Editorial
Welcome to Issue 42 – and what an issue to get your teeth into if ever there was one! We’ve got everything from man-eating plants to earth-chomping diggers, to car- and people-gobbling earth. We like our destruction don’t we?! Not only is this another great issue because it’s packed with a variety of both organic and hard-surface painting tutorials, but this June release is also quite an emotional one for us as we are publishing the final tutorial of Chee Ming Wong’s year-long space painting series. We are indebted to Chee for his continued enthusiasm, dedication and passion to providing the most thorough and stunningly painted tutorials of the space painting genre you’ll find, and we hope that he has not had enough of us yet and will be back for more tutorial projects in the future. A round of applause for Chee, please! And that’s not the only end of a chapter this month; we’re also waving farewell to our vehicle painters, as Hoi Mun Tham brings us the final chapter of our 5-part mini-series (p.65). Our two extremely talented vehicle painters, Dwayne Vance and Mun, are yet more examples of artists in this industry who take time out of their already busy schedules to bring you high quality tutorials through these pages; we hope that you have enjoyed their teachings over the past few issues. And while on the discussion of things coming to an end, our speed painting tutorials will be taking a 6-month breather as of August, when we’ll be bringing you a new tutorial series to keep you all inspired and up to date on your painting techniques! So be sure to check out our penultimate speed painting tutorials – for the time being that is – on p.73, by Robin Olausson and in-house artist, Richard Tilbury.

We have none other than world renowned matte painter and concept artist, Raphael Lacoste who has lent us his awe-inspiring portfolio for the interview pages of this issue. We first interviewed Raphael in our sister magazine, 3DCreative, back in 2006, and we find out how since then he decided it was time to switch videogames for films, and went from art director for games to concept artist and matte painter for the movies (p.7). Our second artist interview this month is with one of our personal favourites of the moment, Blaz Porenta, who we find out is not only an awesome artist, but is also a ninja?! Yep, that’s right; he’s been practising the art of Ninjutsu for several years – this is one artist with a kick for something more extreme, and his artwork is a reflection of his fantastic personality. Check out his stunning portfolio on p.17.

I was proud to discover that recent gallery feature, It was a fierce battle by Geoffrey Cramm was originally inspired by one of our stylised challenges held on the Threedy and ConceptArt.org forums, so it is with real pleasure that we bring to you the making of this wonderful image (p.101), which is also quite deservedly this month’s front cover feature, too. Our second making of is something a little different, by Tony Foti (p.93). His article is packed with personality and wit, and we hope you’ll enjoy it as much as we have. And with these giving you what I hope is a thirst for more making of goodness, check out Aretha by Jason Seiler on p.39 in the gallery this month, as we’ll be bringing you the exclusive making of this in next month’s magazine!

I hope you enjoy this June issue, and be sure to look out for your free resources throughout the magazine; Drazenka Kimpel has kindly provided some of her custom brush collection which accompanies her stunning sketchbook article on p.31, and Richard Tilbury has also created some custom brushes specifically for his speed painting tutorial on p.73.

Enjoy! Ed.