Competition - An overview

I've chosen five competitors and should narrow it down for my analysis due this week, therefore I've decided to have a better look at these magazines and they're target markets - and select the four that are closer to ImagineFx in terms of which are "closer" competition wise, before I start analysing website designs. In the last post I managed to overlook examining what the ImagineFx magazine is, so will start there.

ImagineFX
ImagineFx is an internationally recognized digital painting magazine, that aims at displaying inspirational digital paintings from around the world, exhibiting both masters and up-and-coming artists. It also has a heavy emphasis on tutorials, and looking into the company's and top people and their working life, day-to-day routine, inspirations and work processes.

Digital Artist
Digital Artist is also an internationally recognized digital art magazine, that also looks at illustrations of varying aesthetic appearance. It is a younger magazine, with less "big name interviews", and has less of a focus on painting and more on the broad scope of illustrations available when using digital mediums. It also allows you to make your own gallery (same as ImagineFx)

Computer Arts
Computer arts magazine is another popular international digital art magazine that is older than both ImagineFx and Digital Artist. It covers everything from manipulating photographs with Photoshop to creating amazing vector illustrations with Illustrator - very similar to Digital Artist in regards of content. However it also looks into typography, design and layout, branding, some animation and gives industry advice across the board. It doesn't have the ability to post your own work however.

2D Artist
2D artist is a digital copy only magazine that shows industry works and tutorials. The major difference here is that it doesn't exhibit up-and-coming works, and like computer arts, doesn't have allow you to post your own works. It also doesn't have any of the interactivity that these other websites have - it is purely about the magazine - buying back issues and subscribing.

3x3
3x3 is a contemporary illustration magazine, published in the US and sold around the world. It exhibits the top industry workers, but is only published three times in a year. It shows a very wide variety of illustration aesthetics - although it is similar to 2D artist in that the website is very limited - to only back issues and subscribing. It does however have a blog and an expensive application process to get your work judged to enter the magazine's esteemed content - on the whole, the most different magazine by far.

Illustration
Illustration magazine is devoted to the history of American illustration art. It also shows works about popular culture, commercial art and design, publishing history, comic books, paperbacks or pulp magazines. However, it is more of a collection of older art and has no tutorials or any real opportunity for reader contribution (like 3 x 3).


After looking at the last two magazines, I realised they were poor comparisons to Imaginefx, and weren't real competitors, so I re-looked at the short-list of runners up and decided to look at Its Art Mag.

Its Art Mag
This is an online free newsletter exhibing tutorials, interviews and galleries of 2D, 3D and Animations. It allows users to post there stuff to the website as well (like Imaginefx). However, it has a very different look that I would like to examine in contrast to these other magazines.