Indice dei contenuti per Christmas 2025 in ImagineFX

Seungho Lee LOCATION: South Korea MEDIA: Photoshop WEB: www.instagram.com/lee_seu_no Seungho Lee is a games developer inspired by everything from Digimon to old Capcom games. Korean culture is evident in his work, and he likes to depict worlds where humans and other creatures live in harmony. 1 DRUM DANCER “This is based on Korea’s traditional drum dance. It’s a play of drumming that’s performed as if among several drums.” 2 BEOM-GWI “From my personal project Miximong. This is a monster inspired by Korean tiger folk art and its partner.” 3 EXCLUDED EMOTION “In the world of Miximong, creatures can merge when they achieve a certain bond. This is the merged form of Beom-Gwi.” 4 BAYANSAR “A lion and its partner, inspired by Korea’s traditional lion dance Saja-noreum.” Lilly Wolters LOCATION: Germany…

1 Produce initial sketches I like to produce some more developed sketches, even in the early stages. This way, I can mix and match elements later in the process, and it takes less time to bring the design to the final level of polish. I’m focusing on the silhouette and the message. It needs to address problems and fit into the world of Cronos: The New Dawn. 2 Refine sketches and develop ideas Sometimes there are a few routes worth exploring, so I refine those a bit more while still not going all the way with rendering. I don’t want to get attached. Here I’m bumping strong aspects of the idea and letting them sing. Oftentimes, it’s worth pursuing a particular design a bit further to make sure it’s NOT what I…

Price £1,599/$1,899 Company ASUS Web www.asus.com The new ASUS ProArt PA32UCDM is among the first OLED panels marketed for creatives. Granted, it’s not exactly cheap at around £1,599 or $1,899. Yet that’s significantly more affordable than a £4,599 Apple Pro Display – and that’s before you plump for Apple’s optional Pro Stand for an extra £949. So, what are the main benefits of OLED for creative workflows? Most obviously, perfect per-pixel lighting and the ability to deliver a true HDR experience. Wider colour coverage is highly relevant, too. However, full screen brightness can be limited, and then there’s the ever-present worry of OLED burn-in. All that said, the ASUS ProArt PA32UCDM also comes with the usual range of pro-friendly features that you’d expect from a premium ASUS display: connectivity, a comprehensive…

Price From £2,373/$2,399 Company Lenovo Web www.lenovo.com Lenovo’s laptops are nothing if not reassuringly familiar, no-nonsense machines that put functionality and quality front and centre. This applies to the new Lenovo ThinkPad P1 Gen 7 as much as any previous model, but can this Lenovo portable compete with the best laptops for graphic design, digital art or even 3D modelling? On paper, the Lenovo ThinkPad P1 Gen 7 ticks a lot of boxes. There’s a modern Intel processor with an NPU for AI acceleration, not to mention a discrete professional-class Nvidia GPU. Add in plenty of RAM, a quick SSD, a generously proportioned 16-inch display, good connectivity and a hefty 90Wh battery – all crammed into a pretty slim chassis – and you have a strong, all-round proposition. “All told,…

1 Sketches and compos I start with quick sketches and compositional thumbnails to explore design language, style and mood. These early drawings act as a road map, enabling me to test ideas and solve problems before committing time to 3D, ensuring a stronger foundation for the final piece. 2 Assemble the model I model each element separately in 3DCoat – walls, windows, doors and roofs – so I have the flexibility to mix and match the pieces. I texture these pieces in Substance 3D Painter, then bring them into Blender to assemble the full structure according to my chosen sketch. 3 Complete the scene Once the structures are completed, I return to my composition sketches to guide placement and scene layout. I match the lighting and mood to those early sketches, ensuring consistency.…

Although well known for its annual concept art event, Concept101 also runs themed art contests. These give artists the chance to showcase their work and art skills, and win prizes. This year the brief from the Concept101 team was on the theme of ‘Unfinished Masterpiece’. They came up with some suggestions too, showing the breadth of ideas that artists could pull from, ranging from mammoth sculptures to sprawling cityscapes. Entrants had to demonstrate strong storytelling skills, and explain the thought process and narrative that led to the finished work. With over 60 artists entering the contest – the standard of which was very high – shortlisting was a tricky task and you can see how the winners tackled a variety of subjects in a range of artistic styles. Our congratulations…

Publisher Domestika Price £39.90 (but can be found on discount) Format Online Length 2hrs 17mins Web www.domestika.org This interesting, short course looks at how veteran Spanish designer and illustrator Óscar Lloréns approaches the creation of an editorial image for a newspaper or magazine, when given a brief and a (very short) deadline and how to achieve it. Óscar’s video also acts as a handy Photoshop boot camp, because it explains how to use the wide array of tools within the application to make completing images as quickly as possible. The course itself is translated into English from the original Spanish and the voice-over for the translation is quite ‘hard’, so some viewers may prefer the original, admittedly quiet, voice track with subtitles for your native language. Through interpreting the brief,…

The aim of this article is to give you some advice on how to become a more effective concept artist for video games using Blender. After working on many client and personal projects, I’ve learned the importance of working fast while also producing quality results. The ability to iterate on my designs is an important part of working on video games and is part of how I’ve learned to adapt my workflow in Blender. One of the reasons I prefer working in 3D professionally is that it enables me to be of greater help to the production team. The software makes it possible for me to work directly on top of level block-outs and provide concepts with a greater level of depth and storytelling. One of my goals as a…

