This week The Gnomon Workshop releases a new series of Dynamic Figure Drawing DVDs by DC Comics artist David Finch. Finch is a veteran comic book illustrator who recently joined DC Comics after a long stint at Marvel Comics working on such titles as Ultimate X-Men, Avengers Disassembled, The New Avengers, Moon Knight and Ultimatum. These new DVDs focus on teaching the techniques artists need in order to draw the human figure from multiple angles and poses without the need for tracing and using reference. Each DVD covers specific areas of anatomy that are often difficult for artists to visualize and translate from their imagination to paper. Finch breaks down the human figure to easily understood forms and reveals some easy to remember shortcuts and tricks for making your figures more convincing. Further, he covers male and female differences in all three titles, and he also delves into exaggerating the form to create realistic looking fantasy characters. Besides being a must have set for all concept artists and illustrators, these titles will also help any artist that needs to visualize dynamic human poses such as a story board artist or animator. We’re excited to publish this captivating set of demonstrations, a great follow up to Finch’s amazing DVD series on Comic Book Illustration with inker Joe Weems and colorist Steve Firchow.

"Dave Finch is one of the most dynamic illustrators working in commercial art today. His amazing layouts, his unique character designs and his extraordinary flair to create exciting images are nothing but top flight. And it’s fun… something that’s incredibly difficult to pull off and he does so consistently."

Jeph Loeb
Eisner Award winning writer
Co-Executive Producer, Heroes

Read the Press Release: click here
All of these titles are available as digital download and are also featured in our training subscription plans.

Dynamic Figure Drawing Volume 1: The Head
Dynamic Figure Drawing Volume 2: Hands and Feet
Dynamic Figure Drawing Volume 3: The Body

This week The Gnomon Workshop is excited to announce the first release of Training DVDs for 2010. We have an eclectic mix of titles that cover everything from sculpting expressions to shot breakdowns for a music video. We’re also pleased to welcome two new instructors into the library, Jeremy Cook and Wayne Barlowe.

The Making of White Swan, by Sil van der Woerd is a new 3 disc set that breaks down the entire production process for the music video "White Swan", winner of "Best Music Video" at HDfest. Sil collaborated with students from the Gnomon School of Visual Effects for all of the effects, and together they cover their particular responsibilities for the production. Each disc explores a particular phase in the production’s pipeline from concept to final compositing. This comprehensive title is over 17 hours of lecture and 3 hours of bonus material including a round table discussion and video of the world premiere event at Gnomon.

Wayne Barlowe’s lecture, Rendering Fantasy Characters in Pencil, is a visual treat that reveals Wayne’s process for designing creatures and rendering in pencil. He begins with a presentation of his artwork and then guides the viewer through a step-by-step process for executing a typical character design for feature film. Wayne is an award winning illustrator whose work can be found on hundreds of book and magazine covers. He’s written and illustrated many amazing books on extraterrestrial life and hell. Wayne has also designed creature for many films including the recently released Avatar for which he was credited for Initial Creature Concepts.

Jeremy Cook’s DVD, CG Survival Kit: From Concept to Final Image, is filled with great tips for CG artists with a focus on working efficiently and holistically. The lecture covers a range of topics from layout, modeling and rendering in 3ds Max to compositing a still in Photoshop. Jeremy brings to his DVD all of his experience working on Transformers, Star Wars Episode 3 and Mission Impossible 3 as well as many TV commercials and game cinematics.

We are also very proud to announce the release of a new addition to John Brown’s sculpture series, Sculpting Expression and Fantasy Characters. This 2 disc set covers an array of topics and techniques including sculpting a quarter-scale male bust, sculpting expression, molding and casting, sculpting details and digital painting in Photoshop. In addition to John’s long list of feature film credits and extensive experience as a bronze figurative artist, John’s finely tuned teaching style reflects his over ten years of teaching figurative sculpture at Gnomon School of Visual Effects, and seven DVDs for The Gnomon Workshop.

Read the Press Release: click here
All of these titles are available as digital download and are also featured in our training subscription plans.

The Making of White Swan with Sil van der Woerd
Rendering Fantasy Characters in Pencil with Wayne Barlowe
Sculpting Expression and Fantasy Characters with John Brown
CG Survival Kit: Concept to Final Image with Jeremy Cook

Waylon Brinck has been designing and creating video games since he was a young child. He began his professional career in 1998 when he co-founded Guild Software, an indie game development house, in his hometown of Milwaukee, Wisconsin. In the intervening years he’s racked up game dev experience in multiple disciplines including art, design and engineering. He is currently a CG Supervisor at EA Los Angeles on the Medal of Honor franchise, and he teaches game development classes at the Gnomon School of Visual Effects. Most recently Waylon shipped “Medal of Honor: Airborne,” one of the first titles released on the Unreal® Engine 3.
Read the interview with Christian

Happy Holidays from the Gnomon Workshop! In our final release of Visual Effects tutorials for the decade, we’re proud to present over 19 hours After Effects tutorials by industry veteran and Gnomon School instructor Ergin Kuke. Just in time for Winter Break, these downloadable tutorials cover a wide gamut of tools and topics, with extensive coverage of the basic tools, tracking, using 3D, keying and more. Highlights of this release include a variety of project-based advanced tutorials covering effects and compositing techniques you might see in commercials, effects shots and opening title sequences. Stay warm, be safe, have fun ramping up your After Effects skills and see you in 2010!

These tutorials are also available as part of our training subscription. See more information on all of these great titles below.

After Effects Tutorials Essential Techniques with Ergin Kuke

This week, The Gnomon Workshop is thrilled to announce a huge end of year training DVD release, covering a myriad of subjects from Matte Painting and Character Animation, to Digital Illustration, Creature and Character Design.

From returning instructor Terryl Whitlatch, creature design legend of Star Wars: Episode One, we have a continuation of her creature design series. Volume 3 in her series covers horse-based creature design and delves into horse anatomy while Volume 4 covers her design and story development for a Toad-Ogre creature.

Christian Alzmann, from ILM, joins our ever-growing library with his first DVD titled Digital Illustration Techniques. This title covers his illustration techniques using Painter and Photoshop, as he discusses composition, light and shadow, using reference, applying color and storytelling devices.

Scott Patton, from Legacy Effects, delivers a two volume series on 3D Character Design. In these DVDs he shows the processes he uses to create finished character designs for feature films, using ZBrush and Photoshop. His workflow skips the 2D sketch phase all together as he designs the character entirely within ZBrush. The benefit of this method of design is that it’s more interactive and has allowed him to work with directors one-on-one directly in 3D.

And we have two new additions to the Behind the Scenes Series of DVDs which follows the creation of a game cinematic sequence from concept to completion. In Volume Six, Burke Roane, of Rhythm and Hues, demonstrates the process for animating an action sequence and a close-up of the lead character in Maya. In Volume Seven, Jared Simeth, of Luma Pictures, shows his process for creating two matte paintings using Maya and Photoshop. Both DVDs feature production meetings with either the Art Director or Animation Supervisor.

Read the Press Release: click here

Details are available by following the link below:

Digital Illustration Techniques with Christian Alzmann
View Large Image Creature Design with Terryl Whitlatch 3 – The Marine Mare and Uberhorse
Creature Design with Terryl Whitlatch 4 Toad-ogre Creature Concept and Story
3D Character Design Volume 1 Proto-concepting for Film with Scott Patton
3D Character Design Volume 2 From Concept Model to Presentation Art with Scott Patton
Matte Painting for Production with Jared Simeth
Action and Close-up Animation Animation Techniques with Burke Roane