Digital Art Masters: Volume 8 In Review

Digital Art Masters: Volume 8 by 3DTotal Publishing is the 8th incarnation of the Digital Art Masters series (paperback ISBN: 978-0956817181). For those not familiar with it, the book is basically a picture book of some pretty awesome digital artwork, but it gets way better. The book goes a step further than most in that it has several pages explaining how a given image was created. That's right, it's a book with built-in 'how-they-did-that' bonus material!

Note: This review is for Volume 8, which was published in July 2013; there is a new Volume 9, published July 1, 2014. Be sure to check it out too!

It's totally coffee table awesome and also a great source of inspiration! In their own words:

"Digital Art Masters: Volume 8 is not your typical digital art gallery book. While it does showcase stunning work from 50 of the best international artists, it also includes detailed tutorials explaining how each image was created. Each artist offers insight into their workflow and the methods they employ when it comes to creating a professional piece, from the early concept stage through to the final product. In addition, this year's volume boasts a selection of unique, never-before-seen images for your viewing pleasure. If you're looking to be inspired and learn something at the same time then Digital Art Masters: Volume 8 ticks all of the boxes."

I couldn't really put it down. Not to sound too corny, but it's the kind of book that starts to brighten the spark of your own inspiration in a way that most other books don't. It's a very motivating book for artists in that sense. While the book is not a tutorial by any means, the behind-the-scenes pages do give readers some insight into the process and workflow the individual artists used for a given piece. It's always very cool to see how other people work.

I'm pleased to say the quality of the book itself and of the art contained within hasn't gone down. It's just as awesome as it's ever been! Page after page of thought-provoking, inspiring, downright creepy, very sexy, joyous and somber content. It's pretty much all in there.

The print quality is fantastic, the paper stock is great and even the binding is pretty rugged and should hold up for years of abuse.

As per usual, there's some very talented and well known artists featured in this edition of the book, including, but not limited to:

Pascal BlanchÃ© - One of the authors of d'artiste: Character Modeling.
Serge Birault - PapaNinja on deviantART.
Rodrigue Pralier - Lead Character Artist at Bioware Montreal.
Thomas Scholes - Instructor at Futurepoly and Motivarti.
Patrick Evrard - 3D Artist at Vintage Productions.
Eduardo PeÃ±a - Freelance artist worked on titles such as The Hobbit.
Simon Kopp - An amazing freelance artist from Germany.
Toni Bratincevic - Senior Environment modeler for cinematics at Blizzard Entertainment.
Matthew Burke - Concept artist who worked on titles such as Doom 4 and Halo Wars.
Levi Hopkins - Freelance concept artist worked for Microsoft, Sony, Disney...

All that said, the book isn't without its flaws. At only 288 pages - it needs to be longer! The book showcases some amazing and inspiring talent and it's hard to put down. I have no actual complaints about Digital Art Masters: Volume 8, it's just that I want more! (Funny enough, some sellers on sites such as Amazon.com list the page count at 320 pages, but holding the physical book in my hands the actual page count is 288 pages or 287, not including the trailing advertisement page that comes after the index.)

You can never surround yourself with enough inspirational material. If you liked the EXPOSÃ‰ series, you'll also like Digital Art Masters: Volume 8 and the just recently published Digital Art Masters: Volume 9. The artwork is absolutely the same level of quality.

Still not sure? You can preview a low resolution version of the entire book on the 3DTotal Publishing website. (See link at the end of the article.)

Book specs (paperback edition):

pages: 288 (confirmed with it in my hands!)
publisher: 3DTotal Publishing
ISBN: 978-0956817181
cover price: $49.99 (Shop around and you can find it for about $35 new.)

Preview the entire book free at the publisher's website (click the Preview tab):

https://shop.3dtotal.com/digital-art-masters-volume-8.html#t4

-Modulok-

Kurt Foster (Modulok) falls somewhere between programmer and visual effects artist. When not sifting through technical manuals, he takes on freelance roles in both programming and visual effects, attempting to create a marriage of technical knowledge with artistic talent. He can be seen helping out on the Renderosity Maya forum, when time permits.