ImagineFXの March 2026 の目次

“Smaller doodles help populate the place as well as test designs in a macro view” Do you want to share your sketches with your fellow ImagineFX readers? Send us an email with a selection of your art, captions for each piece and a photo and bio of yourself to sketchbook@imaginefx.com Artist PROFILE Jae Park LOCATION: US Jae is a concept artist working in the video games industry, specialising in characters and creatures. He takes his inspiration from fantasy settings seen in media from his childhood, such as Spirited Away, Avatar and Kirby, and general folklore. Ultimately, he wants to create worlds for many others to enjoy – games or otherwise. www.jaesekki.com…

In my illustration, the action takes place within a futuristic metropolis. It’s here, in the depths of the sprawling city, that ruthless streets gangs conduct their dirty business. Taking my initial inspiration from science fiction films such as Blade Runner, the adaptations of Ghost in the Shell and The Creator, and the video game Cyberpunk 2077, I wanted to create a piece of concept art that would convey a sense of dark noir atmosphere, but also be from the same cyberpunk/sci-fi stable as those celebrated titles. My initial step is to collect reference images that inspire me. But to create the necessary mood I recognise that I need to play around with contrasts. These include establishing the dark foreground of the alleyway versus the illuminated street in the background. As…

“This is the cover art for a book by Alex Knight. The brief was simple: a wizard stands with his back to a goblin who is greedily drinking a potion, while the wizard studies the vessel with suspicion. Everything takes place in a magical laboratory, and I was given full creative freedom. Since this is a wraparound cover, I needed a composition that felt dynamic and balanced on both sides while keeping the focus on the characters. In terms of style, I wanted the raw energy of the sketch to stay alive in the final piece. That honesty is what keeps my work vibrant. I always recommend chasing something new rather than relying on what works.” How I create… A LAB SCENE OF IMMINENT CHAOS 1 Sketch the scene I make…

BEST FOR DIGITAL ART OVERALL ASUS ProArt PZ13 Price £1,099/$1,099 Company Asus Web www.asus.com 1 The ASUS ProArt PZ13 combines refinement and ruggedness in a unique way. The screen is brilliant for digital art, and the stylus is included along with other accessories such as a detachable keyboard, stand and protective sleeve, so you won’t need to factor in additional purchases to have the perfect two-in-one device for drawing. This laptop is best for artists who have a wellrounded workflow and money to spend. Pros◼ Various accessories included ◼ Incredible OLED touchscreen ◼ Competitive pricing Cons ◼ Not good for 3D work ◼ Fairly heavy ◼ Not the most powerful Copilot+ model Rating BEST FOR ARTISTS ON A BUDGET Acer Chromebook Spin 514 Price £379/$399 (Ryzen 3); £600/$580 (Ryzen 5)…

Price £999/$950 Company Geekom Web www.geekom.co.uk The Geekom A9 Max squeezes AMD’s Ryzen T AI 9 HX 370 into a truly tiny chassis, promising desktop-class grunt and modern inputs and outputs in a package that disappears behind your monitor. It’s compact, well-made and punchy where it counts (especially for photo-editing), although its integrated GPU and close resemblance to Geekom’s Intel-chipped IT15 mean that it won’t astonish everyone. Geekom has kept the mini-PC formula tightly focused: a sturdy, mostly metal shell with a VESAfriendly footprint that’s small enough to vanish behind a display and robust enough to survive desk life. When unboxing and during testing, the A9 Max felt solid and reassuringly engineered. The inner frame and anti-slip feet give the sort of build confidence you want from a machine that…

Quick Environment Brushes Artist Madeleine Bellwoar Software Photoshop/Procreate Brushes 128 Price £9.91 Rating This 128‑brush pack with voiceover demo combines painterly tools with graphic shapes, suited to virtual plein‑air and visual development work. It’s great value for Photoshop and Procreate artists. https://bit.ly/44KY5qc Jason’s Free 2025 Illustration Brushes Artist Jason Heeley Software Procreate Brushes 24 Price Free Rating Jason’s free brushes focus on sketching and inking fundamentals. It’s a useful baseline set that’s handy for pairing with specialised primary brushes, or for testing workflows before committing to his paid-for Procreate brushes. https://bit.ly/3YgBU7C Digital Atelier: Painter Brushes Artist Ramon Miranda Software Krita Brushes 51 Price €19.95 Rating Ramon Miranda’s official Krita bundle delivers 51 presets split across oil, pastel and watercolour brushes. The included two-hour video tutorial demonstrates Ramon’s painting workflow, making…

