A Gold Mine of Free Stock Photos for Fantasy Images
October 1st, 2008 | Published in Featured, Resources | 5 Comments
One of many excellent landscape stock photos available on deviantArt. Image by Resurgere.
In an earlier article, we took a look at the massive online art community deviantArt. Today, we’re going to look at how you can use deviantArt as a resource for free stock photos for your fantasy work, and as a place to learn and grow as a digital artist. For fantasy artists, deviantArt is truly a gold mine of free stock photographs. Not only are they free, but they are images you are unlikely to find on a regular stock photo site, free or otherwise. The community members on deviantArt are incredibly generous, taking professional-quality reference photos of models dressed in costume, in every imaginable pose. They make these photos available to all deviantArt members, free of charge. Usually all that is required is that, when you post your creation on deviantArt, you credit the folks who created your source images. (Please read the restrictions stated by the copyright holder before using their work.)
This method of giving credit means that you can see exactly what images an artist used to create the final composition. This is a great way to learn, and to get your creative juices flowing. For example, take a look at this wonderful image by Moonmomma (Pat Brennan), one of my favorite artists on deviantArt:
Briar Rose by Moonmomma
Just looking at this image, you can’t really tell what the artist did. Luckily, on deviantArt the artists put links to the source images used, down in their comments section. The icons you see here are links to the images used, or to the member’s page. You may have to do a little hunting to find the image used.
The artist's comments include links to the three images used in the creation of Briar Rose.
Clicking on each link, we can see that these three images were used during the creation of Briar Rose.
Statue stock image, by fairyandturtlestock
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The face for the image came from this stock photo by bobbistock
Seeing the images used only gives me a greater appreciation of the work done by Moonmomma in her image Briar Rose. I’m just amazed by what she’s done here. Notice that the source image for the face is actually turned the other way, and had to be flipped. Keep this in mind, when hunting for your own source images: usually the images you find will need to be tweaked somehow before you can use them.
Check out the previous article about deviantArt for information about finding stock images, tutorials, and other free resources.
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October 1st, 2008 at 7:15 pm (#)
[...] Random Feed wrote an interesting post today onHere’s a quick excerptOne of many excellent landscape stock photos available on deviantArt. Image by Resurgere. In an earlier article, we took a look at the massive online art community deviantArt. Today, we’re going to look at how you can use deviantArt as a resource for free stock photos for your fantasy work, and as a place to learn and grow as a digital artist. For fantasy artists, deviantArt is truly a gold mine of free stock photographs. Not only are they free, but they are images you are unlikely to find on [...]
November 2nd, 2008 at 3:56 am (#)
Thank you for your site
I made on photoshop backgrounds for myspace,youtube and whatever
my backgrounds:http://tinyurl.com/6rbxmr
Hope you had a good day and thank you again!
February 3rd, 2009 at 11:57 pm (#)
Sweet Greetings!!! Exquisite be this imagery!!! i be lookin’ to place mehself {Pirate Queen} on such a throne fer a fairytale vignette am writing…what must i do to achieve this??? and is it out of meh reach am wondering??? I makes meh watercolour brushes dance to tune of them vignettes and meh pen to flowery words…am an unknown however {a starving artist fer yrs now lol…an’ happily so} Received a dream back in 1978 an’ have to do wat i am doing…Am very excited over coming upon the Eloquent Imagery!!! Is there a way i may utilize this and Happily give credit to where it belongs? Many thx be for Yer reply and Enchanted be them Dreams.
Truly~ LiliumLilium~ Pirate Queen aka: Lily Bee
February 4th, 2009 at 11:18 am (#)
@Lily Bee –
If you’re looking to use the image by Moonmomma, you’ll need to contact her. She’s a member of Deviant Art, at http://www.deviantart.com. Best of luck with your writing!
Bob
March 3rd, 2009 at 1:44 pm (#)
As a DA user, however, I’ve found that some stock image providers’ heads grows with their collections, and some are so restricted that I can’t use them for my images. However, if you have signed up for an account, look at smaller stock collections *OR* the Unrestricted Use Stock Directory (updated periodically under News.)
If you happen to be a stock photographer who’s willing to waive rights to the stock, check out The-Stock-Exchange. It’s an unknown right now, but I haven’t had the time to give it some nice looks or even set it up.
Anyway, that’s my two cents’ worth.