Autodesk's Maya is the industry standard software used in the movie and video game business for creating assets. InBeginner's Guide to Character Creation in Maya, the artist will learn transferable skills for modeling anatomy with Maya and Mudbox, covering topics such as texturing and shading skin, hair, and eyes; kinesiology; deformation; locomotion; and lighting. Step-by-step guidance by expert tutor Jahirul Amin (3D trainer at Double Negative, London) will also detail how to create links, constraints, and controls for animation. Downloadable project files will also be available to allow users to follow along every step of the way.
The Beginner's Guide series returns to focus on character creation in Autodesk's industry leading 3D animation software, Maya.
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The main areas where we promote and publicize our titles are on our website (www.3dtotal.com), our dedicated publishing website (www.3dtotalpublishing.com) and in our digital magazines, 3dcreative (www.3dcreativemag.com) and 2dartist (www.2dartistmag.com). We host banner adverts on all pages of our website (in a rota system) where they are seen by 25,000+ daily unique visitors, with 3.5-million page views a month. Our magazines have approximately 1,000 readers per issue and we run full-page adverts for our products. We also regularly post free book sample giveaway articles on our website, promote reviews and advertise our new releases on various artistic forums and news websites.
Further to this we have a mailing list of 53,000+ which we regularly promote the books through and we exhibit at the ACM SIGGRAPH computer graphics exhibition most years (20,000 visitors). We also promote the books, and all related promotional activity, on our YouTube, Twitter, Pinterest and Instagram accounts, as well as our Facebook page, which currently has over 110,000 Likes. We also feature our books at the very successful Trojan Horse was a Unicorn festival that attracts 500 distinguished digital and traditional artists each year.
We send out promotional postcards with all physical orders to promote book titles that are about to be released. We have also launched a website dedicated to 3dtotal Publishing, which holds full details about all of our currently published and upcoming titles, as well as information about our various global distributors. Visit www.3dtotalpublishing.com.
If a new book is released in an existing series, we write to customers who have purchased the previous book to let them know that a new book is now available. We also try to secure an interview with the main/featured artist just before the launch, which is made available on our website, and promoted via our social media channels.
We have a strong relationship with Future Publishing and Imagine Publishing, who make many of the premier CG magazines such as 3D World, 3D Artist, Advanced Photoshop and ImagineFX, as well as the hugely successful design blog, Creative Bloq and Parka Blogs. These strong relationships ensure our new releases are announced and reviews are published, following on from our press releases.
We aim for all the contributing artists to our titles to post the news of the book release on their websites, blogs and social networks. We are also building solid relationships with other large web-based CG communities, such as ConceptArt.org and ConceptArtWorld.com, and regularly do cross-promotions with them. All of our partners receive up-to-date press releases on a regular basis.
We are also starting to advertise in relevant magazines and websites to promote the release of a new book and we sponsor a few large CG-based competitions each year, offering the books as prizes.
Jahirul Amin Jahirul Amin is a generalist with a particular passion for rigging and animation. He lectured in computer animation at the National Center for Computer Animation at Bournemouth University, UK, and is now a 3D Trainer at Double Negative in London. 3dtotal Publishing 3dtotal was founded in 1999 as a simple 3D resource website. Over the last decade the site has evolved into one of the premier CG art websites in the world, offering a variety of training products, an inspirational gallery, a free texture library and hundreds of free tutorials on a variety of subjects. In 2006, 3dtotal entered into partnership with Focal Press and launched the popular book series Digital Art Masters and Digital Painting Techniques. The premise for these books was to provide high-quality content that would inspire and educate the next generation of digital artists. Featuring the work of top industry professionals, detailed tutorials and image breakdowns, these series have become firmly established as indispensable resources for every digital artist. After five successful years working with Focal Press, 3dtotal Publishing was launched in early 2010. As well as self-publishing the next volumes in the pre-existing Digital Art Masters and Digital Painting Techniques series, 3dtotal Publishing has launched a number of new titles including: Sketching from the Imagination: Fantasy, the Beginner's Guide to Digital Painting in Photoshop Elements and the successful Kickstarter campaign, Sketch Workshop.
