Neville Page
Neville Page is a concept designer in the entertainment industry. Neville is also a teacher at the Art Center College of Design and at the Gnomon School of Visual Effects in California. Some of Neville’s credits include Cloverfield, Avatar, The Hulk, Star Trek 2008, Tron, and The Watchman. Neville has a line of educational DVDs available from www.thegnomonworkshop.com as well as an upcoming line of educational art products. Neville’s portfolio can be seen at www.nevillepage.com as well as an upcoming line of educational art products. Neville’s portfolio can be seen at www.nevillepage.com.
Jerad Marantz
Jerad S. Marantz has been working in both the film and game industry for over ten years. After graduating from the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California, he started designing for Stan Winston Studio. He has also freelanced for several special FX houses including Amalgamated Dynamics Inc., Quantum Creation FX, Creature Effects Inc., and Almost Human. Currently he is the lead designer at the Aaron Sims Company. Jerad’s work can be seen at www.jeradsmarantz.blogspot.com.
Cesar Dacol
Cesar Luis Dacol has worked in the film industry for nearly 20 years, having started his career in the makeup effects industry and transitioning to computers effects in the mid-1990’s. With a background in anatomy and traditional sculpting, he quickly adapted to the 3D world of computers. For the past five years Cesar has worked primarily as lead and modeling supervisor, contributing to many feature films such as 300, Barnyard, and Fantastic Four.
Ian Joyner
Ian Joyner has been a character modeler for more than five years. In that time he has worked on everything from feature films to critically acclaimed video game cinematics. Ian’s work can be seen in many projects, including BioShock, Marvel Ultimate Alliance, Hellgate: London, Warhammer: Age of Reckoning and Halo Wars; the feature films Rocky 6 (Rocky Balboa) and James Cameron’s Aliens of the Deep; and the award-winning short A Gentlemen’s Duel by Blur Studio.
Jim McPherson
Starting in the 1980s in the makeup and special effects industry, Jim has worked with Rick Baker’s Cinovation Studios on Gremlins 2, The Nutty Professor, Matinee, Men in Black, and Planet of the Apes. Rick’s philosophy of sculptural character design has been a huge influence in Jim’s work. The opportunity to design characters under his tutelage was an educational experience that cannot be matched. Previous to the dragon tutorial in this book, Jim has sculpted for designer Miles Teves on a dragon maquette for the film Reign of Fire.
Jim currently works with the team at Gentle Giant Studios. The digital sculpting team has completed work on many of the characters in Sega’s “Golden Axe.” The digital artists work in close proximity with a brilliant team of traditional sculptors. This is the correct atmosphere to meet the challenge of applying the principles of sculpture in digital modeling.
Zack Petroc
Zack Petroc has a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from the Cleveland Institute of Art with a major in sculpture and dual minor in drawing and digital media. Additionally, he studied anatomy at Case School of Medicine and figure sculpture in Florence, Italy. Zack uses his strong design background for both his traditional and digital work. This allows him to contribute to the artistic vision of a project not only during the concept design stage, but also throughout production. Zack is currently working as a freelance art director and concept designer for feature film and video games. He is also a member of the Art Directors Guild Technology Committee.
Alex Alvarez
Alex is founder and director of the Gnomon Workshop and of the Gnomon School of Visual Effects in Hollywood. Having dedicated the last decade to educating students and professional artists around the world, Alex has helped change the face of computer graphics and design education. He has been published in industry magazines, websites, and books, and he has taught courses at several major trade conferences. Alex is president of the Los Angeles Maya Users Group and sits on the Advisory Boards for Highend3D.com and CGSociety. He continues to work on personal and professional projects, recently as a creature development artist on the James Cameron film Avatar. Prior to Gnomon, Alex worked for Alias|Wavefront as a consultant and trainer for studios in the Los Angeles area. Alex is an alumnus of the Art Center College of Design and the University of Pennsylvania.
Eddie Yang
Eddie has been working in the film industry for 22 years, creating characters for such films as Clash of the Titans, Ironman, The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian, Superman, The Grinch, Planet of the Apes, and Men in Black. Eddie started his career as a sculptor/designer for Academy Award winning make-up effects artist Rick Baker in 1987. After a 16-year career with Rick, Eddie pursued a career in digital effects before joining the Stan Winston Studio in 2003. Today he offers his services through www.eddieyang.com.
Ryan Kingslien
Ryan Kingslien is a digital sculptor working to advance the state of digital sculpting and develop new ways to use the computer as an artist’s tool. He is the founder of ZBrushWorkshops.com.
Svengali
As a leading creator of some of the most useful plug-ins for ZBrush, Svengali can be found at www.zbrushcentral.com.
Fabian Loing
Fabian Loing was born in Jakarta, Indonesia, and is currently a character artist living in Canada and working for Pandemic Studios.
Image Contributors
In addition, I would like to thank the following for consenting to include images of their work in the book. I hope you find these images as compelling and inspiring as I do.
- Alex Oliver, “The Mummy”
- Arran Lewis, “ZSphere anatomy”
- Magdalena Dadela, “Old woman”
- Steve Jubinville, “The darkness monster”
- Joel Mongeon, “Studio Wall series”