I am just back from a three-day Facial Anatomy workshop at the legendary Valve Corporation. It was great to be back in Seattle for a return visit. As many of you know, Valve is an incredible company with a very unique studio environment, so it is always fun to work with them for a few days.

The Valve crew had just wrapped the 3rd Annual Dota2 International, a five-on-five tournament with a first prize of $1.4m (more than quite a few ‘traditional’ sporting championships), so there was a bit of a Dota theme running through the place. Donkey couriers greeted me in the lobby and then the impressive Aegis of Champions turned up later. If you are at all curious to see how videos games are rapidly becoming a spectator sport, watch one of the final games and check out the crowd on hand at Benaroya Hall in Seattle.

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I am just back from giving an intense but enjoyable week of anatomy masterclasses to a talented group of artists at Sony’s Santa Monica studio. These are the guys and girls who have the enviable job of crafting the God of War franchise, a series of amazing games steeped in Greek mythology, a theme after my own heart.

Over four days I covered a ton of anatomy for the character artists, concepts artists, animators and riggers at the studio. But by late in the third day everyone was reaching saturation so we had a little fun trying to update my infamous Gallery Abominate with some of their work from God of War Ascension. The most interesting discovery from the week though: cervical ribs occur in approximately .2% of the population, and one artist on the course had this ‘neck rib’, making him officially a statistical outlier. Exciting stuff ;).

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!

At Skywalker Ranch

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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!