Discover your potential with The Rookies, the launchpad for emerging digital artists. With The Rookies, your work won’t only be seen, it gets noticed and featured – just like this! Join a community where your journey from hobbyist to professional artist is supported every step of the way.  WWW.THEROOKIES.CO Cheeseguard YEAR CREATED: 2024  MEDIA: Photoshop “Cheeseguard is a project I worked on at the end of my time at The One Academy. I’ve always loved darker, fantastical worlds such as Warhammer, Elden Ring and Trench Crusade, hence, I imagined a place where Cheese is sacred, driving a desperate struggle against grotesque, ratlike abominations, blending grim fantasy with a touch of absurdity.” Artist PROFILE Samuel Kuar Xin Yu LOCATION: Malaysia Sam is a concept art graduate from the award-winning The One Academy,…

I’ve worked in a lot of studios over the years, but my favourite is the one that I walk into every morning, right in my home. The slightly chaotic, camera-ridden workspace is my home within my home. The heart of it is my animation desk – my original Disney desk – which I’ve had for over 35 years now. It’s followed me through Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, The Lion King, Pocahontas, Mulan and Brother Bear. If the house were on fire, I’d probably try to drag it out with me. The desk is permanently covered in loose animation drawings, half-used pencils, maquettes staring down at me and whatever art supplies I swore I’d put away yesterday. It also doubles as my painting desk for smaller works, because I’ve never…

Having been a concept designer since the early 2000s, Matthew Savage has established himself as a leading practitioner in his discipline. We find out how his patience and determination was rewarded with work on a range of hugely popular films, including Alien: Romulus, The Batman and Star Wars: The Force Awakens. Matthew, how did your career as a concept designer begin? I graduated from University of Wales in Newport with a degree in design futures. It was basically product design and multimedia, as we called it back then, using software like Flash and Macromedia Director. After that, my route into the industry was through film and TV. Like most people, I started with no contacts. I didn’t have any way in and so I felt like I had to claw…

“The illustration was created as part of the visual development effort to conceptualise the world of Spectre Divide, a first-person shooter. The image depicts a part of Wildhaven District in Breakwater, one of the settings that the game takes place in. The goal was to create several illustrations together, so speed was a factor. The artwork made heavy use of filters in Photoshop that gave the photos used in it a more gouache-like look, which gave me a workable base before painting in earnest. Art programs such as Photoshop have many tools. Finding creative uses for them is half the work and fun of digital painting.” How I create… A VIDEO GAME CONCEPT 1 Prepare the photo base With a composition already in mind, I start the painting with a photo…

Price £699/$849 Company Canon Web www.canon.com Let’s say it straight from the get-go. We don’t recall L the last time we were this sorry to send a piece of review tech back to the manufacturer. A lush A3+ printer that uses individual Lucia Pro II pigment ink cartridges, including a matte black ink for maximising monochrome and a Chroma Optimizer cartridge for a sleek glossy appearance, Canon’s latest device is designed to deliver smoothly graduated colours in gallery-quality prints that last. The prints from this thing are gorgeous. It’s capable of capturing such subtle differences in tonality The imagePROGRAF PRO-310 takes up a hefty portion of worktop space, especially when the top feed and output tray are unfolded. At 639mm along its longest edge, it’s fine for home use, but…

Price £1,399/$1,199 Company Acer Web www.acer.com This is Acer’s ultra-premium AI laptop and it’s looking T to go beyond AI gimmick branding and deliver a broader set of industry-leading specs. As such, the focus is on portability and display technology. Indeed, one of the highlights of the laptop is the gorgeous 14-inch 3K (2,880 x 1,800px) OLED display that delivers vibrant colours and a high level of contrast. It’s capable of a 120Hz refresh rate, which is ideal for most casual gamers. It’s also a touchscreen that enables it to be used like a tablet. If the hinge allowed for a complete 360-degree rotation then the Swift Edge 14 AI could be used exactly like one. Still, we found the laptop hinge to be robust and hard-wearing, and the 180-degree…

Once you’re comfortable applying a colour to an object (see last issue), the next common question is how to make something see-through? Glass, water, skin, gemstones… unless it’s the blackest of blacks then all materials have a degree of transparency. However, transparency in 3D isn’t a single setting. A material that simply lets light through would look like cling film at best. When light rays hit the surface of an object, some rays enter the object, ‘bend’ through it and then escape on another part of the object; the bending through the object is called refraction. Reflection is where the remaining light rays have bounced off the surface of the object to show the world around it. It’s the mixing of reflection and refraction and their inherent properties that makes…

SAVE UP TO 40%* PLUS FREE DIGITAL ACCESS TO 150+ ISSUES** START SAVING WITH AN IMAGINEFX SUBSCRIPTION! Subscribing gets you big savings on the cover price, with issues delivered to your door in over 140 countries, while our digital editions are available for iOS and Android CHOOSE YOUR PACKAGE! £34.99 PRINT PLUS FREE DIGITAL ACCESS • Six months of the print edition • No-hassle home delivery • Pay less than you would in the shops • Exclusive text-free covers • NEW! Digital access to 150+ issues when you subscribe to print!** £27.49 DIGITAL ONLY SUBSCRIPTION • Six months of the digital edition • Instant access via your Android or iOS device • Same content as the print edition • Interactive text-free covers • Never miss an issue THIS SPECIAL OFFER IS ONLY…

