The Wormworld Saga is a new online graphic novel by German illustrator, comics artist and gaming concept artist Daniel Lieske.

It is an adventure story centering on the memories of a young boy recalling a time in his life when the world of the everyday intersected with the extraordinary.

The format is a bit different from most online graphic stories, which are posted a page or a few panels at a time; the first chapter of The Wormworld Saga was just posted complete; a necessity in this case because the entire chapter, in a variation of Scott McCloud’s “infinite canvas” concept, is essentially one long scrolling page, with the panels interconnected by larger passages and shared backgrounds.

The comic is read by scrolling down (something seemingly particularly appropriate for reading on the iPad), and though there are sections that might be considered “pages” in that their content and panel format is related, they defy the boundaries of conventional page layout.

Unlike some artists who have experimented with the online comics format and the conventions of how comics stories are read, Lieske hasn’t indulged in experimentation at the expense of graphic storytelling fundamentals, and his story reads well, flows nicely and is easy to follow.

The story, though only one chapter long so far, also stands out for its pace, more like an actual novel than the pace of most comics, which tend to proceed like a movie or television show, in which the narrative is compressed. Lieske seems comfortable with a pace that allow him to build up background and narrative texture; though the story is told well enough that there is no feeling of lag or delay.

The most outstanding characteristic of The Wormworld Saga, however, is Lieske’s artwork, which is highly accomplished, quite original and wonderfully realized.

Lieske is a digital painter by profession, both in his illustration and his game related concept art (you can see his professional portfolio here). He has applied his skills with digital painting tools to the images for the story in way that is delightfully painterly; and no, I don’t think applying the description “painterly” to a digital medium is a misuse of the term, it refers to the application of color in patches that look and feel like physical brush strokes.

Combined with a cinematic feeling for drama, his painterly textures and judiciously applied details give the story an emotional resonance and sense of place and time.

Lieske created a page called The Wormworld Saga Exhibitions, in which he talks about the project and its origins. he also maintains a blog which likewise features background on the story and art, as well as a personal website with sections for his other projects, including galleries of digital painting and sketches, and a page about the artist. There is also a page for ordering prints that should go live sometime this month.

If Lieske continues his practice of creating an entire chapter before posting, the next installment of The Wormworld Saga may take a while to arrive; but the current chapter ends in a way that will allow us to wait, and the next chapter should be worth waiting for.

[Via MetaFilter]

Ian McQue is a concept artist, illustrator and art director for the gaming industry. He is currently working for Rockstar North, and gaming aficionados will recognize the several Grand Theft Auto titles to his credit, along with an number of other games.

McQue works in both traditional and digital media, the latter including Photoshop, Illustrator and 3d Studio Max.

When not working, McQue likes to add to his flotilla of steampunk airships. Wonderfully realized, improbably heavy, they appear battered and patched, as though the aerial equivalent of the junks and salvaged ships one might find in an off the map Pacific port, trading in God-knows-what, plying the currents in the grey skies of another place or time.

You can find a nice big introductory batch of his flying ships on Concept Ships, where his work was chosen for the Monthly header this month.

You’ll find more of his on his blog, along with some of his nicely gestural sketches. There is also a gallery on CGHub.

[Via io9]

An increasing number of artists, even those firmly committed to working in traditional media, are discovering the value of adding digital painting and drawing tools to their repertoire.

The transition can be daunting, though, with some artists feeling intimidated by what they perceive as complex and expensive digital art tools and the implied learning curve.

There are smaller, easier to use alternatives, however, that can make the dive into digital art simpler and require less of an up-front investment.

One of them is ArtRage, a digital painting and drawing application by Ambient Design that represents an inexpensive alternative to the industry standard digital painting and drawing applications like Corel Painter and Adobe Photoshop (I might include Manga Studio Pro as a standard at this point as well).

I received a review version of ArtRage3 Studio Pro, and as someone with both an eye to the needs of novice digital painters and a long personal history of creating digital art in both Painter and Photoshop, I put it through its paces.

Though not strictly necessary, ArtRage is meant, like those other tools, to be used with a pressure sensitive tablet and stylus when drawing and painting. (Wacom’s Bamboo Pen model [more here] allows for basic pressure sensitive pen input for about $70 U.S.)

ArtRage features digital emulations of painting and drawing tools for oils, watercolor, pencil, ink, airbrush, chalk and others. The Studio Pro version, which is what I tested, features layers and layer groups, layer blend modes, support for plug-in fliters, importing and exporting custom brush settings and a range of surprisingly sophisticated capabilities for its modest price.

