www.artist-reference.com

As we have been focused on Gnomon group’s websites, here we come with another one equally interesting and inspiring as the other discussed – sketchtheatre.com. As their profile says, the aim of Sketch Theatre is to expose “young” minds to opportunities that might be a great stepping stone for them when it comes to a career in digital art design. In other words, it is a place for young talents that aspire to make a career in the special effects industry in the future. Basically Sketch Theatre is a place for amateur artists to display their own works whether their art is based on comic book design, animation, films, entertainment design (like creatures, sets and props) and even music.

Let´s move to the description of what sketchtheatre.com include. The home page of Sketchbook Theatre has a standard search bar at the top as well as videos in which different artists display their own works. The best part about these videos of this website is the fact that artists actually give a sort of play by play of how they created their sketches. These “demonstrations” are also followed up by background music of the artist’s own choose. Also, the website includes instructional videos that feature sketching demonstrations from professionals in the field of character design, illustration, comics and more. Come to think of it, I did find one similarity between the gnomonworkshop.com and this one. Both sites have a forums page where artists can discuss topics related to their interests as well as competitions. However, that’s where the similarity ends.

The “Interviews” section includes, well, interviews with some of Sketch Theatre’s most talented artists, and not just any artists. The website interviews the artists who have had the pleasure of working in big budget box office hits. For example, one of the featured interviews includes that of Aaron Sims, a special effects artist that has worked on “some of the most popular, defining movies of the 1990’s” like Gremlins 2, Mighty Joe Young, Men in Black, Batman Forever and Nutty Professor too.

Besides that, sketchtheatre.com offers the latest news about industry and artists who made their mark in their respected fields. As a digital art enthusiast, I would like to keep myself updated on what is new in the world of visual effects so such information was a definite plus for me. The “Store” section also caught my attention – with sketch pieces and T-shirts on offer. Some of them went for about 29 USD. However, there were also specialized ones, like the Cameron Davis limited edition sketch T-shirts, that go for a whopping 45 USD per a piece. One thing is for sure – the quality of the sketch designs on these items means that you are getting your money’s worth.

Another thing I found interesting was a competition in which amateur sketch artists could pit their skills against each other. Winners could get their hands on exclusive Gnomon DVDs (tutorials) as well as other products offered by the gnomonworkshop.com.  Items such as these would definitely come in handy for an aspiring 3D artist so the competition is also a definite plus.

However, to tell you the truth, the News and Interviews section did not seem very different from each other, as both are featuring works of different artists via videos. I was also annoyed that I had to go to the actual website of the artist whose video demonstration I wanted to watch in the News section. As for the navigation aspect, there is nothing much to maneuver through since the site doesn’t have that much to offer, but this might have more to do with the site’s elementary theme than anything else. Overall, this site is a great place for budding artists to see what other aspirants that are gunning for a place in the 3D industry are doing.

Summary

+ This website provides a great place for budding artists to showcase their sketching talents via video demonstrations.

- One has to go to other links if  wanted to view the profiles of famous artists in the News section which is annoying.

Popularity: 17% [?]

With more and more websites showing off their vibrant collection of textures and 3D images, it becomes increasingly important for artist to read over genuine reviews of these websites in order to find if a particular one is perfect for him. Here we shall talk about PoserWorld, a website which boosts of excellent quality, large variety and ready to use content.

The first thing you’ll notice after loading the homepage of PoserWorld is the website claiming to have a large variety of over 1900 items with excellent quality 3D content. Though the website shows off more content on human models and clothing, it also includes seamless textures of varied categories. Due to the diversity of website´s content, we thought it would be better to publish 2 separate reviews – one on textures and one on human models. Here we shall discuss all it has to offer in terms of textures.

