Eaton-Houdon Écorché

 anatomy, digital sculpture, sculpture
Apr 042013
 

Eaton-Houdon Ecorche figure for anatomy study
click for larger

The Eaton-Houdon Écorché is my update of the classical anatomy figure by 18th Century sculptor Jean-Antoine Houdon. His original l’Écorché sculpture, produced in 1767 during his time in Rome, has been used by artists studying anatomy for centuries. It is celebrated for its balance, gesture and proportions but, to the trained eye, has always contained a handful of anatomical inaccuracies. Combine this with an overall loss of detail resulting from centuries of re-casting and the piece was in need of both an accuracy update and a sharpening of details. The result is shown above.

The Eaton-Houdon ecorche figure is featured in the L’Ecorché eductional iOS app produced by collaborator Michael Defeo (available for download from the App Store here).

The sculpture will soon be available as an 18″ anatomy figure for desktop reference, hopefully continuing the centuries-old contribution this piece has made to artistic anatomy study. Subscribe to the newsletter to receive updates!

UPCOMING: Anatomy for Artists online course – 5 July, 2013

 anatomy, courses, news
Apr 012013
 

anatomy for artist course

The Summer Anatomy for Artists course starts on July 5th. Since the online course started almost three 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

L’Ecorché – Classical Anatomy for Artists
coming soon…

 anatomy, digital sculpture, news, zbrush
Mar 222012
 

anatomy for artists app - iphone, ipad, OSX

I have been busy over the past months revising and updating Jean-Antoine Houdon’s classic L’Ecorché sculpture for the soon to be released iOS App of the same name. The app is a collaboration between myself and legendary character sculptor Michael Defeo. I will post more on the app, including some behind-the-scenes ‘making of’ videos, soon.

Until then, please check out the app’s Kickstarter project for more information.

Anatomy at Rocksteady Studios

 anatomy, courses, news
Dec 192011
 



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)!

Anatomy at Industrial Light & Magic

 anatomy, news
Oct 212011
 

ILM - August visit teaching Anatomy for Artists course

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!

A picture of Scott at skywalker Ranch from an earlier lecture tour at Lucasfilm, San Francisco
At Skywalker Ranch

Facial Anatomy Workshop – Reconstruction Progression

 anatomy
Mar 102011
 

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, medical imaging, forensic reconstruction, and classical portraiture techniques. Upcoming Workshop

The gallery below shows the step-by-step progression of the reconstruction exercise.

3DArtist Magazine – Anatomy Course Feature

 anatomy, news
Dec 142010
 

3dArtist Magazine feature article on Scott Eaton\'s Anatomy for Artists online course and trainingclick for larger image

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!

“Bodies in Motion” image library online

 anatomy, news, photography
Mar 012010
 

bodies in motion, dynamic figure reference for artists

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!

BODIES in MOTION dynamic figure reference for artists
link to Bodies in Motion

Siggraph 2007

 anatomy, renderman, zbrush
Aug 082007
 


I am currently at Siggraph 2007 in SanDiego giving presentation on behalf of Pixar for the RenderMan Certified Courseware that I have been developing at Escape Studios with co-author Andy Cadey. I am also giving presentations for Pixologic, the company behind Zbrush, announcing a series of anatomy lectures that I will be developing for them in the Autumn. The lectures will be released once a month over the next year covering critical aspects of artist anatomy and figurative scultpure. They will be freely available to the public on ZbrushCentral.

The Archer

 anatomy, digital sculpture, zbrush
Jul 292007
 


Here is an image of ‘the Archer,’ which I created in Maya and Zbrush as an anatomy study. The process was documented in a tutorial for 3dWorld magazine (issue ??). The tutorial covers the critical anatomical knowledge required to construct realistic human figures. The tutorial is here , and in the same issue I wrote an accompanying article on human anatomy for digital artists.

Animal Anatomy

 anatomy
Mar 282007
 

Here is an image from my article on Animal Anatomy in the most recent 3dWorld (issue 89). The base model, the winged lion, is still a work in progress and I will post a few updates as it progresses.

update: You can now download the complete article from the Tutorials section.

Powerade Campaign

 anatomy, zbrush
May 302006
 

Here is a still from a Powerade campaign that I worked on last year at the Mill, London. The campaign was for the Austrailian National Soccer team for the 2006 World Cup. The brief was crazy, they wanted the players to tranform into anatomy men to show the inner working of Powerade. We hammered away on this for a couple of months. I supervised 3d, designed and modeled the anatomy man (Maya and Zbrush), and build tools (MEL) to help our master animator Rob Kuczera efficiently animate 30 or so shots. The end result was interesting, if a little gory.

Information on the Artistic Anatomy course that I teach in London can be found here.