The most direct competition for ArtRage might be AutoDesk’s Sketchbook Pro, though I don’t have a copy of that for comparison. Another relevant application would be Corel Painter Essentials.

Despite a vaguely toy-like interface and inclusion of craft store sillyness like a “Glitter” tool, ArtRage in actual use defies your initial impressions and becomes a surprisingly powerful tool, suitable for creating serious digital artwork.

The application’s strongest point is the drawing and painting tools themselves, particularly the default oil painting brush, which I think is among the best in the industry, and the pen and pencil tools, which are at least as good as the tools from the more expensive counterparts.

Add to that features like layers, layer transparency, layer groups, Photoshop standard blend modes, and the additional capabilities in ArtRage Studio Pro for extra painting tools, selection tools and filters, and you have a very capable digital art tool for a very reasonable price.

The downside, from my point of view, is the quirky and sometimes frustrating interface design, in which the designers have felt it necessary to be clever and original, sometimes at the expense of ease of use.

Many aspects of the interface are clear enough, like the palette of tools and the color picker, and many of the tools are actually easier to use than their counterparts in the more expensive applications, which can sometimes be bewildering to novice users.

However, there are other convention-defying interface design choices that seem different for the sake of being different rather than “different because we think we have a better way to do this”. (I happen to be a fan of the controversial interfaces Kai Krause and Phil Clevenger designed for the mid-90′s Metacreations applications like Bryce and Poser, so I don’t object to non-standard interfaces out of hand).

I initially found it maddening that I couldn’t use some simple UI conventions like “Select All” and “Delete” that are an expected function in any digital graphics application. This frustration was eventually mollified as I began to assign custom key commands (e.g. creating a custom key command for “Clear Layer” as a substitute for Select All and Delete).

The pop-up palettes for things like layers, presets, color swatches and tool settings are fine, even if they waste a bit of screen space on design elements, but I found it mildly annoying that the tool palette and color picker are part of the canvas. They can be hidden easily enough with a key command, and automatically disappear when using a tool in their corners, but cannot be moved or pulled off of the canvas as far as I can tell.

The tool and color palette arrangement is reminiscent of the old versions of Alias Sketchbook (now AutoDesk Sketchbook), but even they have moved to a more conventional tool and color palette arrangement in current versions.

The ArtRage tools themselves, however, once accessed, are a joy to use.

I found them easier to adjust and tweak (certainly for a novice) than comparable tools in Painter and Photoshop; and in general superbly implemented in terms of their action and response.

The pencil tool took much less tweaking on my part to produce a sketchy, light line for preliminary layout, easily adjusted for heavier lines (as if going from a 2h to a 2b in traditional pencil work). The pen tool (interestingly represented in the tool palette by the image of a technical pen instead of a steel quill) is smooth and fluid, with a nice response to pressure sensitivity.

The airbrush behaves well, the camel hair brush and marker tools have the necessary basic settings to make them suitable for speed painting and the creation of digital concept art.

The oil painting brush, in the way it lays down colors over other colors, blends and gives the appearance of blended brush strokes, is terrific. I like it better than any of the default oil brushes in Corel Painter (and I’m a big fan of Painter’s brushes in general), and, like many of the ArtRage tools, it’s just easier to use “out of the box”.

Those who are used to Painter and Photoshop’s more sophisticated brush engines may find some elements of the brush controls limited, but for someone who is just diving into digital art, ArtRage provides a less confusing range of options while allowing a good deal of control and flexibility.

ArtRage Studio Pro is able to import and export a variety of image formats, including (within limitations for some advanced features) layered Photoshop files.

There are a series of tutorials on the ArtRage website to get you started, and there is an ArtRage user community — the webite includes user forums and galleries.

ArtRage Studio Pro is inexpensive (as of this writing, $80 U.S.), and an excellent value given its capabilities. It can be a great place for novice digital artists to start, but is powerful enough for professionals to turn out finished work, as in the two images by Pakistani visual development artist, Waheed Nasir, above.

There are two other versions, both more limited in features, but even less expensive, as you step down: ArtRage 3 Studio (currently $40 U.S.) and Art Rage 2.6 ($20 U.S.). All are available for Mac and Windows. You can upgrade from the lesser versions to the more full featured ones.

