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This is a bit late, but Persepolis, the animated feature based on the popular graphic novel by Marjane Satrapi won the jury prize at Cannes last week. The novels tell the story of Marjane's childhood growing up in Iran and have won her critical praise worldwide. Also check out Persepolis's myspace page.

Among the first artists to submit their work for Project 300, was Hassan Nozadian. He sent me an email containing 16 pieces with little description other than wishing me luck for the project.
I was impressed with his sketches. They reminded me of old Iranian comic strips I used to read and had a retro feel to them. Since the submitted pieces were so many, I only selected a few to put up on the gallery page. I definitely feel that the other pieces deserve to be seen as well, especially since I couldn't find any online portfolio or gallery belonging to Hassan Nozadian. These sketches appear to be part of a comic strip about the Persian "Epic of Kings", in the same style as the old Persian comic strips I remember reading, with the text written in boxes below each image, instead of appearing in speech bubbles. Maybe Hassan can update us on the status of his project, if he's reading this =) .

I'm sorry for the delay in updating here, been a little busy. Anyway, let's get back right in it with another artist spotlight. This time, it's the work of 20-year-old Ehsan Dabbaghi from Tehran. His portfolio over at cgsociety has a nice mix of original CG paintings, environment drawings, 3D models, and a lot of matte paintings. There is a strong sense of fantasy that dominates most of his work. He's certainly an artist to watch out for, and I expect to see more original cg drawings from him in the future.

Cyrus Swire - who was one of the first artists to submit his work for the Project 300 gallery - is a master of modern achaemenid art. He has created vibrant vector illustrations based on some of the most well-known and beautiful achaemenid insigna. He has recently sent in some new work, which I already added to the gallery. But I'm sure you will appreciate seeing all of this submitted work together here as well.

There may not be a lot of pieces in Shahin Kazemi's portfolio, but what is there shows an artist with great capabilities. While his design/collage work is nicely detailed, using a lot of texture, it's his simple and roomy illustration style that caught my eye the most. I really hope he uploads more of his illustrations there.

Last year, there was a fascinating exhibit going on at the British Museum called the Forgotten Empire which featured rare artifacts from ancient Persia. While the exhibit is no longer on, the online version of it is still available at the British Museum website. While it is a tad tedious to navigate, if you can find your way through you can find a lot of interesting photos of incredible artifacts and objects, as well as some fascinating information about that era. It's definitely worth taking a look at.

The books I had ordered arrived last week. I still haven't finished reading them, but they have some nice illustrations which I thought I'd share with you. The first bunch is from the Persian Army, illustrated by Simon Chew.

The next batch is from Rome's Enemies (3): Parthians and Sassanid Persians, illustrated by Angus Mcbride. I like these illustrations way better. Perhaps it's because of Mcbride's background in fantasy illos, or maybe it's just because the Sassanids had cooler gear.

There is still one more book which I really want to get, and that is Sassanian Elite Cavalry Ad 224-642. I've seen some of its illustrations and they look really good.

Meysam from 3DParse.com has written in to let us know that he has added new renderings of this massive Persepolis virtual reconstruction project to his gallery. The new images are really impressive and show a marked improvement over the previous work. Well done Meysam!

After spending two weekends on this, I finally finished my own submission for the Project 300 gallery. It's a Disney-esque seated King Xerxes.I did a lot of research for this; all the elements used in the throne and the accessories are based one real Persian artifacts remaining from that era. For the style, I was greatly inspired by Barbucci's Sky Doll.

Incidentally, Disney will be working the film adaptation of Ubisofts' Prince of Persia franchise, set to be released in summer of 2009. While I'm a huge fan of the games, I was always disappointed by the lack of any real "Persian" feel to the games. The settings were almost always some made-up generic place with the theme being much more Arabic than Persian. I'm sure the movie is going to be more or less the same, unless we establish contacts with Disney and ask them to make it more authentic, perhaps by sending them good references. By the way thanks to reader Fatso for reminding me of this.

I recently discovered the great art of 22-year-old Soheil Danesh (thank to Reveal), and I'm in love with his atmospheric cg illustrations. Among his work is this poster for "Jamshid & Khorshid", a full-length animated feature with ancient Persian themes (the first of its kind in Iran) that has been in the works for a few years and despite being completed, its release has been held up by unknown reasons. Also check out his storyboards. I was told that Soheil will soon be working on his submission for the Project 300 gallery as well.

p.s. Soheil has a deviant art gallery and a personal website as well that I think he's still working on.