Zbrushing ‘n people sketching: Getting out of the comfort zone

Excellent new year to everyone! After taking a long deserved holiday, I am back to learning new techniques and pushing personal boundaries -mine and others; Me and another girl decided to invade a coffee house today, and practice our drawing skills on the other customers. It might be a bit naughty thing to do, but we try to be discreet. We are meeting later today. I feel excited already, as I tend to be somewhat shy and avoid conflicts. But this will definitely be good for me, in matters of learning and in matters of courage -and if I get caught, I can always offer to draw a portrait as compensation? (and then run fast if the other person doesn’t find it funny!)

As I felt it would make a great combo, I started picking up Zbrush simultaneously with drawing. Previously being a Mudbox user, the UI in Zbrush is a labyrinth of madness and pure horror. If it came just to UI, I wouldn’t leave Mudbox, but raw firepower of options and variability is really a much better reason to base a choice to, and that Zbrush has covered. I am still watching tutorials and trying to progress one area at the time, making sure I understand what I’m seeing and am able to repeat the commands. Sometimes the UI causes random screams like “what the hell, why is that there” and “who would….why….” and “that doesn’t….It can’t…..” but it won’t get the better of me. All those horrible UI design failures will not scare me away.

So the wintery sun is shining, cat is being lazy, and creativity and excitement are flowing. There is a good chance I’ll be posting some of my anatomy rehearsals from Zbrush in the near future. All in all everything is going steady, and I am soon moving into actual sculpting and producing few prototypes before engaging into long term projects. I plan to gain a deep level of understanding of this program and really weld it a sturdy part of my arsenal of tools.