Please welcome our newest featured artist, Michael Zimmerman. Michael is a concept artist from California.

Be sure to check out his work in the gallery.

Massive Black has teamed up with Ballistic Publishing to release a compilation of artwork by the Massive Black team. From the press release:

Massive Black: Volume 1 brings together more than 700 pieces of artwork by the Massive Black team from studios in North America and Asia. A foreword by Oddworld’s Lorne Lanning provides an entertaining view of his dealings with Massive Black and his thoughts on what makes it such a unique artist-focused company, while Jason Manley (co-founder of Massive Black) recounts the formation of the company with partners Justin “Coro” Kauffman, and Chris Hatala.

Judging by the contributions to the community by MB, and level of quality we’ve seen from Ballistic, this should make for a good addition to any digital artist’s collection.

The Redmond Arts Commission will be hosting a Digital Arts Festival on October 4th-5th, in Redmond, WA. The presentations and workshops are free of charge, but the event does require registration from their website. Admission fees will be charged for the lunch, Digital Dance Party, and Short Films/Movie Night. Presenters include industry artists from Sega, Microsoft, Valve, and Gas Powered Games.

Artists can also submit their work and register for cash prizes up to $1,000. The deadline for submissions is August 31st.

Back in May, Massive Black released a new set of downloadable tutorials from artist Whit Brachna. We just recently got a chance to view these. I love environment sketching, and Whit does an excellent job of introducing his techniques with painting an outdoor scene.

Download today from dvd.massiveblack.com. If you haven’t already, also be sure to check out Whit’s other videos.

And watch out for the Indian food.

Wacom today announced a price reduction of $500 for the Cintiq 21UX:

That’s right. We ran out of cozy sweaters to keep Cintiqs warm, but have no fear. We’ve decided to bring you a better offer. Our flagship Cintiq is now $500 less – indefinitely.

Now you can get your very own world-class interactive pen display or only $1999.

If you’ve been holding off on one of these due to budget concerns, perhaps now is the time to take the plunge.

Recently released from the Massive Black library is Digital Figure Painting, by James Kei. This is the first time we’re seeing James on film, and he’s an excellent teacher. In this 50 minute video, he details his process for digitally painting a live model in Photoshop.

Purchase and download from dvd.massiveblack.com.

This is the continuation of Rich Doble’s excellent demonstration on creature concepting. For Part 1, see this post.

Download it today from dvd.massiveblack.com.