This is the last week to register for the upcoming Anatomy for Artists and Digital Figure Sculpture courses. Both start this Friday, January 20th. What better way to start the New Year than with some intense artistic training!
I am just back from a fantastic week of anatomy workshops with the character team at Rocksteady Studios, the creators of the wildly successful Batman: Arkham Asylum, and Batman: Arkham City games. Over five days we covered a lot of territory, going deep into human anatomy and portraiture, including some inside secrets on facial anatomy. While I was there, the Joker took home the “Character of the Year” award at the VGAs! Congratulations to the team at Rocksteady. I think there are a lot of people looking forward to what you do next (no pressure)!
As many of you already know, the second session of my online Digital Figure Sculpture course is underway. A group of artists are hard at work learning new techniques in ZBrush and studying hard to make great progress as figure sculptors. To give everybody a taste of the types of projects they are working on week-to-week, I have started a blog where I will post updates as the course progresses. If you have an interest in ZBrush and figure sculpture, check it out.
upcoming course: January 20, 2012
During the first half of the course, students complete weekly studies that focus on areas of the body in isolation. These are a few of the ZBrush exercises that students are shown how to complete.
I am just back from a return trip to Lucasfilm, this time to their Singapore studio where I ran courses for their artists at ILM and Lucasfilm Feature Animation (the Rango guys). Over the week I ran two intensive anatomy courses for 30 of their artists (morning and afternoon sessions). The group was divided almost down the middle between modelers and riggers, though there was a stray animator and concept artist thrown in the mix well. The crew was great – obviously a very talented group of artists – and we were able to go in-depth into all the critical anatomy that applies to their work on feature film characters and creatures.
This trip reminded me a lot of the last time I visited Lucasfilm in San Francisco. Pretty much if you don’t like Star Wars, this is not the place to visit. It is everywhere and Yoda greats you at the entrance to both places (he has evolved in style a bit over the years). Luckily, I grew up with Star Wars and was a big fan (though, like most, lukewarm about the three prequels). The outstanding highlight of both visits is still the personal tour of Skywalker Ranch!
At Skywalker Ranch
The Autumn Digital Figure Sculpture online course is currently underway. The next course begins on January 20th. This course covers the critical foundation necessary to build naturalistic figures in ZBrush, including all the tools and techniques that I use day-to-day in my own figure sculpting – both on my art projects and on feature film characters.
Over ten weeks artists get a chance to hone their skills by completing numerous weekly figure studies and one complete figure. The course reinforces the importance of anatomy as the critical foundation for building realistic figures and shows practical construction techniques for applying this knowledge to figure sculpture. The goal is for every artist on the course to increase the realism and naturalism of their figurative work in Zbrush.
For more information and registration see the Digital Figure Sculpture course page here.
The next Anatomy for Artists session starts on January 14th. Since the online course started almost two years ago there have been a wide range of artists on the course including character artists from visual effects and video games, comic book artists, concept artists, oil painters, stone carvers, medical illustrators, medallion makers, figure sculptors, photographers, fashion designers and even a chainsaw sculptor.
No matter what your medium, if you are an artist looking to master the human figure this is the course for you.
COURSE INFORMATION & REGISTRATION
The first trailer for Steven Spielberg’s upcoming War Horse was just released. The film looks beautiful and early buzz points to Oscar nominations. I was part of a very talented team at Framestore who completed all the visual effects work on the film in late Spring 2011. Spielberg placed considerable techincal and artistic challenges in front of us, but in the end I am very proud of the work we did on the film. Our fingerprints are all over the film (and trailer), but you will have to wait until next December for more on this!
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The iPad docking station, codename Venus of Cupertino, is hot off the press. If you missed the genesis of this project see early sketches in the drawing section. Here are a couple more images of the prototype with her iPad: Read the rest of this entry »
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Here are a couple images of a digital sculpture that I did for a ‘recently released pirate movie’. At the time the film was in early preproduction and this piece was more speculative design than anything concrete for the film, though it is loosely tied to an event in the script. The piece also has thinly veiled references to Damien Hirst’s infamous pickled shark sculpture. For more details on how I created the sculpture keep reading below.
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The first digital prototype of Scott’s iPad docking station has been seen in the wild. The docking station is a private commission but will be available to the public in a small limited edition (contact here). For anyone new to the project, find concept sketches here.
“A stylish docking station for syncing, charging and display. An evocative blend of ancient fertility symbolism and modern technology worship. I want one!”
