CGHUB - The Social Network for Professionals in Entertainment

 
I just recently came across CGHUB and have been hooked since my first visit to the site. Basically, it's deviantART without the 13 year old anime fangirls clogging up the feed with their really quite terrible "artwork." This is a place where you can really find talented individuals with an eye for creature and character design. The majority of the work posted on the site is digital, both 2D and 3D, but you can still find traditional artwork on the site. I have found profiles of concept artists who post some of their work for films that have recently come out, like Pacific Rim, The Hobbit, and others.

If you have an account, you can post your own illustrations for the world to see, as well as comment, like, share, and favorite other people's work, and subscribe and follow different artists whose collection of work you would like to revisit in the future. When posting new works, you can ask other members of the site to critique your work. It's a helpful tool because better artists than you man stumble across your image and give you just the advice you needed. 

On the home page, the Editors Picks are featured at the top (a collection of really superb works of art), and below them are a collage of "Popular Now" works of different sizes, showcasing a variety of styles and content from different artists. Whenever a new image is posted, or some other notifiable activity occurs on the site, there is a tiny thumbnail at the very top of the page saying ______ left a comment on _______. While sometimes this might be a little useless, occasionally cool new artists can be discovered by clicking on this link.

CGHUB also hosts Articles, Forums, and Challenges for its users to participate in. Job postings are available on the site as well, so professionals in the field looking for work can post their availability or organizations looking for artists can put an ad on the site when they're looking for artists. When I'm out of school, I plan to use this to try and find some work.

If you like this kind of website, I would suggest you check out these other art sites: Behance, CGSociety,  deviantART, ConceptArt.org
If you're interested, my profile is at kilianmcmann.cghub.com.

Microsoft's Illumiroom, Sec. 2940

I was looking around the web to find out about any new and/or interesting technology that I would one day not mind buying and trying out and I came across something that was both new and interesting. It is called the Illumiroom. The Illumiroom by Microsoft, of course is a device that casts off images from the game being played to give the player a chance to really engage themselves and feel like they are there walking around the in-game environment. Apparently by using the X-Box Kinect and a most-likely a very,very pricey projector, Microsoft will make it possible to project images and video images from the screen and on to the walls and surrounding furniture to ultimately blow any gamers mind. I think this idea is really cool, but at the same time I don't believe that we are ready for this technology yet, take a look at the video. 

I believe that after a little more work and a bit more awesome games to play, this will probably be great thing for all gamers. Illumiroom Article