More and more artists who have used 2D painting tools for years are expanding their craft into other dimensions and mediums. It’s clear that 3D software in particular is opening up new channels of creativity. Some are going beyond 3D and into AR and physical sculpture. Others are learning game engines. All of this is made more accessible by tools such as Blender, Affinity Studio and Unreal Engine being free to use, making it easier than ever to try new things. Concept artist Jordan Grimmer tells us that learning Blender has been a turning point for him. “It has completely changed how I approach creating images and has removed barriers when it comes to experimenting with different workflows,” he says. “For example, I may use it to create a simple…

Artist PROFILE Arne Billen LOCATION: Belgium Arne is a freelance concept artist working in the indie game industry and a long-time teacher who specialises in expressive, stylised character design. His Dungeons & Dragon-related design work has been his go-to way to relax while creating. www.artstation.com/arnebillen SEND US YOUR CONCEPTS! Are you working on a project, fresh projec or doodling your own development sketches that you’d like to share with us? LET US KNOW! Email your WIPs and final images to: mail@imaginefx.com develop@imaginefx.com…

“This is from Made In Manila, a graphic novel that I’m working on. For a project like this I start by writing a research checklist and grounding abstract ideas with sketches. Tools like Photoshop and Blender help me to paint the scene broadly with an understanding of space, form and light. I then finish it off with stylised line work that expresses my style and influences. Details add to the story – not just the image’s density – by communicating the illustrations’ visual subtext of eyes. Once the silhouettes and colours harmonise, I lit it dramatically with story-driven intent. Well-planned lighting always enhances a piece.” How I create… A TENSE STREET SCENE 1 Start simple and graphic My approach comes from the basic structure of painting and then combining it with…

Price £599/€699 Company Secretlab Web https://secretlab.co.uk RATING One of the best deskmakers around is Secretlab. Its line of Magnus and Magnus Pro desks in particular have been a huge hit with PC gamers and creatives. The Magnus Evo, with a simpler design and (slightly) less bulk overall, paired with a lower price tag, is likely intended as an entry point into the Secretlab Deskonomic Universe. There are two size options available: the 150cm wide Magnus Evo and the Magnus Evo XL, which ups the size to 177cm. The back and side panels have magnetic steel surfaces, and concealed underneath the back is a steel cable tray that’s screwed in on one side and magnetically attached on the other. This means you can open it up slightly to access your power…

Publisher Domestika Price £19 Format Online Length 2 hrs 29 mins (14 lessons) Web www.domestika.org This Domestika course from Julia Körner (aka Dyru). T focuses on how she creates the incredible art that led to her ‘discovery’ on ArtStation. As an example of how to be found, Julia is a brilliant ambassador for a career in creature making. After going through her inspirations – always useful for finding new sources – Julia is honest about what types of characters will get you noticed. She then details how to respond to a brief, no matter how short, and this forms the focus when teaching her technique. Her manifesto is that context is everything when creating characters. In terms of Procreate, the course starts with strong basics, and it’s good to see…

LOCATION: US MEDIA: Substance 3D Designer, Substance 3D Painter, Marmoset Toolbag, Unreal Engine, ZBrush, PhotoScan, Krita, Maya, Plasticity, Photoshop  WEB: www.artstation.com/mentor_3d 1TRUE KNIFE B&W “A personal project modelled in Plasticity, textured in Substance 3D Painter and staged with Megascans. Here I wanted to sharpen my texturing and rendering skills.” 2 FIRE HYDRANT “This fire hydrant was the first asset I created under the mentorship and supervision of Dan Kenton. Working with Dan to create this fire hydrant has helped me get up to speed with industry standards and workflows, and I can’t wait to pass this information on to my students.” Sponsored by…

“This is a personal piece that’s based on character designs from my original sculpture series FIERCE GIRLS, with a sub-line called BONEGIRL that also comes in a range of action figures. The two characters who are pictured here – Triceratops and T-Rex – are both part of this line. The concept features girls who have been fused with dinosaur skeletons and metallic armour. I wanted to place Triceratops and T-Rex back-to-back to create a balanced structure. The main colour theme is a striking contrast of white and red, which I chose to help create a greater sense of visual impact.” SKELETON CREW How I create… FIGURES CLAD IN UNIQUE ARMOUR 1 Digital sculpting in ZBrush These characters were in standing poses from previous sculptures, later adjusted into back-to-back poses for this…