There is a brief overview of the versions and features here, and a link at the bottom of the top section of this page to a more complete PDF listing of the differences in features between the versions.

I would certainly recommend that anyone interested in digital art give ArtRage a try, even if you are already comfortable with one of the more expensive tools.

There is a full-featured (but limited export) 30 day demo version of ArtRage 3 Studio Pro available for download.

However, I might suggest downloading their free, limited-feature but unlimited use, ArtRage 2.6 Starter Edition first (link at bottom of this page). This is much more limited than any of the other versions, but you can use it to acquaint yourself with the eccentricities of the interface, and then download and evaluate the full featured but time limited demo of ArtRage Studio Pro; so you don’t waste demo time getting used to the interface.

Even experienced Painter and Photoshop users may find, as I do, that its small memory footprint, quick launch time and sophisticated drawing and painting tools make ArtRage a valuable addition to your digital toolbox.

I continue to work extensively in Painter and Photoshop, but ArtRage has become my favored tool to open up quickly and make sketches or visual notes, and to play with casual digital paintings when I have a few minutes between deadlines.

For those who are looking to make the leap into digital painting, it can be a great place to start.

[Addendum: Cédric Trojani was kind enough to let me know that you can indeed separate the tools and colors palettes from the document area by right-clicking (Windows) or Control-clicking (Mac) on the grabber icon in each corner to access a contextual menu. For more see Cédric's comments on this post. So the key is really just to familiarize yourself with the ArtRage interface. The more I learn about it, the more flexible and adaptable it becomes.]

I’ve written before about ImagineFX, a UK based magazine devoted primarily to 2D digital art (“digital painting”) for the fantasy, science fiction and concept art fields.

Almost every issue of the magazine I’ve every seen has had articles of interest to me, (and ImagineFX is one of those magazines, like Illustration magazine, in which even the ads are relevant and interesting); but I found Issue #60 (September 2010) to be of particular interest for a number of reasons.

In addition to the cornucopia of news from the field, pointers to interesting topics on the web, artist questions and answers, reviews of computer graphics software and hardware, how-to workshops, and the discovery of at least two artists new to me that I will be profiling in the future, the issue includes several feature articles about (or by) artists I’ve previously featured here on Lines and Colors.

William Stout is profiled in a several page article, illustrated with art from his beautiful new book Hallucinations (which I reviewed here) and his previous recent book Dinosaur Discoveries (which I reviewed here), along with other work from his illustrious career.

Goro Fujita, who I profiled here, contributes a three page article on Digital Painting on the iPad with the Brushes app.

James Gurney, who I have featured in several posts on Lines and Colors, highlights the Workshops section of the issue with a terrific 6 page article on The Science Behind Visual Perception, that is alone worth the cover price of the magazine. This includes material adapted from Gurney’s upcoming book, Color and Light: A Guide for the Realist Painter. There is a post about the ImagineFX article on Gurney’s always fascinating blog, Gurney Journey.

There are good-size digital files of the images from the articles by Gurney and Fujita on the DVD that accompanies the issue. This also includes a ton of resources, including images from other articles and workshops, a hi-resolution texture pack, over 700 female figure reference pose photos and trial versions of Painter 11, ZBrush 3.1 and ArtRage 3. (I’ll be reviewing ArtRage 3 in an upcoming post.)

As part of a nine page “Back to Basics” section on topics like Texture, Digital File Formats, Layers, and Figure Drawing Basics, Justin Gerard, who I profiled here, contributes a short article on Composition for Beginners,.

Oh yes, and as part of that same section, yours truly contributes a short column on Art Terms and Questions, in which I explain some commonly misunderstood art terms like “chiaroscuro”, “negative space”, “simultaneous contrast”, “chroma” and “lost and found edges” (page 61, right column).

ImagineFX #60 is currently on sale in the U.S. and Canada (in the UK, it’s last month’s issue, which can be purchased from the website as a back issue).

The ImagineFX website is also a huge resource of archived articles, galleries, workshops, forums, reviews and downloads.

After retiring from her 35 year career as a designer and illustrator, Michigan based artist Susan Murtaugh took up digital art, creating digital paintings in applications like Sketchbook Pro and Brushes on the iPod and Modbook (a third party Apple tablet computer) and now the iPad.

Murtaugh doesn’t appear to have a website or blog, but displays her work in her Flickr galleries and is a regular contributor to fingerpainted.it, a blog devoted to digital painting on touchscreen devices.

