xviiIntroduction
Welcome to ZBrush Character Creation: Advanced Digital Sculpting, Second Edition. I wrote
this book to pull together the tools and techniques I have gathered over the past few years as a
digital sculptor from both personal experience and the openness and sharing of other ZBrush
artists. It is my hope that this book will help build on your experience with ZBrush and open
up new and exciting techniques using the program.
This book focuses specifically on character sculpting and painting with ZBrush. Creature
and character work has been the focus of my career for the past 10 years, and since moving into
a digital workflow with ZBrush, I have seen the possibilities for artists to explode. We will cover
topics from basic sculpting to more advanced techniques of building form and character. We
will also look at painting skin and adding fine details to our characters. Throughout the book,
I have invited some friends to add their own experience with ZBrush in the sidebars. Every artist
works differently, and we can learn so much from seeing other approaches to the same problems.
In addition to working as a sculptor and designer, I have been an instructor at the Gnomon
School of Visual Effects in Hollywood teaching ZBrush both on site and online. I have also
taught ZBrush at a variety of studios and schools in both hemispheres of the world. In this time I
have seen a variety of students, from beginner to advanced, approach ZBrush and learn the tool-
set. This experience has helped me craft this book in a way that I hope will be most beneficial to
you, the reader.
In my teaching, I have found that it is important to learn the ins and outs of the software.
Knowing how to find the tools is, of course, necessary. I have also seen that just as important is
an understanding of what to do with the tools you learn. It is easy to find the Standard brush,
for instance, but I illustrate how to use the brushes to build a character with sound structure,
form, and an eye toward sculptural anatomy. These foundation artistic principles are the core
of good work whether you are making it in ZBrush or in clay.
Who Should Read This Book
This book is for anyone who wants to sculpt creatures and characters in ZBrush. It is best to
work from the first exercises through the book if you are new to ZBrush. You may also skip
to the section specific to your center of interest. For this reason I have sought to include many
examples of how to approach digital sculpting from an artistic perspective in the book. It is
not by any means the last word on the subject, but I find that my own experience in traditional
media has helped me in ZBrush. I hope that by applying the same principles of gesture, form,
and proportion to this book it will help you as well. It is easy to become preoccupied with the
technology, so we often need to step back and look at the art itself. Because this is a sculptural
medium and a series of still images can only show so much, I have included most of the exer-
cises on the DVD in video form. You can watch these and see the steps performed in real time.
This book is for the intermediate ZBrush user. I assume a certain amount of experi-
ence but I have also been careful to include enough information that a new user can grasp
the topics quickly. For a more foundational introduction to the tools, I recommend looking
at Eric Keller’s Introducing ZBrush (Sybex, 2008).