Officials from Ballistic Publishing have announced the company's latest d’artiste game design book, Character Modeling 2, which presents character modeling techniques from accomplished modelers Zack Petroc, Timur "Taron" Baysal, and Gears of War's Kevin Lanning. In the book, each artist shows the approaches and techniques they use to create amazing characters and creatures for films and games. One of the book's chief draws is the work of Epic Games' Kevin Lanning and the team at Epic Games on the Xbox 360 exclusive Gears of War. In Character Modeling 2, Lanning details the high-polygon and low-polygon workflows that allow Epic Games to create the game's characters. Timur “Taron” Baysal follows with his techniques on building creatures with personality, and Zack Petroc adds to this with his sculpting approach to creature modeling. Character Modeling 2 is currently available for pre-order, and is expected to be available in May 2007. In addition, those who pre-order the book will also receive a set of four limited edition prints. Like other books in the d’artiste book series, the three authors go on to explain the reasoning behind their creative decisions as well as showing individual techniques, create a kind of pseudo-dialog between the author and the reader. Character Modeling 2 represents the fifth book in the d’artiste series, which began in 2004 with the release of Digital Painting.