Art book reference dump!!

Hey y’all, wanted to share some of my favorite pages from a few issues of replicant I’ve acquired recently for $10 each on eBay :)

They’re pretty affordable and you can also probably find them at a kinokuniya or book off! I also included a ton of pages from this other book I have called Digital Beauties. I think 3D is a vast world, just like the world of illustration with so many masters and styles but 3D has felt a bit limiting because everyone’s been trying to do super real stuff for so long... anyway I’ll get more into that later.

1. Asuka & Rei resin kits! Almost all figures shown in these magazines are garage kits that people have painted themselves so they’re usually not available pre-painted

2. Getsumento Heiki Mina aka lunar rabbit weapon mina figures... I remember watching this but it’s something I want to revisit bc the characters are sooo cute

3. Same series, I actually found a resin kit (the only one I own) from this series while I was in Tokyo last year for 500 yen ($5) but didn’t know where she was from! So after stumbling upon this page in the magazine I’m stoked to ID her true colors

4. Most exciting thing I’ve found in these magazines so far... apparently they’re 2 characters from a series called take off the shoes??? 🤣🤣🤣 thats all I’ve found so far backsearching thru Japanese hobby websites... if anyone knows anything else pls lmk!

5. Disgaea figures I’ve never seen before on the top right! Not sure about the others except ofc rei ayanami

6. Another mystery... the two characters in the top left corner are so cute but I don’t know where they’re from hehe

7. This book is a must have if you make 3D humans honestly... it’s called Digital Beauties and it’s from the year 2000. It includes like around 80 artists (no exaggeration it’s really big...) from around the world who make 3D virtual idols using digital medium. Most are 3D contributors but there are a few airbrush and photoshop masters sprinkled in. You’ll find Russian artists , Japanese artists, Hungarian, American, Canadian, German etc and it’s extremely diverse. The most exciting thing is they list their names, websites, countries, and SOFTWARE!! Sometimes even computer specs (also humbling to see them using literally 512 MB of RAM 20 years ago to make this shit and I’m over here with 8GN struggling to get my redshift render to go 🤣🤣🤣)

It’s so cool to see these artists using primitive versions of photoshop, poser, cinema4D, Maya, etc to create virtual people from their fantasy imaginations rooted in their cultures.

8. Naomi Yamamoto, from japan

9. Sonehati from japan and also the reason I bought this book! I’ve seen their work all over tumblr for years and finally mustered up the courage to source one of the books the scans are from.

10. More sonehati; you can see how much I’m inspired by them.

11. Mambo-S, according to the book, also from japan and born in 1963, making him around 35 when he made this in light wave. The mix of low poly and high poly + photo images is so cool to me. Love that every artist had a different approach to 3D aesthetics unlike how nowadays everyone’s 3D humans look super similar bc we all use DAZ3D lmao

12. Ken ichi kutsugi. Okay I know I’m only sharing the Japanese artists but they’re so cool I can’t help it

13. Chantal Heijinen from the Netherlands. Her style is super gothic and the book the character is holding is Necronimicon, which is pretty sick imo

14. Masako (another from japan I’m sorry)

15. Peter Tiedenbacher from Canada

16. Steven Stahlberg from Australia

17. Pascal Blanche from Canada. Love this one so much sorry for the nudity I tried to cover it with my pen haha

Hope you guys enjoyed that, I have a lot of art books I want to curate pages from because I found them so useful in defining my own style and also just for historic reference. There are simply so many artists that have come before us and it always humbles me to know that we kinda peaked in the year 2000 haha!!!