator Rick O'Brien.

I would consider the art featured in this book abstract. It might be a little hard to make form and physicality out of some pieces. In simple terms, it translate to,"Hey, nice art, but what is he painting?" For those that I can make out, they are about human characters and the environment.

He uses a lot of traditional medium such as egg tempera, oil, gouche, wood, ink, resin and plaster (for his scuptures).

It's very hard to review abstract. Everyone has their own interpretation. It's better for you to see it and decide for yourself.