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.
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!
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.
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.
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!
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:
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 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.
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.
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!
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 presenting a two-day Artistic Anatomy Masterclass on 2-3 April 2009, at the Moving Picture Companies screening room in central London, sponsored by Escape Studios . The sessions will be VERY intense (but fun), so get your coffee, notepads and sketchbooks ready. I hope to see you there!
For more information and booking visit Escape Studios’ registration page
FOLLOW-UP
The April anatomy masterclass was a great success and every attendee left packed full of new anatomy knowledge. If you missed this course but are interested in attending a future masterclass in London please send me a quick note expressing interest. The more interest there is the sooner I can offer another course. Thanks!
The first of three of my lessons in Figurative Sculpture is now live on Pixologic’s site. This lesson covers the fundamentals of sculpting and studying from reference, and walks through the process of creating the ‘Study of Milon de Crotone‘. If you are interested in figure sculpture check it out. Stay tuned for part II, which will cover sculpting from life, and is closely related to some of the work I am showing at the Tate Modern lecture on the 25th of March.
A special thanks to the Pixologic team who did a fantastic job formating and putting the lesson together.
I will be giving a lecture at the Tate Modern on the 25th of March entitled:
Bits to Atoms – the Process and Evolution of Digital Sculpture
The talk broadly covers the history of figurative sculpture, techniques of digital sculpture and methods of prototyping digital sculpture. I will also be showing a new piece that I have been working on for the last couple months with a little behind the scenes “making of”.
Follow-up
The sell-out talk was a great success. Thanks to everyone who attended. For anyone who missed the talk, the Tate Modern recorded the presentations and made them available as a webcast here. My presentation is the second and begins at 00:46:00.
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)!
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!
The April 2011 issue of German film/VFX magazine Digital Production features a full-page 
The December 2010 (issue 23) copy of 3DArtist magazine features a two-page article on the 