Her topics range from portraits and still life to classic cars, matchbooks to florals. You can see her design background in the playful patterns with which she occasionally fills her backgrounds, as well as her design-oriented layouts.

What I find particularly appealing about her digital painting technique is her use of stylized texture, particularly when she uses textural elements in the role of brush strokes in defining forms.

There is an interview with Murtaugh on Photoshop Cafe that includes a step through demo. She also has a portrait tutorial using Sketchbook Pro on the AliasDesign site. She is a participant in thefingerpainters live digital painting demos.

[Via Telegraph]

David Jon Kassan, a Brooklyn based artist I wrote about in 2008, recently posted a short (7 minute) video to YouTube in which he is shown in time-lapse Finger Painting on the Apple iPad from the live model.

The iPad, for those who have been living in a cave in Tierra del Fuego until this morning, is Apple’s new touch-screen device, so Kassan is painting with his finger, a pretty blunt instrument compared to a brush, pencil or stylus.

Kassan is painting in Brushes, a very capable digital painting app for the iPhone and iPad that allows for most of the basic tools of digital painting, including, of course, the ability to zoom in on the work.

Though it doesn’t allow for variations in pressure, a factor most of us who do digital drawing and painting have come to rely on, it does allow for changes in brush size and opacity, as you can see in the video.

(For another mention of the Brushes iPhone app, see my post on the New Yorker covers of Jorge Colombo.)

Most of us associate digital painting with work from the imagination, particularly given its popularity in concept art and science fiction and fantasy illustration, but a number of people use it to sketch or paint from life.

I’ve used a laptop, Painter software and a tablet and stylus to sketch and paint from the model, but it’s a bit of an awkward proposition. The lack of pressure sensitivity seems a fair trade-off for the easy portability and simplicity of the iPad (though you would want to make sure it was well-secured to your easel – grin).

Unlike the use of similar applications for the iPhone and Nintendo DS, the iPad is large enough to do more than small sketches. Kassan takes the painting pretty close to the state of a finished portrait.

Kassan has updated his website since I last wrote about him, including new work, a blog, and more videos.

In particular he has released a new three-hour instructional DVD, Drawing Closer to Life (images above), that follows him through a day in the studio, documentary style, as he develops a fully realized charcoal drawing (using the same model as in the iPad painting, if I’m not mistaken). There is a trailer for the video here.

[Via Daring Fireball]

Tuomas Korpi is a Finnish illustrator and matt painter who, like many in his field, paints digitally in Photoshop.

His site has little or no biographical information, but has a number of his paintings arranged into genres. I found the work most interesting in the Illustrations section, which includes a variety of subjects including digital still life, and the Sketches section, which includes both briefly noted and more complete digital paintings, as well as some pieces in traditional medial like pastel and gouache.

Despite the lack of other information, he includes the titles of the works and notes the medium, and you can find more detailed comments for individual works on his space at CGSociety, where you will also find some of his pieces reproduced in higher resolution.

Korpi has an effective approach to controlled color and atmospheric perspective that gives his work, even those pieces that are more quickly suggested, a feeling of place and mood.

He has two process videos on YouTube, and has generously made his Photoshop brushes available for download from his Sketches page.

There is a brief interview with Korpi on Dark Wolf’s Fantasy Reviews, in which he expresses a particular admiration for 19th Century Finnish painter Albert Edelfelt..

Jason Seiler is a caricaturist, character designer and illustrator whose clients include The New York Times, Time Magazine, The Weekly Standard, Business Week, MAD Magazine and many others.

As a caricaturist, Seiler often pushes his exaggerated portraits to extremes, to the point where they have a fun-house mirror feeling. He can then turn around and deliver a straightforward portrait, though he obviously enjoys the freedom that caricature allows.

His web site has sections devoted to entertainment and political figures, but don’t miss the sketches, in which displays a nice quality of line and hatching in the process of building up his monochromatic tones.

If I’m not mistaken, he works both digitally in Photoshop and in traditional media, using strongly modeled rendering to give his exaggerated faces a solid three dimensional feel.

Seiler also maintains a blog, in which he discusses work in progress, often with preliminary images and process sequences.

He has recently done his first character design for feature film, working on the Bandersnatch for Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland.

Seiler is also an instructor with the Schoolism online school, along with Bobby Chiu and Ryan Wood.

Jason Seiler is the son of painter Larry Seiler, who I profiled yesterday.