What happens when you’re interested in 3D creation, but every YouTube video or TikTok clip ends with someone insisting you need to learn a specific application to master 3D? “Start with Blender!” “Maya is industry standard for VFX!” And so on. The confusion arises because these facts, while true, don’t help an artist new to 3D find the right 3D tool for what they need. This explains why most 3D professionals and studios use multiple 3D applications throughout their 3D pipeline. While there are 3D applications that are jacks of all trades, the investment in learning a 3D tool from a time perspective should be focused on the imagery that you wish to create. Luckily, there are many applications that cater to 3D artists of all types and levels of…

These days, many 2D artists use 3D models as the foundation for their artwork. Often a basic greyscale mannequin is posed in an app, with a quick screen grab being used to help guide proportions as they draw. For more complex landscape paintings, boxes are placed into a 3D scene and quickly rendered to offer help with composition, perspective and foreshortening. Virtual sculpting is another option, with concept artists using it as a quick way to throw around ideas when coming up with creature designs. The favourite option is then fleshed out in a painting tool. So even though you don’t see it, polygons could have been used to create your favourite piece of what you thought was entirely 2D artwork. Now these are quick and easy ways of bringing…

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My workspace is pretty straightforward. I have a home studio that I share with my wife Penelope Gaylord. We have a modest library of art books and comics, two couches, a big-screen TV, video games, posters, and fun comics and anime-related memorabilia all around us. Our desks face each other so we can easily talk back and forth as we work. I use a 27-inch iMac and I draw on a Wacom Cintiq Pro 24. I rotate lots of toys and action figures on my desk to keep me inspired. They can be a helpful distraction when I need to change gears creatively, too. I also use them as reference for tough angles and gestures. I’m a huge fan of so many IPs [intellectual properties], and the figures also serve…

“This image was created as the key art for our upcoming game Witchspire. It was designed to encapsulate the tone, world and spirit of the experience in a single frame. The composition leads the viewer toward the distant spire that holds the secrets players will uncover throughout the game while collecting magical beings. This piece was a team effort between myself, our game director, our lead producer and one of our principal artists. We began by writing down what we wanted the image to communicate. Starting with text helped align our vision early, and we skipped the traditional black-and-white stage, instead jumping straight into colour comps to quickly establish the overall mood and direction.” Artist PROFILE Atey Ghailan LOCATION: Sweden Atey is an artist and CEO of Envar, leading both Envar…

BEST PEN TABLET Wacom Intuos Pro (2025) Price £340/$380 Company Wacom Web www.wacom.com 1 Wacom is the long-standing leader in drawing tablets, known for reliability, quality and compatibility with every app you can think of. The Intuos Pro range comprises its best pen tablets, coming in three sizes: small, medium and large. Updated for 2025, the new models shift the dials and buttons from the side to the top of the tablet. Pros ■ Quality build and well-placed controls ■ Slim and light ■ Precise and customisable Cons ■ More expensive than the Xencelabs Pen Tablet Medium Bundle ■ Only one stylus supplied Rating BEST-VALUE PEN TABLET Xencelabs Pen Tablet Medium Bundle Price £290/$330 Company Xencelabs Web www.xencelabs.com 2 The Xencelabs Pen Tablet Medium strikes an optimal balance of features, design, portability and…

Price £949/$1,099 Company Geekom Web www.geekompc.com The Geekom IT15 enters a mini-PC market that has long been dominated by one product over all others: Apple’s Mac mini. Last year, this relatively little-known computer hardware manufacturer made a great impression with the GT1 Mega. This was a robustly built and well-specced mini-PC, packing 32GB of RAM and 2TB of storage to rival a top-specced Mac mini. And this year, Geekom’s aiming to go one better with the IT15. It sports 32GB of RAM and 2TB of storage, while the CPU Core Ultra 9-285H with its built-in AI boost will help users keep up with the development of AI technology and software. The Geekom IT15 follows the basic design of the GT1 Mega, but is smaller than the Mac mini on all…

Brushes for Photoshop Artist Michael Adamidis Software Photoshop Brushes 416 Price $29.53 Rating Brushes for oil and acrylic work, and 26 canvas textures and a range of support and video resources, makes this ideal for those wishing to give their Photoshop work a Renaissance look. http://bit.ly/3IJtiSQ Lane’s Painting Brush Pack Artist LaneDraws Software Photoshop Brushes 350+ Price $22 Rating There’s everything a Photoshop artist needs here, but we would recommend not buying this until you’re familiar with Photoshop, because there’s also so much content that it could overwhelm! https://lane339.gumroad.com Jingsketch Procreate Brushes Artist Jingsketch Software Procreate Brushes 50+ Price $19.99 Rating This popular brush set for Procreate has tools for sketching, painting and colouring to name but a few, with constant updates including the addition of new brushes. Recommended. http://bit.ly/3KMUzV3…

“This piece began as a small idea that was then translated into sketches, models and finally a piece. Each stage builds on the last, gradually transforming a loose concept into a polished image. Sketching enables me to experiment with shapes and composition quickly, modelling turns those ideas into tangible forms, and assembling and painting over allows me to combine elements, refine lighting and introduce painterly touches for mood and storytelling. This layered workflow helps me to finish my work efficiently while achieving a professional finish.” Artist PROFILE Catherine Kong LOCATION: US Catherine is an environment concept designer for games and films. Outside of art, she enjoys just about anything that takes her outdoors. http://bit.ly/4mH7SDW https://boulies.com/…