Imagine FX full page Feature for Machines and Magic Review

Featured Review Page 23 ImagineFX Magazine (UK) Feb 2012 edition #79
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”
A dream becomes reality
Craig Musselman is a digital art fan, in the fullest sense
of the term. Running a number of websites dedicated
to his love of fantasy and sci-fi art, he’s a passionate
photo manipulator, artist and selfconfessed
steampunk geek. He’s also
just self-published a new book of
international fantasy and SF art called
Machines and Magic, on sale now.
This isn’t his first foray into publishing. “In 2010 I
funded, edited, designed and published Talent Next
Door, showcasing Canadian artists,” he says. That turned
out to be Craig’s dry run for this year’s Machines and
Magic release. “This time the book was international,
honing in on my passion: fantasy and sci-fi art.”
Craig used his online contacts to get the ball rolling. “I
had a small group of friends with extensive libraries of
art to start with,” he says. “Early 2011 I set up
MachinesandMagic.com to recruit artists, and began to
scour the internet for artist galleries that I liked.”
Craig soon became deft at finding great artists
through the web, Google-translating the many non-
English speaking artists, and tracking anonymous images
back to their authors using online image-recognising
sites. Then he arranged a judging panel just before the
publishing deadline. “Having been flooded with work I
chose Ona Loots (South Africa), Angela Tygerson Ross
(US), Mark Rehkopf (Canada), and Joël Larose (Canada)
as my panel,” he says, “and dropped them several
hundred images into a judge’s inbox, with a one-line
email: ‘just pick five of them – by tomorrow if you can.’”
Have a look at Craig’s site to see how it all panned out:
www.machinesandmagic.com.
Magic realism Driven by a love of all things fantasy and sci-fi, this
artist has funded, designed and published his first digital art book

Artist news, software & events
February 2012 23

Scouts was painted by Raoul Vitale, a self-taught artist.
See more of his work at www.raoulvitaleart.com.

James Ng (www.jamesngart.com) combined pencil and
charcoal with Painter and Photoshop for Court Band. “