During 1995-1997, 3D Artist magazine broadcast an E-mail newsletter called The Tessellation Times that went free to anyone interested, including 3D industry "movers and shakers." In Tess#535 of 24 October 1995, we included this request from the editor:

535.06.03 - Term Limits
I'd like to ask if anyone can remember or can find the term "3D artist" in use anywhere before late 1991. "Virtual Artist" was the working title for the newsletter that became the magazine, but we went to press in October that year with *3D Artist* as a name that related more clearly to what we intended to do with the publication. So far as we know, that was the first time the term "3D artist" appeared anywhere. Even the concept of basing one's art on computer 3D graphics was uncommon then.

This went to 1,755 recipients and no doubt thousands more read it forwarded or online. HTML and text versions have long been removed from our Web and old ftp sites, but we have put that edition back now (along with our infamous April Fools Day "Polygon Gazette," Tess#614, both best read in a word processor). You

also can see the Web version stashed in 1996 by the Internet Archive Wayback Machine.

No response to that claim was received, so, on page 18 (PDF) of our Fifth Annivesary issue, 3D Artist magazine #27, which shipped in February 1996, we tried again:

This [3D Artist magazine] was begun originally as only a small newsletter -- a way to use our many years of publishing experience to jump into 3D. The "working title" was Virtual Artist, but it debuted as 3D Artist. That term didn't exist, or wasn't common*, but "virtual" already seemed so overused as to lack meaning for our audience.

* We have yet to find examples of the term "3D artist" in publications that appeared before October 1991. Once we started publication, my recollection is of encountering a general skepticism that anything done with desktop 3D could be called "art." And, early on, we had trouble getting people (many of them CAD operators and video technicians moving into 3D graphics) to associate what they were doing with a publication that had "artist" in its name! So it appears that we invented the term. Certainly, we brought it into common usage.

No response was received to this claim.

As I recall from mid-1990s research, the term "3D art" had some use for mixed media having added relief, such as attaching shells and grasses to a beach painting. I don't remember if the practitioners were called "3D artists," but we introduced this term to describe those who create still and animated art on computers with 3D graphics software. More controversially at the time, we focused on affordable personal computing when the CGI field was still being pioneered with expensive 3D workstations.

Once more, we issue a challenge to find instances of the term "3D artist" published in context anytime before our first use. Places to look are old computer graphics books, magazines, and manuals. If found, we'll be happy to yield our claim. Let's set the historical record straight.