demo sculpt from the Ubisoft workshop
I am recently back from a week-long workshop at Ubisoft’s Quebec studio focused on portraiture and facial anatomy. The week broke down into three days of facial anatomy lecture for twenty of their artists (animators, riggers, concept artist, character artists) and then finished with an intensive two-day portrait sculpting session in ZBrush with just the character artists.
artists sculpting away, and me, the shadowy figure in the corner
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The Venus of Cupertino, my iPad docking station, is just back from a busy week at the London Design Festival. She received countless oogles, smiles, and appreciation over the four days. She was even chosen as the top design at the festival by a prominent online design & lifestyle magazine.
Now that the Venus of Cupertino is almost all grown up, most future posts and updates on the Venus project will be found at: EATON.london There you can follow all the gossip, blogs, & tweets. And of course you can order her there as well!
Ange Cire Perdue, clear and red crystal, 73 cm, image © Lalique
I was recently commissioned by the legendary French glass makers, 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 big Angel
I will be showing the new Bodies in Motion site for the first time in public at London’s Industry Workshops event on the 10-13th of September (soon!). There is going to be incredible art talent presenting at the workshop, so if this kind of thing interests you, sign up! I am presenting Saturday afternoon, hope to see you there.
I am excited to show the first images from a recent collaboration with fellow artist Jason deCaires Taylor. I designed and sculpted the four Shire horses with oil-pump heads for Jason’s installation The Rising Tide currently installed on the Southbank of the Thames, right outside the MI6 building (for all you James Bond and secretive intelligence agency fans out there).
The piece is a powerful commentary on man’s relationship with the environment. Throughout the day the sculptures are submerged and revealed as the tide cycle waxes and wanes. As a long-time scuba diver I am delighted by Jason’s epic underwater works, so it was a pleasure collaborating with him on this piece.
My work on the piece involved the design and digital sculpting of the 18-hand tall Shire horses. Interestingly, over the past few years I have sculpted quite a few horses. First my centaur, then work on Mark Wallinger’s White Horse (also installed in London), followed by the horses for Steven Spielberg’s War Horse, and now these petrochemical Shires.
I’ve just finished six days of anatomy masterclasses for Industrial Light and Magic, London (yes, the Star Wars guys). This isn’t the first time I’ve been to ILM, in the past I’ve run workshops for both their San Francisco and Singapore offices, but this is the first time it was just a tube journey away (not a nine-hour flight). It is great having Industrial Light & Magic in London!
I recently kicked off a series of pastblast posts digging up old but interesting projects that I didn’t have time to write about when they were happening. One of the most interesting and enjoyable visual effects projects that I have worked on is Steven Spielberg’s film adaptation of War Horse.
The story follows Joey, a farm horse in rural England, onto the battlefields of World War I. Being a war story, you can imagine there are a few upsets along the way, and Joey inevitably finds himself in very dangerous circumstances – circumstances too dangerous in fact for real ‘horse actors’. Cue our digital Joey.
CREATING THE DIGITAL JOEY
Our digital horse stretching his legs
I recently completed a tutorial for 3dArtist magazine about the making of this facial anatomy ecorche. In the article I go through the steps used to create the digital sculpture in ZBrush and about the importance of understanding facial anatomy and why it helps improve portraiture. The tutorial is in issue 81 of the magazine.
Our Megafaces project takes home a gold cube at the ADC 94th Annual Awards in Miami. If you haven’t seen the Megafaces facade in action, there’s a nice little intro video for the project on the awards page here.
We are recently back from a busy weekend at London Design Festival. We showed our latest design, the Moai ipad docking station, for the first time and the response was amazing. Thanks to everyone who stopped by to say hi and see you again next year!
We are proud to introduce our latest design – the Moai iPad docking station. Inspired by the serene, eternal vigilance of the monolithic icons of Easter Island, we’ve upgraded and remixed them for a tongue-in-cheek poke at the persistent distraction of modern digital life.