Imitation Game at the Vancouver Art Gallery

 machine learning, machine learning / AI, news
Mar 092022
 

Imitation Game AI Exhibition Poster, Vancouver Art GalleryEntangled II at The Imitation Game

I am excited to have an entire room dedicated to my artwork at the recently-opened feature exhibition at the Vancouver Art Gallery, “The Imitation Game – Visual Culture in the Age of Artificial Intelligence.”

the venerable Vancouver Art Gallery

The groundbreaking show gives insight into the development and impact artificial intelligence is having on art, creativity, and wider visual culture. I have a collection of large pieces in the show as well as a series of development ‘sketches’ that are being shown in public for the first time. If you’re near Vancouver definitely check it out, the show will be running until October 23, 2022!

Caffeinated Diversions, drawings processed by custom neural networkCaffeinated Diversions, 2019

Scott Eaton's machine learning experiments at the Vancouver Art GalleryA wall of displays showing Scott’s machine learning video works

Scott Eaton's Humanity (Fall of the Damned) at the Vancouver Art Gallery Humanity (Fall of the Damned)

Crystal Angel for Elton John

 digital sculpture, news, sculpture
Sep 182013
 

Ange Cire Perdue, clear and red crystal, 73 cm, image © Lalique

I was recently commissioned by the legendary French glass maker, Lalique, to design and sculpt an enormous (in relative terms) crystal angel, an allegory of Music, for Elton John. The piece, know as Cire Perdue (after the lost wax process Lalique used to cast the piece), is a single, unique artwork that will be auctioned off in Los Angeles in February, with all proceeds going to the Elton John Aids Foundation. After a long design process and an even longer time in production, the piece is finally finished and was shown for the first time at Elton’s Windsor estate, to an effusive reaction:

“I don’t think that I have ever seen a more beautiful piece of glass than the big Angel. It is breathtaking!

-Elton John

Elton signing the Lost Wax AngelElton signing the big Angel

Designing a sculpture for casting in crystal is challenging because there are many considerations the medium demands:
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Upcoming Courses and Workshops

 anatomy, courses, news
Mar 152025
 

Scott Eaton's Anatomy and Figure Sculpture coursesScott’s Eaton-Houdon écorché

UPCOMING SESSIONS

Due to a busy work & travel schedule, I will not be running full-enrollment courses over the summer. The next full-enrollment sessions will be in the Autumn term. Dates and registration coming soon. For anyone looking to level-up their anatomy and/or sculpting skills over the summer, Standard enrollment sessions are available for enrollment, and you can start anytime.

These in-depth courses are designed to teach the skills every artist needs to produce inspiring, professional figurative work. They have been taught to artists and studios around the world, including Pixar, Industrial Light & Magic, Disney Feature Animation, Sony Imageworks, Sony Playstation, Warner Bros, Ubisoft, Blizzard, Valve, EA and many others.

Scott Eaton Anatomy for Artists clients - studio logos

If you are looking for an intensive course to develop your figurative art skills, consider one of these:

COURSES

  • ANATOMY FOR ARTISTS
    The most comprehensive online course covering artistic anatomy. No prerequisites are necessary, just a sincere interest in learning about the wonderful machine that is the human body! more…
  • DIGITAL FIGURE SCULPTURE
    An intense ten-week course in the tools and techniques of digital figure sculpture. This course is recommended for students with a firm grounding in anatomy (the Anatomy for Artists course is recommended) as well as an intermediate knowledge of ZBrush. more…
  • PORTRAITURE & FACIAL ANATOMY
    The companion course to Anatomy for Artists, this course explore the anatomy of the face in-depth. It covers the construction of the skull, features, facial fat, musculature, expressions, and the Facial Action Coding system (FACS). Every great figure needs a great face, this course teaches you the anatomy you need to build it. more…

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EXHIBITION – Art Through Time: Contemporary Reflections

 news
Mar 102024
 

I have a new work debuting at the Alon Zakaim Gallery in central London in April. This exhibition pairs contemporary artists (me and others, mostly painters) with works from 20th century artists – Picasso, Dali, Chagall, etc – and asks us to react with a new, contemporary take.

I am paired with a larger than life-sized alabaster bust from Jaume Plensa, a Spanish artist known for his large scale portraits, often compressed in one dimension. My ‘reaction’ is a moving image piece – an aging, kaleidoscopic, digital portrait that borrows stylistic elements from early 20th century art movements (cubism, constructivism) and remixes these with a recipe of photogrammetry, digital sculpture, machine learning and rendering. The work – flat, colorful, evolving and ephemeral – is a counterpoint to the static, polished, ageless bust of Plensa. Hopefully when appreciated together, they contrast and compliment each other, sparking conversation. Images to follow after the opening.

Curated by Virginia Damtsa

‘Out of Distribution‘ Talk at the VIEW Conference, Turin, Italy

 creativity, news
Nov 162023
 

Scott Eaton giving Out of Distribution talk at View Conference 2023Talking about the making of Spherical Enumeration

I recently gave a talk at the VIEW Conference, in Turin, titled:

Out of Distribution: Thriving Creatively in the Age of AI

The talk gives my current take on the state of AI and how we, as artists and creatives, need to think about situating our work in relationship to this ever-more-disruptive technology. (the talk now available on-demand on the VIEW Conference’s plaform here). The talk blurb:

In this densely illustrated talk, Scott explores how we can maximize our human creative potential in the face of the tidal wave of capabilities from the latest AI tools. He explores the trajectory of the field of AI, covering the critical ideas that have led us to where we are now. He asks the question on everyone’s mind – what space will be left for artists and creatives as more powerful AI inevitably arrives, and how should we think about situating our work and careers in the face of this constantly accelerating technology? Scott showcases his recent projects and gives examples and anecdotes from his own work with machine learning over the past seven years, including a behind-the-scenes look at his recent takeover of Times Square.

