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Ballistic Publishing is pleased to announce that Christopher Sloan, the Senior Editor for Art at National Geographic Magazine, will be one of the distinguished members of the EXPOSÉ 2 Advisory Committee. No stranger to the publication, Sloan has used EXPOSÉ 1 at National Geographic as a resource to find computer graphic talent.
Founded few blocks from the White House in 1888, the National Geographic Society grew to become the largest non-profit scientific and educational institution in the world. A pillar of the society has been National Geographic Magazine, which was first published towards the end of 1888. In 115 years, National Geographic Magazine has provided a highly visual window on the world and its inhabitants in compelling stories covering topics such as animals, nature, science, technology, culture, history, travel, adventure, exploration, and geography.
Though photographs have been the visual backbone of National Geographic Magazine for some time, artwork has always been required to illustrate subjects which cannot be photographed such as dinosaurs or ancient civilizations. Christopher Sloan, the Senior Editor for Art at National Geographic Magazine heads up a department of four art directors, three art researchers, and two support staff, who commission freelance artists and also execute final art using 3D applications like Alias Maya.
National Geographic’s Senior Editor for Art
Christopher Sloan joined the National Geographic staff in 1992. Prior to working at National Geographic, he art directed and redesigned several other U.S. magazines and was a freelance science illustrator. Aside from his duties as Art Director, Sloan is the magazine’s specialist in paleontology and paleoanthropology, writing articles for National Geographic including ‘Feathers for T. rex’ as well as several award-winning children’s books published by the National Geographic Society. Sloan’s keen interest in computer graphics started in the late 1980s when he worked on a Mac Plus with programs such as MacPerspective, Pro3d, and Adobe Photoshop. He has followed the development of computer graphics and their use in print and illustration ever since. The Art Department at National Geographic which he directs works primarily with Alias Maya and Maya Unlimited on Macs and PCs. Scientific and medical visualization software are also used in the department and freelance artists commissioned by the magazine work with many different platforms and packages.
Finding talented artists
As Senior Art editor, Christopher Sloan is responsible for commissioning artwork which meets the requirements of National Geographic both in quality and the communication of information. Finding capable artists is simplified with communities such as CGNetworks. “I subscribed to the CGNetworks web site a year or two ago”, explains Sloan. “I use it to keep abreast of developments in 3D graphic software and to keep an eye out for new talent.”
EXPOSÉ 1
Beyond web sites such as CGNetworks, Sloan relies on submissions from artists and published collections such as Ballistic Publishing’s own EXPOSÉ 1: “I ordered a copy of EXPOSÉ 1 the first day I saw it advertised. For me it represented a unique resource for computer graphic talent. We get a lot of promotional art books here at National Geographic. They are filled with great art, but computer graphics artists are mixed in with artists using other media. Some of these books are three or more inches thick so it is quite a chore to find the computer artists in them, to say nothing of simply lifting them. EXPOSÉ was immediately attractive because it only contained computer art. Furthermore, the art in EXPOSÉ was selected for its quality, so I did not have to hunt for gems of good computer art amid mountains of bad computer art.”
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