What is Study Studio Max?
Study Studio Max (SSM) is a “social alias” used by me, the artist Max Forward. It is the Fanart wing of the Join Max project, which is a free educational platform I host in my spare time. These works are my love letter to all the cool projects I’ll never get to work on 🙂 and are provided as a vehicle to demonstrate and popularize the effectiveness of pre-GenAI illustration techniques. They are created for educational purposes only.
Why Fanart?
Fanart is popular among young artists and fandoms, and is therefore a potentially effective conduit to deliver my message to the masses.
What message exactly?
The message that pre-GenAI or “traditional” digital illustration techniques are worth learning, and doing so will help secure a future for artists and audiences that seek authenticity in the creative process.
Learn how?
Study Studio Max is the bait and Join Max is the snare, if you follow the analogy. My hope is that artistically curious minds will look at my works and think “I wonder how that was done…?” and go a step further to investigate. If they do, they’ll find a free, educational, entertaining, open, and evolving platform, based on appealing case study projects and live demos, showing how (often in real-time) compelling art is composed from blank page to finished design.
Right now, Join Max is a free youtube / twitch channel and discord community. It represents a kind of “open door” policy into my virtual studio, where “Joiners” are invited to respectfully watch, learn, comment, ask questions, and share their works (and frustrations!)
This project is like a letter in a bottle; cast into the ocean of time, to my kids and anyone else who wants to be an artist when they grow up: I believe in you.