Scott Eaton on stage at the View Conference, showing himself holding a stack of sketchbooks.Talking about the importance of drawing in one’s creative practice. Mini-me and large me, juxtaposed.

Inside Pandora’s Box, talk @ Google

 machine learning, news
Jul 022023
 

I recently presented a new talk titled “Inside Pandora’s Box: Bodies, Geometry and Internet-scale Intrigue” for Google. Here’s the description:

Intersections on the Living Canvas, Dublin

“In this richly visual presentation, Scott takes us on a journey through five years of creative experimentation with machine learning and AI in his artistic practice. He shares the progression of his projects, from initial sketches and concepts to fully realized artistic pieces, recalling the iterations, side quests and failures along the way. Scott concludes by delving into ‘internet-scale’ models, revealing intriguing cultural artifacts discovered within CLIP networks and Stable Diffusion. While recognizing the immense potential AI offers to artists, he also worries for the future of creative employment and the blind spots inherent in the technology.”

I’ll try to share some of the content and interesting experiments here soon. If you’re out there and interested in this talk for your org, please get in touch. Finally – the banner image teases a new work, Intersections, that is having it’s international debut in Time Square, NYC for the month of August 2023. More details on that soon.

Figure Drawing workshop at the V&A Museum

 news
Mar 222023
 

I am excited to be running a series of figure drawing workshops for the Victoria & Albert Museum in conjunction with their landmark Donatello, Sculpting the Renaissance exhibition. The first workshop has passed, and was great fun, but we will be running a second workshop on Saturday, June 10th (the day before the Donatello exhibition closes). I give an introduction to drawing digitally (ipads/apple pencils) and cover some anatomical fundamentals before we explore the impressive sculpture collection at the V&A – works from Rodin, Canova, Leighton, Dalou, Giambologna, and others.

Cast court at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London. Casts of Michelangelo's David and Slaves.V&A Cast Court

We end with a long afternoon drawing session in the museum’s fabled Cast Courts. If you haven’t been to the Cast Courts, they are, like many things at the V&A, grand relics of 19th century Victorian England. They house myriad plaster casts of masterworks ranging from a full-sized replica of Trajan’s column (in two parts), to Ghiberti’s Gates of Paradise, to many works by Michelangelo, including a 1:1 cast of David. An inspiring setting for drawing practice!

REGISTER

Anatomy for Sony Pictures Imageworks

 anatomy, courses, news
Mar 102023
 

.
Whew, just finished eight weeks of anatomy lectures for Sony Pictures Imageworks, the studio behind my favorite animated film of all time – Spiderman Into the Spiderverse.
Over thirteen lectures we covered the essential anatomy of the human figure from head to toe (artistic anatomy mind you, not medical anatomy, so no guts etc.). It was an intensive combination of my two, longer, online anatomy courses – Anatomy for Artists and Portraiture & Facial Anatomy, delivered remotely packaged as two lectures per week. I’ve been weary of delivering workshops over Zoom versus in-person, but the convenience for the studio, with respect to timing and geography, is definitely hard to beat. If you’re a studio interested in similar workshops, feel free to get in touch.

Essential Anatomy with Industrial Light & Magic

 anatomy, news
Mar 092022
 

I recently hosted artists from Industrial Light & Magic’s London and Singapore studios for a three-day Essential Anatomy workshop online. The goal was to go in-depth into a few challenging areas of the body needing special attention for their upcoming projects – facial anatomy and expressions, shoulders and neck, and forearms & hands.
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Artist Vs Machine panel at CogX 2020

 machine learning, machine learning / AI, news
Jun 102020
 

CogX 2020 – Artist Vs Machine

I will be participating in a three-artist discussion panel at CogX 2020 on the future of creativity and art in the age of AI, VR, and AR. I will be joined by Jonathan Yeo, contemporary portrait painter, and Patrick Morgan, an artist exploring the boundaries of VR/AR in his work. The conversation will be wide ranging, but focused around how these emerging technologies might enable new creative horizons for aritsts in the coming decades.

Nvidia Webinar –
Artist+AI: Figures & Form, now available on-demand

 machine learning / AI, news
Mar 202020
 

My webinar, hosted by Nvidia, is now available on-demand. I talk about my latest work using AI (machine learning) as a “creative collaborator” in my artistic process. I show an eclectic range of successes, failures, and just crazy experiments that I’ve done over the last few years while exploring the capabilities and limitations of this emerging technology.

Free to register and watch.

WATCH HERE

Facial Anatomy at Respawn Entertainment

 anatomy, news
Feb 162020
 

respawn reception logoRespawn reception on Valentine’s day

Pathfinder, from Apex LegendsI’ve recently returned to soggy London from ever-sunny (but windy) Los Angeles where I ran an intensive facial anatomy course for the artists at Respawn Entertainment (an EA studio). For those who don’t know their work, their freshman release was an epic mech game called Titanfall, followed by its sequel. Then in 2019 they release two huge titles – the run-away hit Apex Legends, a Fortnight styled battle royale game, and Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order, an, umm, Star Wars game.
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