ZBrushCentral

What ZBrush Means To Me

Watching the live videos of ZBrush Summit 2018 over the weekend I couldn’t help but think about what ZBrush/Pixologic has done for me since I first learned about digital sculpting. A little bit about myself. I’d always been interested in art and music since I was a kid. I joined the United States Marine Corps right after high school and spent 5 years as an F-18 Communication/Navigation Tech(basically Avionics). After I finished my enlistment I went to college for 3 1/2 years studying Media Arts and Animation. My main goal was to create 3D characters for games and movies. Ironically they never even mentioned ZBrush, they just focused on box modeling characters in 3Ds Max and Maya. To say the least, I wasn’t very inspired by what I learned there. Before I left college(due to an issue between the VA and the college) I came across a picture of a digital sculpt created in ZBrush. A few months later I tried the program for myself and to be honest, it changed my life.

See, after I left the Marines, I honestly couldn’t seem to find a direction to go in life. I worked various jobs like being a maintenance man, home repair guy, fence builder, and a short time as a graphic designer for a furniture company. Even with college I hadn’t found my niche in life. I’d lost the comradery and sense of belonging that I’d known while in the Marines.

As I started learning about ZBrush and the community that it has, I reached out to people like Joe Menna, T.S. Wittelsbach, and other industry professionals, who were kind enough to give me advice about this and that. That’s the amazing thing about the ZBrush community is that we share the same mindset, curiosity, and thirst for creative freedom. It’s never about ego or status, it’s about helping each other grow as artists regardless of if you’re a novice or a seasoned professional.

ZBrush has provided us with the tools to explore areas of 3D printing, CNC milling, movies, animation, games, education, illustration, etc. that haven’t been explored yet. It truly allows the user to create his or her’s own destiny and literally take dreams and ideas and turn them into a reality. I know for me it has. It’s brought purpose and direction into my life again. It’s provided me with a solid career that I’d only dreamed of.

ZBrush is more than just a digital sculpting program. It’s a powerful voice in this deafening world. Pixologic is more than just a company. It actually cares about it’s users and what they are creating. That’s a very rare thing.

So I guess the purpose of this post is just to say thank you to the amazing team at Pixologic for such an amazing and powerful program and thank you to this awesome community of extremely talented artists. Also a big thank you to Paul Gaboury for taking an interest in my work and promoting it. You all rock!3021721_orig.jpg