Library News Last updated 10 November
MCM Birmingham is back! To celebrate the nerdiest weekend of the year, we’re sharing nerdy hidden gems from our e-resources and serials collections.
How to sculpt a dragon
Lukas Kutschera sculpted Vhagar, the largest of the dragons in Game of Thrones spin-off show House of the Dragon. Extremely cool. But more importantly, he wrote a whole book about sculpting – so now you can make cool dragons too. Sculpting in ZBrush Made Simple covers modelling and character creation techniques for VFX, games and 3D printing and is available online through IG Library.
Check out Packt Publishing, hosted on IG Library, for information technology topics such as AI, security, machine learning, programming and web development.
The business of anime
With anime’s huge rise in global popularity, it’s not surprising to see voice actors from Jujutsu Kaisen, Demon Slayer and Sword Art Online heading to Birmingham Comic Con. But how can brands use this expanding market as an opportunity to grow their reach? Search WGSN for their article Brand Strategy: Anime, Comic & Games. This report explores ways brands can connect to anime fans, including bringing their favourite fantasy worlds to life through creating immersive physical spaces and launching campaigns around key events such as Comic Con.
Check out WGSN for information on consumer behaviour, marketing strategies, and the latest news in a variety of industries.
…or become an animator yourself!
Have you ever dreamt of animating your own show or simply curious how it works behind the scenes? Check out our brand-new e-resource The Animator’s Survival Kit Animated. Oscar winner Richard Williams (famous for Who Framed Roger Rabbit?) walks you step by step through the fundamentals of animation in a series of 16 videos. Chris Wedge described the series as a “revelation” – and he directed Ice Age!
Bloomsbury Video Library also features documentaries, videos and interviews about dance, film, history, culture, music and art.
Calling all cosplayers!
Whether you’re recreating Spider-Man’s Miles Morales or Astarion from Baldur’s Gate 3, Bloomsbury Fashion Central can help you out. For example, the Design and Making section allows you to filter by construction technique, equipment type and elements of cloth (such as grain, warp and cloth count), helping you find specific resources for your latest cosplay design. These resources include reference images, informative videos and even practical costume-making guides.
Bloomsbury Fashion Central covers all things fashion – historical clothes, the fashion industry, design and construction, dress and costume, business cases and videos of fashion shows.
Comic book deep dives
Enjoy deeply analysing the cultural significance of your favourite fandom? Art Full Text has got you covered. Take X-Men for example. You can read articles discussing all sorts of topics, including queerness, nationalism and minority racial identity in the X-Men comic books. And then you can go to Birmingham Comic Con and ask James McAvoy (aka Professor X himself) what he thinks...
Art Full Text features abstracts and citations of journal articles on art, architecture, film and photography, many with links to the full text of the article.
The cinematography of superheroes
We don’t just have nerdy e-resources – we have physical copies of magazines and journals to flip through too. In the September/October 2025 issue of British Cinematographer, you can read all about Henry Braham BSC’s approach to the cinematography of the latest Superman film. The interview explores how James Gunn’s directing style influenced his decisions, the advantages of filming with a small camera, and the surprising influences he used for the film – from Citizen Kane to silent era filmmaking!
You can find all our issues of British Cinematographer going back to 2020 on the ground floor of Curzon Library in the rolling stacks.