Wacom has put together a customer survey about the Cintiq product line to help the company continue its dedication to offering the best products possible. The questionnaire takes approximately 20 minutes, and everyone that takes part will be entered into a prize draw to win the following:

• 1 Cintiq 24HD
• 2 Cintiq 21UX
• 1 Adobe CS Design Standard
• 6 Intuos5 touch M
• 40 Bamboo Stylus solo

Take the survey before 28 May 2012 for a chance to win.

First celebrated in 2008, The Unity Awards is an opportunity for projects created using the Unity game engine to receive recognition across a number of categories. This year’s categories include:

• Best Student Project
• Best Technical Achievement
• Best Visual Experience
• Best Gameplay
• Best Serious Game
• Best Non-game
• Community Choice
• Golden Cube (best overall game/project)

“There is a torrent of amazing content created by the Unity community of developers each year,” said David Helgason, CEO of Unity Technologies. “It’s incredible to have the chance to acknowledge the talented and dedicated groups and individuals who use Unity in ways that continue to inspire us to improve our tools, engine, and company.”

Nominations for awards categories will be accepted from 15 May to 15 June. For more information and to find out the entry rules, visit the Unity Awards 2012 website.

Did you know? Unity is a free game engine used in everything from games to arch-vis, military simulations, previous and more. Check out our free tutorial on getting started in Unity, and download the software for free from the Unity website.

Deciding that digital artists spend way too much time in front of the monitor, sculptor and teacher Ryan Kingslien is striving to bring the very best in traditional and digital sculpting to Los Angeles, with real, in-person workshops at SculptCon 2012.

Celebrate the traditions of sculpting in every form imaginable with legendary make-up effects sculptor Brian Wade, fine art sculptor and marble master Cicero D/avila, creature sculptor Glauco Longhi, and fine art sculptor Ed Byth.

SculptCon will contain workshops by traditional artists as well as make-up FX guys. Why? Because the goal is one and the same: to sculpt mind-blowing, awesome stuff.

The schedule so far:

• 2-day creature sculpting workshop with Brian Wade – 7-8 July
• 2-day traditional and digital sculpting with Cesar Dacol Jr. – 21-22 July
• 4-day sculpting the figure workshop with Cicero D’avila – 27-30 July
• 3-day sculpting the figure workshop with Edward Eyth – 21-23 July

Glauco Longhi will also become a resident artist throughout the month of July. For more information about the workshops and artists, head to the SculptCon website, and follow @ryankingslien on Twitter for up-to-the-minute Tweets.

The 3D Art & Design Book is the perfect guide for both beginners, and those more experienced in the world of 3D art and design. Providing an insightful introduction, the book also contains features, interviews and tutorials from character and vehicle design to arch-vis and custom typography. There are also masterclasses and a helpdesk to further enhance skills and techniques.

Digital Artist Collection is the definitive guide to digital art, with features exploring the diversity of digital styles and powerful applications now available to artists, and detailed step-by-step guides covering a range of genres from pop art collage to manga illustration, the Digital Artist Collection is perfect for both enthusiasts and professionals.

Both bookazines come packed with ideas and inspirational artwork, plus a free CD containing tutorial files and more – everything you need to get creative. The 3D Art & Design Book is on sale now from www.imaginebookshop.co.uk and all good newsagents, priced £14.99. The Digital Artist Collection is priced at £12.99.

Artist: Damir Karimov
3D Artist Online username: Damir
Image title: July morning
Damir says: “Warm July morning, serene and care free… Programs used: modelling [in] 3ds Max, rendering [in] Maxwell Render, Post-production [in] Photoshop”

3D Artist says: The lighting of this scene is absolutely beautiful, and perfectly captures a hot summer’s morning. The objects have been carefully placed to interact with the lighting, supplying all those wonderful shadows while highlighting the important elements that tell the story. Fantastic work! Now, if we could render our office with some of that glorious sunshine…

Maxwell Render is built around the concept of light that behaves as it would in the real world. Find out more about how Maxwell rendering and demo the trial on the website.

Want to know how to get your art featured in print? Find out right here!

Despite popular belief, Hollywood isn’t all glamour. In comparison to Daniel Simon‘s background in the automotive industry, when he worked for the likes of Bugatti and Honda and where fancy company cars, business-class flights and sharp dressers were the norm, in the LA movie business it’s much easier to stay grounded – in what is quite often modest, temporary offices.

