Once you've read my pages about
Training & Tutorials, and
the Best Methods of creating Digital Art, you should understand what I'm about to say.
It's best when starting in Digital Art to
First get familiar with
Photoshop and using
Wacom drawing tablets. 3D Software should come later.
Here's how I recommend you go about developing your digital art skills:
Get yourself a copy of the most current version of
Photoshop you can, and then get yourself a
Wacom - Intuos tablet. (They come in 3 or 4
different sizes, so go to
www.Wacom.com and look up the sizes. Then take a couple pieces of paper and
cut them to the exact dimensions of the available tablets, and take a pen and pretend like you're painting using the paper. Use this to
determine what size would be right for you before you buy.)
Then you need Training and a good understanding of how to use these tools. So purchase either the Matte Painting DVD's by
Dylan Cole, the Interior Spaces DVD's by
Mark Goerner, or
the Concept Design DVD's by
Feng Zhu (for digital painting his best DVD's are:
1,
2,
and
3), to get an understanding of how to use your new tools for art. You can
also work through several free
Photoshop Tutorials to get even more education. Work at becoming as proficient
at
speed-painting as you can, and then start to turn that into an ability to
quickly create completed Matte Paintings.
Once you've worked through this and have become skilled at Digital Painting, you can now start to add 3D Graphics to your skillset. I
recommend that even if you're on a budget, you try to start out with the best program you can, rather than settling for a cheaper
program. Get yourself a copy of
3D Studio Max, and work through every Modeling, Texturing, and Lighting Tutorial you can find, both those
that come with the Software and anything you can find online. Work at becoming as proficient as you can at
speed-modeling,
so when you digitally paint your concept, you can quickly model it in 3D without it costing so much time you begin to lose your vision.
Once you have these skills down, you can then start to add 3D Scenery and 3D Characters to your scenes. I recommend
Vue for Scenery (I also use
DreamScape and
World Machine in concert with Vue and
3DS Max), and
Poser for Characters (I've never
been a big fan of Character Studio, which comes with 3DS Max, but that's just me). -A great place to buy Models for Poser is
www.DAZ3d.com.
Having first developed a strong Photoshop foundation, the ability to use all the other software together to create Digital Art should come
a lot easier than if you'd started out in one of the 3D programs. So, follow these recommendations in the order I've shown here and you'll
quickly be on your way to developing
Hollywood-Competitive Digital Art!
For a list of all the best Software available for creating Digital Art, check out my
Software & Resources Links Page.
