Prime showcases the pinnacle of digital artistic achievement from around the globe in a definitive collection of 21st century CG artwork.

This unique set of five books is housed in a single slipcase, with each book devoted to a classic gallery theme – sci-fi, character, cartoon, fantasy or scenes – and featuring stunning, world-class work that comes courtesy of some of the greatest artists in the industry.

Never before has a collection of this magnitude been released. Prime brings together over 400 top-quality pieces in one easily accessible set of books, for your immediate viewing pleasure. Whatever your artistic tastes, the tantalizing mix of fantastical creatures, humorous caricatures, sweeping landscapes and fascinating characters on offer in Prime is guaranteed to capture your imagination and leave you with a timeless source of inspiration that you can return to again and again.

The Book Review:

First of all, I must note the substantial presentation of Prime. Five perfect-bound books snugly protected by a rather hefty glossy slipcase. Each book’s cover is adorned with a spot UV illustration, and the interiors are vibrantly printed on large glossy paper.

Prime, as well as being a very attractive coffee table piece works very well as an introduction to world of digital illustration. It showcases illustrators from a broad range of styles and techniques. For the most part each artist only has one page, with the occasional few having two to three pages. Which is why I say it works well as an introduction, with so few images per illustrator, it definitely encourages you to seek out more about individual illustrators.

Each image is titled, credited and names the software used. The predominant technique showcased across all five books is, unsurprisingly, digital painting. However, the editors do a good job of breaking this up with varying styles, including some breathtaking examples 3D rendering—mostly found in the Scenes book. There are also good examples of less rendered illustrations, almost completely flat colours, as well as more experimental and expressive painting techniques. On the whole I would say it caters better for those wanting to see great examples of realistic digital painting, but there are enough gems showcasing other techniques to keep any eclectic Lounger happy.

If I had to choose a volume, I would say Cartoons is my probably my favourite. It is the one with the most varied styles, and the most light-hearted. A few of the illustrators that stood out (some in the slideshow above) were Reynan Sanchez, Yukari Masuike, Mateusz Lenart, Guillermo Soria, Morteza Najafi, Valentina Remenar, Sergio Diaz, Guillaume Ospital as well a couple illustrator’s we have previously featured on the Lounge Peter Oedekoven, and Max Kostenko. All illustrators featured across the books are top-notch; these are just some of the ones that appealed to my personal tastes.

To find out more about Prime – The Definitive Digital Art Collection, and perhaps discover a new favourite illustrator, head over go to the 3DTotal website.

Our friends at 3DTotal have just launched LayerPaint, a great new resource site dedicated to 2D digital painting. It is already filled with resources, tutorials, and inspiration galleries. here is what 3DTotal had to say about their latest venture,

LayerPaint allows you to browse the gallery, interviews, news, tutorials and products all dedicated to 2D digital art. On top of that, we have included a free custom brushes library that is available to all our LayerPaint audience.

We wish LayerPaint to be a definitive resource for digital painting, creating a friendly and educational environment that not only helps budding and experienced CG artists alike, but also showcases some of the best computer generated artwork in the world.

You can also keep tabs on LayerPaint’s updates by following their Facebook and Twitter page.

In other news

We had a great response from January’s Giveaway, so a very big thank you to everyone who entered. We have announced the winner. We are now working on this months competition and will be posting it soon, so stay tuned!

Humorous and highly skilled work from 3D illustrator Pedro Conti. Hailing from São Paulo, Brazil he is currently working as lead artist at Techno image. With a portfolio filled with expressive,larger than life illustrations it is no surprise that Mr. Conti has won a Cgchoice Award, CgHub Gold Award, and a 3DTotal Excellence Award…multiple times. You can check out more of his portfolio here on his website.

A big thanks to everyone that entered last months INKtober giveaway, the winner has now been announced.

This month, we have a very special prizes from our friends at 3DTotal. They have kindly contributed a set of two books, Beginner’s Guide to Digital Painting in Photoshop and the newly released Elysium – The Art of Daarken.

We will be giving away two sets of these sought-after books, and all you have to do to be in for a chance to win simply RT and follow us on Twitter, or like and share us on Facebook

What you need to do:

- Twitter entries must retweet and follow us
- Facebook entries must both Like us and Share the giveaway link on our Facebook page

All entries must be in before the 30th of November 2012. Two winners will be selected at random and announced on the 1st of December 2012.

Good Luck!

The Review:

Elysium – The Art of Daarken

Elysium – The Art of Daarken is the first art book from illustrator and concept artist Daarken. It opens with a personal and rather funny foreword from fellow illustrator and personal friend kekai kotaki. Daarken then takes the helm to explain, in short, his journey to becoming an illustrator. The book is broken up into four main sections—Illustration, Concept Art, Fine Art, and Painting Workshop—and Daarken pops up now and then giving a little background and thought process of certain pieces.

For those of you unfamiliar Daarken’s work, he has illustrated for card games such as Magic: The Gathering and Duel Master, and video games such as Dungeons & Dragons and World of Warcraft. His Professional and personal works are all presented in this book, which creates a wide range genres and styles. To Daarken’s own admission he does not really do speed painting, which does leave an abundance of fully rendered and polished pieces. For those, like myself, who like to see more sketches and workings from an art book there are some great thumb sketches throughout the Concept Art section, as well as section dedicated to his sketches in the Fine Art section.

Daarken has been working professionally since 2004 and in that time has built an extensive portfolio as well as loyal fan base. I feel this book does do a great job collating that history, and pedestalling the skill involved in creating such illustrations. The book is 200 pages of inspiration and testament to Daarken as well as digital art.

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Beginner’s Guide to Digital Painting in Photoshop

Beginner’s Guide to Digital Painting in Photoshop is comprehensive introduction to digital painting. Aimed at the complete novice it begins with a step-by-step tutorial about working in Photoshop, explaining preferences, workspace, configuring your tablet properties and goes into useful details about creating bushes and setting up your canvas.

Following the set up there are a few pages on art theory—colours, composition, and perspective—which tie in with the Photoshop tutorial, elaborating on certain tools and features. There is a section on “Art Fundamentals” which cover subject like lighting, portraying emotion, and storytelling. This section and some of the tone they employ when explaining certain things is perhaps my only gripe with the format of the book. Assuming you are a practising illustrator wanting to learn about digital painting, it may feel a bit of a waste to have colour theory and portraying emotion explained to you. However, of course I see their relevance for students or people coming from different disciplines.

About half way is where the good stuff begins in a section title “Complete Project”. This section has a process breakdown for creating a digital painting. It includes the thought process, planning as well as techniques to use to get certain effects. It does a good job of explaining the tips and tricks needed to make you image truly impressive.

In all Beginner’s Guide to Digital Painting in Photoshop is trove of very useful information and advice. With inspiring examples to learn from. It may take a few reads before you are putting into practice all of the tricks, but it definitely has all you need to feel confident to pick up your interactive pen start digital painting.

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For more information about 3DTotal please go to www.3dtotal.com and follow them on twitter – @3DTotal