The one thing about searching for good textures online is that you see the same kinds of textures as you move from one site to the other over the web. This does not happen here, though. Uniqueness is one of the main qualities you’ll find here. I would like to put light upon the fact that this site has a huge number of seamless and digital textures, props and scenes to offer. The texture collection ranges from

seamless Jet and Sky Photo Background added in July 2007 to the latest seamless metal photo texture set added on April 2011. They offer a huge variety of textures, having different sets of seamless fabric photo textures like gold embroidered fabric and variety of plaid and stripped fabric textures, which are quite unique. The Scenes section has a lot to offer to the user, too. For example beautiful textures like Pool Scene that shows off breathtaking pool view with the lawn by the side. Also there are textures like Cityblock which offers beautiful architectural views of the city blocks, generally not to find elsewhere. With ready to use exterior scenes like Bob’s Dinner, Park center and interior scenes like Kitchen, Sauna etc., one can easily and quickly incorporate it in his project. Moreover, different parts of scenes can be moved so the basic scene can be modified accordingly to your needs.  This section is worth taking a look and the site itself is surely a must-visit for an artist who is in search for some unique well finished scenes and textures with good resolution.

The sizes of these textures range from 512 to 3000 pixels but majority of them is 3000×3000 pixels. The site updates and keeps adding various new textures on a regular weekly basis. One thing that is not so satisfactory is that at times it displays only one picture of the textures collection. The viewer has to rely on one sample picture before downloading the whole section of images. For example ‘By the River’ set shows off one beautiful picture of bridge over river to sell off whole collection of 19 photographs of Newcastle Keyside section. Also, at times the viewer has to rely on lower pixel size samples of textures before he buys the textures in higher resolution. Speaking about website´s weaknesses, it seems a little clumsy with the heavy header, footer and right panel being repeated on each page.

Though PoserWorld has huge number of designs and textures, unlike sites like environment-texture.com, the viewers have to do a laborious searching through lots of data and lists to find the perfect texture to suit their needs. This is due to the fact that there is no division into categories on the site. Tough it has search engine which works fine, but again whereas there is a huge number of images loaded in it, even the search results might show up in huge number. One thing that could be improved is the way how the search engine works. By typing ´red brick´ the search engine lists all the textures and images with ´red´, ´brick´ as well as ´red brick´ so one will get more results than wanted, which means another tedious searching for the right image among the others. Very disappointing I find the fact that although there is a free sample section, there is just one free item, which changes “from time to time” (as they write). This is surprising because free samples are already the must-have of this kind of websites.

The downloading charges of the site are fair and reasonable. One can download a texture or any other design at a price of about 3 USD. This is the average price of the designs. Also the site offers memberships which when paid for, it grants full access to all the textures of the site. The memberships offered by the site are 20 USD for a three month membership, 50 USD for a 12 month membership and for a full lifetime membership one has to pay 500 USD. The lifetime membership grants the user full access to all of the features of the site for lifetime, plus 5 DVDs full of textures, 3D models and several tutorial videos. A good thing over here is that by providing option of single item purchase as well as subscriptions option, they have covered all the possible demands of individual as well as corporate users. All the images and textures offered are royalty free for personal and commercial use (if derivated), but for more information I would contact website´s owners. For all those who would like to learn how to create clothing textures on their own, there are also 3D clothes texturing tutorial video DVD for 19.95 USD and 3D photo texture DVD with over 1362 textures for 19.95 USD.

With all these information we can easily conclude the following summary for texture section of PoserWorld:

+     A commendable collection of 3D textures, with unique categories makes it stand apart from the rest.  Reasonable prices of membership – for example at 50 USD per year, one gets access to all of content for a full year, for the price of about 16 individual item purchases.

- At times it becomes clumsy to move through all the heavy panels of headers, footers and right hand panels. Search engine should be made more intelligent with added features to enhance the user’s experience over searching varied textures and designs. Disappointing Free Samples section with just one free item.

We couldn´t show you any sample textures, because as we already mentioned there aren´t free samples for download on the website. Although we sent PoserWorld a couple of e-mails asking for some samples, no reply received.

Popularity: 19% [?]