The April 2011 issue of German film/VFX magazine Digital Production features a full-page Hephaestus image to introduce their writeup on Zbrush 4. The image is backwards but otherwise looks good. Their article gives a great overview of Zbrush, my digital sculpting tool of choice.
The recent Portraiture & Facial Anatomy workshop was a huge success. Over three days, ten artists got a chance to build a face from the inside out, gaining insight into how soft tissues modify the structure established by the skull to create the final surface forms that we see in life. The course draws heavily on reference from plastic surgery, forensic reconstruction, Madame Tussuad’s sculpture techniques, and classic portraiture techniques. Next Workshop – 10-12 November, London.
The gallery below shows the step-by-step progression of the reconstruction exercise.
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The December 2010 (issue 23) copy of 3DArtist magazine features a two-page article on the Anatomy for Artists course. The writeup gives a good overview of the course and conveys the importance of studying anatomy as a digital artist. There are also some excellent examples of students’ work from past courses. Pick up a copy if you are interested!
Here is a production stills from some of the work that I did on Clash of the Titans in 2010. I worked as a Character Supervisor on the film. One of my more taxing responsibilities in this capacity was having to photograph supermodel Natalia Vodianova as reference for Medusa. Tough work I know, but somebody’s got to do it.
Here are a selection of images from recent Portraiture & Facial Anatomy for Artists workshops held at Scott’s London studio. The gallery shows the progression of the facial reconstruction sculpting exercise over the three days of the course.
More details on upcoming workshops can be found on the Portraiture & Facial Anatomy course page.
Read the rest of this entry »
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Here is an early preview of a new digital sculpture that I am slowly working on. The sculpture is of Hephaestus, the smith god. Time permitting I will try to post some early sketches and other works in progress. Check back soon….
Samples from the second installment of the Bodies in Motion Reference Library are now online. This shoot had a huge variety of talent including: mixed martial arts, kung fu, karate, stage combat, Spanish fencing, female sumo wrestling, classical ballet, hand balancing, break dancing and contortion.
There are tons of images from the shoot (~700 Gb) and sample sequences are forthcoming. If you are interested in staying informed about the library’s development/availability, drop me a message here.
link: BODIES IN MOTION LIBRARY
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Samples from my Bodies in Motion image library are now online. The library was created to capture high-quality, dynamic figure reference for artists. The human figure is extremely complex and its form is so variable during motion that high-quality reference is essential for capturing that anatomical complexity. The full library is over 20,000 images so I can only put a sample of images online to start, but I hope you find it interesting and useful!
Here are a few images of the sculpture, shown in clay above, which I unveiled during my lecture at the Tate Modern on “Bit to Atoms – The Process and Evolution of Digital Sculpture“. During the lecture I talked about the process of making the piece – first creating a digital maquette in Zbrush to establish the balance, weight, and proportions of the figure, and then using that digital data (shown below) as a guide for constructing the full-sized figure sculpture in clay. Here are a few views of the digital maquette and a timelapse of the clay construction.
click below to view the timelapse construction of the life-sized clay sculpture.
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Here is a little digital maquette that I knocked together a few months back to test some new functionality in Zbrush 3.5R3. Timelapse videos of the construction/sculpt will be available as resources in the Online Anatomy Course.
I will be returning to Montreal at the beginning of March to teach a two-day Anatomy Masterclass followed by two one-day Zbrush Figure Sculpting workshops. The dates for the masterclass are 1-2 March, and the Figure Sculpting sessions are on 3 and 4 March. The sessions are sponsored by the National Animation and Design (NAD) Centre and are open the public as well as industry professionals.
The plates from Duchenne de Boulogne’s Le Mécanisme de la Physionomie Humaine (ca 1876) have been added to the reference library. The images are curious and not entirely pleasant to look at, but useful for artists interested in the extremes of human facial expressions. Duchenne would use electro-stimulation to activate individual facial muscles in willing but not entirely happy subjects.
Link to image gallery.
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I will be giving a lecture at the Gnomon School of Visual Effects as part of an Anatomy Masters evening on the 22nd of October. I will be one of four speakers presenting that evening and admission is free, so you will definitely get your money’s worth! The content is evolving but my talk will focus on comparative anatomy. More details to come….
I will be giving an intensive two-day anatomy course at the The National Animation and Design Centre in Montreal, Canada on the 24th and 25th of August 2009. The course is open the public and industry professionals in and around Montreal. If you have a desire to deepen your knowledge of anatomy and improve your character skills, please stop by, I hope to see you there.
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Interesting posts from days past
for becoming a better artist