And it’s all about speed. “You have art directors monitoring your work, walls are plastered with schedules, and a flood of emails remind you every moment of your duties,” Daniel Simon describes. “In your own art studio, you rarely decide to change a jet plane into a propeller train within a day. That’s Hollywood. All is in flux.”

Check out this freshly released interview with Daniel Simon at RTT Excite 2012, where he reveals all about concept designing for movies – including his recent vehicle design work for ‘Prometheus’:

If you like Daniel’s work, you’ll love the features in back issues 15 and 23 of 3D Artist magazine. Back issues are available in the official Imagine Publishing online store. Digital editions of 3D Artist are also available through the new GreatDigitalMags website – save money off the cover price and get your copy immediately! Back issues and subscriptions to this service are also available – check out our latest subscription promotions.

GreatDigitalMags.com is the latest website launch from UK publisher Imagine Publishing. The site will house direct links to the digital editions of the company’s top-quality magazine portfolio.

What’s more, every title – from 3D Artist and Advanced Photoshop, to How It Works and GamesTM – will appear on the web portal, with direct links to Zinio and iTunes. So, no matter what platform you’re using, there’s a digital magazine for you.

For more information, visit: www.greatdigitalmags.com

3D Artist is now available to buy through Imagine Publishing’s brand new, secure web portal: GreatDigitalMags.com.

GreatDigitalMags.com enables readers to purchase their favourite magazines by linking directly to the Zinio, Apple Newsstand, iTunes and Android platforms. Simply select your preferred hardware, such as iPad, PC or Android, and follow the on-screen instructions to get started.

There are many key benefits to buying digital copies of 3D Artist – not only do you save paper and money off the standard cover price, but you also still have access to the magazine tutorial files. These can be found by visiting the Tutorial Files section of the 3D Artist website.

To buy your digital editions of 3D Artist, or to browse through the rest of Imagine Publishing’s magazine portfolio, head on over to www.greatdigitalmags.com.

The 3D Art & Design Book is the perfect guide for both beginners and those more experienced in the world of 3D art and design. Providing an insightful introduction, the book also contains features, interviews and tutorials from character and vehicle design to arch-vis and custom typography. There are also masterclasses and a helpdesk to further enhance skills and techniques.

“The 3D Art & Design Book will satisfy any CGI cravings an artist has,” Jo Cole, editor in chief says. “All of the major genres and software are explored, with inspiring tutorials to help readers improve their work. For those just starting out, the special Masterclass section reveals the fundamental skills any 3D artist needs in order to build up their own creative portfolio, while experienced users will benefit from professional artists revealing their expert tricks.”

The 3D Art & Design Book is on sale now from www.imaginebookshop.co.uk and all good newsagents, priced at £14.99.

Who is Marshmallow Laser Feast? Three UK companies collaborate under the identity Marshmallow Laser Feast (MLF) – essentially a skilled network of artists, designers, animators, directors, architects, engineers, programmers and musicians

What was the project? Dynamic projection mapping with camera/head tracking for Sony PlayStation Video Store

Who was it for? Sony Entertainment Network

What software was used? 3ds Max, Unity

For the launch of the Sony PlayStation Video Store, Marshmallow Laser Feast’s job was to bring a living room to life with hints of various Hollywood blockbuster franchises over three films. Deciding to push projection mapping to new levels, the collective projection-mapped a living room space with camera (or head) tracking and dynamic perspective. With all content real-time 3D, the camera or head was tracked to match and update the 3D perspective in real time to the viewer’s point of view. The results? Spectacular.

MLF explains why Unity was the game engine of choice for this particular project: “We chose Unity because we had such a short development period, and Unity allowed us to turn the project around in the short time frame,” says MLF. “Our 3D animators could work in 3ds Max, import their models and animations into Unity, and further tweak the positions, animations, keyframes, timing, etc.

“Unity has an intuitive GUI, which most 3D artists can pick up very quickly. Also a lot of the events can be scripted quite simply. Finally, Unity allowed us to add the real-time polish that we needed, deferred rendering, lots of lights, soft shadows, ambient occlusion, particles, lots of other post effects – all in real time, which normally would have taken us a lot of time to develop. But, thanks to Unity, we could just enable them all with a tickbox!”

Watch the making of MLF’s mammoth undertaking here:

Check out a feature interview with Marshmallow Laser Feast in issue 39 of 3D Artist magazine. Back issues are available at the official Imagine Publishing online store. Digital editions of 3D Artist are also available through the Apple Newsstand and Zinio. Save money off the cover price and get your copy immediately. Back issues and subscriptions to this service are also available – check out our latest subscription promotions.