Ballistic Publishing recently graced Sketchfeed with a review copy of Exotique 5 – The World’s Most Beautiful CG Characters. We take a quick look in the hopes of helping you determine whether it’s worth picking up.

Let’s face it, we never really tire of gazing at vulnerable, sword-wielding digital beauties in all manner of undress. After all, isn’t that the real reason we became artists? Exotique 5 certainly delivers–not only amazing girls–but a little something for everyone. And don’t worry, there’s a fair share of creatures, dragons, bots, and monsters too. Science Fiction and Fantasy characters are the dominating themes, which reflects the scope of featured professional artists that hail from the game and film industries. Most of the images are purely 2D, with a few ZBrush and Maya/3DS Max artists represented as well.

Commissioned art is included from the likes of Sony Online Entertainment, ArenaNet, ImagineFX, Alderac Entertainment, Wizards of the Coast, and Games Workshop, as well as numerous independent pieces. Ballistic selects it’s content from artist submissions, which they announce from their web site. If you’re an artist looking to receive some good exposure, be sure to keep your eye out for such announcements.

As you can see, there’s some serious eye candy and inspirational material here. As always, print and binding quality of the book is top notch, with heavy-gloss paper stock–and should hold up to a number of serious coffee-table perusals.

If you’re a serious collector of printed digital art compilations, then you don’t need us to tell you that Exotique 5 is worth the $52 USD price tag (or $115 for the mega-elite Special Edition). In fact, you probably already have a copy. Otherwise, this publication makes the perfect holiday gift for the artist or fans of fantasy art. And speaking of holidays, Ballistic is currently running a 20% Christmas discount for paid CGSociety members.

And just so you know, we searched around for a cheaper price, but didn’t really find any better options at the time of this writing. Perhaps that will change as other vendors pick it up. I never like to buy something before finding out if it can be had cheaper elsewhere. In this case, buying straight from the publisher is probably a safe bet.

Check out the Exotique 5 web page to make a purchase or preview the book in it’s entirety online. Also see Neville dSouza’s article on CGSociety, detailing his process for the creation of Exotique 5′s cover image.