I had the pleasure of meeting Jordu Schell the other day as he gave a wonderful presentation of his work, the field of special effects, as well as a sculpting demo to a massive audience At Rhode Island School of Design. I must confess I am a huge fan of Jordu, I love sculpting, love to see sculpture, love to learn the process (I am the annoying guy asking silly questions in the back) and I love to sculpt. Sculpting helps me understand the shapes and volumes that I am trying to get across in 2d form. Sculpting is hands on experience in structure, how forms turn in space, why edges might be sharp or soft in perception, how gravity effects form, how…. but I digress this is an introduction to the wonderful and amazing world of Jordu Schell, a charmer, an eccentric and a wildly passionate artist.
Check out his site for lots and lots of cool works as well as info about his classes.
Jordu is a living legend.
Jon,
Did he say anything about the future of the hand arts versus all digital?
Peter
Does a market still exist for sculpture? I see people doing everything on the computer now.
He did talk a little about these subjects. Mostly he is excited about the blend of these two mediums such as in Pan's Labyrinth (the dude with he finger eyes). He did mention a certain trepidation about the digital work taking over but thinks the meld of the two forms will provide the best results. Honestly I think traditional sculpture is still just as viable with scanning processes and such, could just come down to which medium you are more comfortable with. Nothing like have the volume and forms under your hands for understanding and connection though. I will have to post more on the subject of tradition versus digital in the future.
Yup. good stuff! Jordu's amazing!
Hi, I have been using – or trying to use – sculpture as a way to help me understand my characters better. Sometimes I just have a hard time taking my initial sketch and turning the characters head in a new sketch, I can't get the same characteristics… my Sculpy sculptures help me out in this situation. One lesson I did learn at the IMC2010 with my frost titan is that it's vital the sculpture is anatomically accurate… you can see in my image that I really messed up the arms[IMC2010 student work]…my arms on the sculpture were rough but in my panic to get the drawing done I didn't fix the arms or recognize the errors until the week was over. At the same time, creating a quick ref sculpture helped me understand and define the character pose. In regards to digital vs. traditional work… I like traditional hands down, it's like Jon says there's a physical connection digital can't give you. My biggest challenge is trying to balance both sculpture concepts and drawing concepts with my time constraints. Both sculpting and drawing feed off each other, but sometimes I don't know which one to end with or which one to pursue. In that spot now with the 3rd rendition of the Frost Titan [it's the fix the anatomy rendition], my fake deadlines are causing me to flounder between the two concepts. I'm curious if you've had this issue Jon in real life on deadline assignments? And how do you deal with knowing that if you create a ref sculpture it is going to take time from creating a final illustration? Is it simply just knowing that the sculpture will save you time by increasing the understanding of a pose/situation? Thanks for the post… Mike Perusse, Part time dabbling artist, IMC2010 student.
Anonymous 9:20pm,
I struggle with the same artistic ADD or floundering as you put it. I feel inspired to pursue many creative things even beyond the realm of visual art but I worry there is a lot of danger in not specializing. That is to say if you want to achieve a certain level of mastery in a career then you must focus on a practice. I like to imagine famous historical figures that have since then become archetypes of their own achievements and then try to imagine them in other pursuits. It seems unnatural. It helps keep me focused on fewer goals. I know there are individuals out there who can succeed in many things but they seem few and far between. What is the old saying? “A jack of all trades but a master of none”
Just some thoughts,
– Joey