On March 1^st, 2^nd and 3^rd 2010, Scott Eaton will offer a master-class on traditional artistic anatomy for digital artists followed by a one-day practical workshop based on a digital figure creation process using ZBrush. The NAD Centre had the chance to ask him some questions about his work and passion…

Centre NAD: Scott, you deliver anatomy workshops to 3D artists across the globe, can you please explain how you became so passionate about this subject? And, why create workshops on this topic?
Scott: My artwork has always had a strong figurative focus, but for many years, like most artists working today, I didn’t have a solid anatomical foundation to build my work around. I had an intuitive grasp of the figure, developed from life drawing and illustration, but there wasn’t the quality that comes from a complete understanding of anatomy.

My time in Florence introduced me to the study of anatomy, and started me on a long personal journey investigating the depth and complexity of the body until I understood the figure completely.

My anatomy workshops began when I started to appreciate that many, many artists working digitally (games, VFX, etc.) as well as traditionally, don’t have the foundation they need to successfully execute the work they imagine. The first course I gave was a short, half-day anatomy lecture to Sony in London. It received great feedback from the artists and a longer anatomy workshop was developed to cover the full body. The course that I teach today was born out of these early lectures.

Centre NAD: In your bio, you indicate that you studied traditional fine arts at the Florence Academy of Art in Italy. Can you explain what lessons you learned during your studies and how these lessons have helped you in your work at Framestore?
Scott: My time in Florence was an opportunity to dedicate a complete block of time to studying art – no computers, no scripting, no software crashes, just traditional mediums. The things I learned there relate to my day-to-day work in that they helped put in place part of the foundation in figurative art that I used to build CG characters.

Centre NAD: Today, how do you integrate your knowledge of the traditional fine arts into your Anatomy for Digital Artists class intended for 3D design professionals?
Scott: At a fundamental level, the knowledge a classically trained painter or sculptor uses to construct a figure is not different from what a digital artist needs to understand. In fact, I would say that a digital artist needs to understand far more about the body that a painter or sculptor. From concept design to modelling, rigging, and animation, there has to be a complete understanding of the body – joint placements, bony landmarks, facial expressions, ranges of motion, shape changes during deformation, etc. There is so much to know. The course takes the classical lessons of anatomy that DaVinci and Michelangelo worked so hard to pioneer and builds on them with modern tools like action photography, MRI data, video, and Zbrush.

Centre NAD: We had the pleasure of welcoming you last August. This time, on March 3rd, you will be giving an additional, more practical, course entitled Digital Figure Sculpture in Zbrush. Can you explain what this course entails and how it differs from the main class?
Scott: This workshop is designed to show how the theory taught in the anatomy course is applied in 3d to create great digital figures in Zbrush. We start by blocking in a figure and then we refine proportions and establish the skeletal landmarks talked about in the anatomy course. From there we define the major planes and volumes of the body before focusing our attention on muscles groups and the finer details. Zbrush 3.5 is used for the course so many of the tools and techniques that I used in my own work will be explained and used during the workshop. In the end I hope that artists will leave with a solid understand of how to approach constructing a figure in Zbrush and how the fundamentals of anatomy are applied to ground the figure in reality.

More info about Scott Eaton: http://www.scott-eaton.com/