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It’s that time of year again! I picked up a surprisingly nice haul of books in the last one, including Russian propaganda posters, Picasso & Drawing the Head & Hands by Andrew Loomis. This is even better than the Library Sale cause you free up space by passing on old books that you don’t read anymore..

Recycle your books at the Book Exchange! Drop off your used books* at any Public Library from 2 to 15 April, 11.00am to 8.00pm and get a coupon for every book** accepted. Present your coupon at the Book Exchange for a one-for-one exchange of books.

Event details

Date: Saturday, 16 April 2011

Time: 8.30am to 6.00pm

Venue: The Plaza, National Library Building, 100 Victoria Street

*We accept adults’ and children’s fiction and non-fiction books (eg. cookbooks, travel guides and romance novels) in the four official languages. We also accept used library books bought from previous Library Book Sales. Used books for exchange should be in relatively good physical condition. Textbooks, magazines and audio-visual materials are not accepted.

**Each person can exchange up to a maximum of 50 used books. For enquiries, please call NLB Helpdesk at 6332 3255 or email: helpdesk@nlb.gov.sg.

Note: NLB reserves the right to change the terms and conditions without prior notice

That’s my haul from the Library Book Sale two weekends ago. More cool stuff than last year, even though I went down after lunch that day.

It’s a good mix of technique, artist centric and theory (not to mention a few plain eye candy books). Sculpture, Form & Philosophy is a book I’ve borrowed from the library before and wished that I had a copy of my own. Ian Norbury’s wood scultures are insanely good. Each one not only has an interesting pose and texture, they each have a story to tell. His technical skill with wood makes his sculptures really look alive. Nick Bantock’s book Artful Dodger is great in how he relates his artistic journey, from early days in art college, painting book covers for a living and finally writing and illustrating his own books (and pop-up books as well!). The Digital Domain book is also something I’ve been meaning to get. I have William’s sharp eyes and generous spirit to thank for that one. Patience & Fortitude was an apt find, considering it deals with libraries and the obsession of book collecting.

For the comics, The World’s Greatest Super-Heroes is one of my favourites. It’s the book that Alex Ross and Paul Dini did after the success of Kingdom Come. I grabbed the book off a heavily loaded cart on a hunch, didn’t even really take a good look at the cover. It was like last year when I saw a portion of a cartoon face obscured amongst other books, dug it up and realised I was holding on to a Princess Mononoke artbook. Gorgeous fully painted art from cover to cover, the stories are pretty interesting too (getting Superman to solve world hunger isn’t as easy as it sounds). The Dark Knight Returns was a great find.

Honestly, both times I’ve been to the sale it’s exceeded my expectations by giving me both what I wanted as well as cool stuff I didn’t know I needed! Add to that the price of $54 for the lot, and you’ve got an annual event that can’t be missed. Looking forward to the next one (and also planning more shelving..)

I came across Scott Squire’s blog while looking for more information about the VFX budgeting process.

He’s an effects veteran whose first job off the bat was designing the cloud tank effect for Close Encounters.

His blog is a mix of insightful podcasts/transcripts on a wide variety of Visual Effects related material, as well as some shot breakdowns for work he’s done.

Just read a bit so far, gonna read more of it when I’m more awake.

effectscorner.blogspot.com

Just some useful resources I’ve come across.. Currently working on my character in ZBrush, so all this is immensely valuable for getting the right look.

Huge reference dump at Polycount

Many thanks to the good people at Polycount for this amazingly comprehensive list of reference sites. I’ve come across some of these myself but seen altogether in one page they’re just staggering..

Noadi’s Resources for Figure Artists is a great figure drawing focused resource site. In addition to the usual sites are gems like links to diverse stock collections on DeviantArt as well as two figure drawing books by George Bridgeman.