You love fantasy art, but might think that you lack the ability to draw and paint top-notch fantasy art of your own. In this workshop I’ll show you that creating fantasy art is within the ability of any art enthusiast, by using a computer with readily available and affordable 3D graphics tools and digital characters, all of which you can buy on the internet.

To help create my old-school fantasy art piece I will be using the 3D applications Poser 6 by Curious Labs and Vue Infinite by E-on Software, digital characters from DAZ Productions and other digital content creators, plus Photoshop CS2.

You don’t need to own Photoshop CS2, Poser 6 and Vue Infinite together to create fantasy art. On their own each one of these applications can produce beautiful images with a little creativity and a lot of practice. I chose this combination of applications because they work well for me. If you don’t own these applications, you can still follow the tutorial, since the concepts provided will be applicable to any 3D graphics program.

Please note that this is not a tutorial about how to use Poser 6, Vue Infinite or Adobe Photoshop CS2. For a detailed description of these applications’ inner workings, please refer to their respective manuals. This is however, a detailed workshop of how I created the Frazetta-inspired image you see here. Let’s dispense with the formalities and get on with making art!