I’ve just finished a fantastic, four-day intensive anatomy course for the artists at Valve in Seattle, WA. For those not in the know, Valve is the collective talent behind the Half-Life and Portal series as well as many other landmark games. A truly unique company with amazing artists.

-> VALVE

Find out more about Scott’s iPad docking station, the Venus of Cupertino.

Here is a work-in-progress image from a collaboration with two old colleagues from my days at the MIT Media Lab. They are conceptual designers working on a project to visualize the effects of zero-gravity on human form. The exhibition will have many aspects but my contribution will be two life-sized 3d-printed heads showing the difference in form between a man raised on earth versus a man raised in space. The image above shows the man raised on earth. The next step is to reverse the effects of gravity and UV exposure, and then get these off to the 3d printer. More images coming soon…

OK, it may not be a great movie but there are some decent visual effects in there. The CGChannel website has an article talking about the visual effects behind Wrath of the Titans. I designed and sculpted the three Cyclops in the film and then nurtured them, like giant one-eyed children, through much of the post-production process. My design process is always firmly grounded in the plausibility of the anatomy I am creating and the cycloptic eyes proved an interesting challenge (with mixed success). Below are a couple images of the concept sculptures I create while working up the body types and personalities of the three Cyclops – the aged father and the two brothers.

click for larger

© Copyright 2012 Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc.

The next Anatomy for Artists session starts on June 22th. 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

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.

The Spring session of the Digital Figure Sculpture Course is getting ready to start on April 20th so I thought I would post this image from the culminating exercise and also talk a little bit more about the philosophy and goals of the course.

Simply, the goal of the course is to teach students how to create more naturalistic figure sculptures. Too often artists struggle to breathe life into their figures and are left scratching their heads as to what went wrong. There are many stages where things can go off track but most often it is inexperience with anatomy, planes, volumes, and proportions. Everyone wants to jump straight in and put muscles onto their sculptures but in their zealousness they forget the critical construction and proportions that hold things together. The course guides artists through the entire process.

The course leads artists through the figure sculpting process by showing my work at every stage and then I critique students’ work to keep them moving closer and closer to a naturalistic result. The first half of the course is dedicated to isolated studies of the body, what I call “fragments”, where students can study forms and anatomy without having to worry about the complications of the rest of the figure. The fragment exercises are practice sessions for the latter half of the course where students tackle the grand challenge – the full figure.

The software for the course is ZBrush, a fantastic digital sculpting tool that I have used on many projects. The course, however, is not focused solely on the tools and techniques of ZBrush (though I cover every tool and technique I use). The larger focus is on helping students observe and understand the volumes, silhouettes, pose, balance, proportions, and anatomy that create the essence of the figure. When all these elements come together and are executed with good technique, the figure sculpture approaches a magic place.

Digital Figure Sculpture course page

The final week of the course covers the tools and techniques used to refine the figure in ZBrush. This lesson concentrates on refining small forms and plane transitions, but emphasizes correct placement and scale relative to larger forms and proportions. Finally, all good sculptures need to be photographed (rendered) and presented well to look their best so there is a culminating lecture on lighting and rendering outside of ZBrush. In this video Scott talks about the fundamentals of lighting and shows his rendering techniques in Maya and also gives a short preview of Luxion’s Keyshot renderer.

The Winter Digital Figure Sculpture online course is currently underway. The next course begins on June 22th. 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 detailed full figure study. 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.

This workshop covers the critical foundations of portraiture and facial anatomy for artists of all disciplines. Over three days, each student constructs a portrait over a skull, building up anatomical structures from the deepest level out to the surface. They learn about each layer of fat, muscle, cartilage and skin that influences the appearance of the face on the surface and importantly how it varies from person to person. Artists get a unique opportunity to delve deep into the anatomy of the face and learn about the unseen structures that are critical to successful portraiture.

COURSE INFORMATION & REGISTRATION