Top Magazines for 3D artists

If you go in for 3D modeling surely you often face some difficult problems, when you need advice and tips from experienced graphic professionals. Yes, you can easily find a lot of information on the Internet but still you shouldn’t forget that websites has certain limitations and they don’t always provide the full details. We believe that every 3D artist should also gain profound knowledge about the world of 3D through well edited and respectable magazines.

Information and resources the professional magazines provide do help both the young and experienced 3D artists to replace their online learning to offline. Printed stuff is often edited and researched by highly skilled editors and leading expert in the industry. That’s why today we have found and put together for you some of the magazines for digital artists that certainly contain a bunch of interesting and necessary information.

Note on the magazines:

Since the original publication of this article, many of these magazines have stopped releasing new issues. To keep things current, we’ve added “Update” sections to each of the entries below with the current status of each magazine – and at the end of the article, we’ve added a few more up-to-date resources to help you out on your 3D journey!

3D Creative

First up we recommend you “3D Creative” magazine that’s being issued by 3D resource website 3dtotal.com. It’s perfectly suitable for beginners in 3D modeling and animation. “3D Creative” has a wealth of up-to-date information on what is happening in the world of 3D. Articles are jam packed with information and there are helpful making-ofs and tutorials that cover the latest and greatest 3D applications, from 3ds Max to Maya. There are really interesting interviews on artists and their work, their inspiration and how they got to where they are today. Unfortunately, “3D creative” is not available in a printable version, but it is available in PDF format to read. Each issue is available in high-res and low-res formats, so you can really check out the details and the work that people have done.

Update: 3D Creative magazine ended in 2016, but all the previous issues are still available to download from their website. 3Dtotal.com also has a wide variety of more recent books, e-books, and publications, including the Character Design Quarterly magazine which is still active and available as a print subscription!

3D Artist

Our constant sponsor on rendering competitions, “3D Artist” magazine, is dedicated to bringing you the secrets of techniques and innovations that you see on real 3d films on televisions. The way the advertising industry uses 3D to promote their product it’s all discussed in there. Apart from that each issue showcases awesome 3D portfolios of 3D artists around the world. The magazine is jam-packed with inspirations and advice from top notch 3D graphic artists. It also includes analysis of latest trends in the market, impartial product reviews, and exclusive behind-the-scenes articles on the making of key projects in this fast-paced industry. The magazine provides detailed step by step approach to 3D animations as well. Here one can also know about the software’s and hardware’s used for getting the maximum output.

Update: 3D Artist is no longer publishing issues, but previous issues are available to download from Magzter.com and Pocketmags.com.

3D World

If you want to take your skills to the next level, “3D World” is for just you. “3D World” magazine by creativebloq.com covers more in fields of animation, VFX, games, illustration and architecture. While “3D Creative” feels more like a one-on-one interaction, “3D World” is considered an international mag. The artistic and technical advice comes from the best in the industry like Disney, Pixar and Blur Studio. While the interviews don’t seems as personal as “3D Creative”. “3D World” does offer video tutorials and demonstration of their work. “3D World” also offers the best advice when building your own workstation. “3D World” is available in varies formats including Android, Apple download and print. You can visit the “3D World” official website here, and subscribe to digital or print editions at magazinesdirect.com.

Update: 3D World is still active! As mentioned above, you can subscribe to digital or print versions at magazinesdirect.com, or check out individual articles for free online at creativebloq.com. CreativeBloq also publishes the ImagineFX magazine.

EXPOSÉ

At this point we should remember a legendary artbook from Ballistic Publishing. Every year, they bring together the world’s leading digital artists to create “EXPOSÉ”, a compilation of the finest digital art in the known universe that covers the fields of 3D, digital illustration, industrial design, architectural visualization, games, television, feature film and more. It is really worth looking through in your free time!

Update: Ballistic Publishing seems to have gone out of business, and the last issue published was Exposé 11 in 2013. Previous issues of the artbook can still be purchased from Amazon, but they may be a little outdated!

CEIGA

Another magazine we would like to mention here is “CEIGA” (stands for “Computer, Entertainment, Graphics, and Animation”). It is a bi-monthly released free online magazine focusing mainly on 3D art. It differs from the many other magazines for 3D artists with its fashion/art magazine design style. You won’t find here much of the technical and industrial information that others include. Focusing on the creative talent of many incredible 3D artists, it is a picture magazine aimed for those that are already interested in computer generated art, but also for the average person who is mildly interested in any form of art.

Update: CEIGA stopped publishing in 2015, and is no longer available.

3D Art Direct

“3D Art Direct” is specialized in the sci-fi and fantasy genres. It is a monthly magazine the main aim of which is to promote CG-artists from around the world.

Update: 3D Art Direct stopped publishing in 2015. Individual issues can still be purchased from Magcloud.

BlenderArt

There are also magazines that are dedicated to certain software. For example, “BlenderArt” is a magazine providing Blender tutorials, how-to guides and usage recommendations of the Blender open-source tool. See more on their website.

Update: Blenderart magazine stopped publishing in 2015, but individual issues can still be read for free at issuu.com.

Updated 3D Art Resources

As we’ve seen, there are a lot of 3D art magazines that just aren’t published anymore – unfortunately for magazine lovers, it seems that most of this kind of 3D content is moving towards a website based, less issue-oriented approach.

So, where are these online resources? Well, let’s take a look at a few of them!

BlenderNation

For those interested in the Blender 3D software, BlenderNation.com is a curated and regularly updated source of Blender news, tutorials, and project breakdowns from artists across the board. BlenderNation is created by the same people as the popular BlenderArtists.org forum, and often features artwork posted on there – so if you post to BlenderArtists, there’s a chance your work will be featured!

Artstation

Although you probably know artstation as a website for publishing artwork and portfolios, Artstation also allows users to publish blogs relating to digital art – and with so many professional artists on the site, there’s no shortage of interesting and informative material!

Artstation also has an official magazine, with things like industry info, job roundups, and “Art Blasts” from popular games, films, and shows.

CreativeBloq

We mentioned CreativeBloq before, but since they’re still an active site it’s worth mentioning again! CreativeBloq offers many articles on all kinds of subjects in 3D and digital art, ranging from hardware reviews to art tutorials and behind-the-scenes. Many of these articles are from their 3D World and ImagineFX magazines, which are available as digital and print subscriptions.

Flipped Normals

For those learning 3D art, Flipped Normals is an excellent resource. FlippedNormals.com has some fantastic paid courses on many different subjects in 3D, and a wide variety of paid assets – but if you’re looking for something a little bit lighter on the wallet, their youtube channel has a lot of really high quality 3D tutorials too!

Blender Guru

Here’s another one for all the Blender users out there! Blender Guru is another excellent youtube channel created by Andrew Price (owner of poliigon.com), and it has a lot of really great tutorials relating to 3D modeling in Blender – most notably, the famous donut tutorial for Blender beginners.

Conclusion

Hopefully some of these resources will be useful to you in your 3D journey. Although many of the well-loved magazines of the past have run their course, there’s plenty of valuable information still out there. So whether you’re new to 3D or a seasoned pro, you’re sure to find something new and interesting!

Did we miss anything? Feel free to let us know in the comments below!