Massive Black has released another set of videos, this time from artist Whit Brachna, aka Mr. Blonde. Whit explores creating a ‘Non-SciFi’ interior environment, from thumbnails to the finished product. He also makes use of a simple 3d model from Google Sketchup to lay out basic perspective and initial lighting.

Whit is a student of the Concept Art Atelier and currently works for Massive Black, based in San Francisco, with satellite studios in Shanghai and Bangkok. As usual, we are provided with the Photoshop .PSD files, Sketchup renders, and the final full-res image. Prices for these tutorials will go up to $14 after Jan 1st, still a great value and well below the industry norm.

For the full experience, be sure to purchase both Part 1 and Part 2.

We’re excited to welcome a new Featured Artist, James Paick.

James is a freelance concept artist and illustrator from Los Angeles, CA, with a background in the games industry. Once we saw his wonderfully detailed and colored environments, we knew he had to be a part of Sketchfeed. But don’t take our word for it, check out his impressive gallery and let the art speak for itself.

Good news for Tolkien fans. It seems Peter Jackson and New Line Cinemas have finally put aside their squabbling and have agreed to produce two movies based on The Hobbit. The LOTR trilogy sent shock waves through the visual arts industries with the extensive use of illustration, concept art, and matte paintings during the production process as well as included in the final film. It will be interesting to see what we have in store for the next installment of Middle Earth. Pre-production will start immediately with release dates scheduled for 2010 and 2011.

Read the press release for details, or check out the official movie blog.

A few links to cover Monday’s news items.

• 2D Artist Magazine, published via PDF download, has released it’s December 2007 issue.
• It’s Art Magazine is running a 3-part concept series by artist Daniel Arnold-Mist, using a combination of tools including Painter, ZBrush and and Maya. Part 1 and Part 2 are online now.
• MyToons is running a contest with a $7000 cash prize award for the best animated commercial.
• ImagineFX has a new workshop on Dark Fantasy Painting with JP Targete.

Part 2 of the Massive Black / Nox video is now available!

Nox introduces the second video with more bloopers (and don’t we all love these). Again, he’s naturally hilarious throughout. In this round we see more of the details, composition, lighting, and background coming together. And yes, more stomach/torso edits. Again we are supplied with a Photoshop PSD as part of the download, this time the final full-size copy. This source file comes in handy and helps us to follow along by inspecting the layers up-close. Once again Massive Black comes through with a great set of downloads for the cost of a few cups of coffee. Several more videos are currently in the works from other Massive artists, so expect to see more in the near future. Proceeds go towards supporting the free ConceptArt.org community.

Check out the Massive Black DVD site to purchase. And if you haven’t already, make sure you watch Part 1 first.

Please welcome our first addition to the Featured Artist section of Sketchfeed, Reto Kaul.

Hailing from Switzerland, Reto is a freelance illustrator and concept artist specializing in landscapes, book covers, and fashion design. We were drawn to his moody, atmospheric landscapes and imaginative environment concepts. Be sure to check out his work!

ImagineFX has a new PDF Workshop download from Christian Bravery, video game art director for Black & White 2:

“The only brief here was to create a workshop piece, so I could do pretty much whatever I pleased. I wanted to produce something that would encompass character and environment visualisation, coupled with elements of action and narrative. I chose some mainstream sci-fi subject matter: a giant robot in a ruined cityscape with our hero winning through against terrible odds. Archetypal stuff, but fun to paint and the kind of action shot that publishers always love.”

Check out the article which contains links to grab the workshop PDF and a ZIP file containing the images related to the tutorial.