Which medium do you use to design stuff?

[Steve-O]

I'm rubbish at drawing and I haven't got the patience for computers.  I find it quicker to sculpt a rough maquette.  I've seen some great designs on computer where the maquette is photographed then monkied around with using some fancy computer programme.  Is that the done thing now?  What computer software do people use nowdays?   Is "monkied" a word?

[Zombianca]

Through an odd bit of luck I have acquired a copy of Zbrush.  I have really enjoyed playing around with it, and need to get serious about learning how to use it.  I mistakenly thought it would be a slightly more advanced version of Photoshop... I could not have been more wrong.

Typically I draw something first, because for now, my drawing is better than my sculpting.  I am great at mimicry though, so once I have something drawn I can usually sculpt it pretty easily.  Freehand sculpting has always been hard for me, maybe ZBrush will change that.

[Steve-O]

If this scheduled chat session goes well on 29th April, I'll look into asking and expert in z-brush and photoshop to do a live Q&A session in the chatroom. What do you think?

[Lost in the Orient]

You ought to see if you can get Neal Kennemore to do it.  Neal is a younger guy, but does a lot of digital design work for his and other people's sculptures and paint jobs in the LA area.  He actually lives at my house in LA.  He goes by Tube Disaster on the "LAB" if you can manage to reach him on there. 

[Zombianca]

A Zbrush expert would be awesome!

I'm doing an okay job teaching myself with online tutorials, but hearing from someone who actually uses it would be great.

[mudpusher]

I used to use plastiline or clay maquettes to generate quick half sculpts, photograph them and take them into photoshop for refining, but now, I only ever use zbrush and photoshop and the whole process has become so much quicker and sooo much more versatile, it's insane how much possibilities it has open for me.

it is actually a stong possibility that I maght be doing an introduction to zbrush 3  days course some time in june this year win partnership with mouldlife.

I will let you now as soon as it become real enough!

[Steve-O]

Hey Martin!  I love that maquette thing where you sculpt just half then photo graph it 3/4 on both sides, then flip and paste it in photoshop to make a complete thing.  If you get a chance  or already have some pictures on file to do a step by step how to and post it in a seperate topic on the forum that would be rather thrilling, I think a lot of people would love to see the technique!

Great to have you at the forum old bean.

Steve

[ian-j]

Hi Martin,
saw you doing some brilliant things with z-brush at the trade show last jan..... must learn how to use that programme. for me i sometimes use photoshop but realy prefer just getting dug in to the clay and start sculpting.

[Alain]

Forgive my late reply, but I just come across this thread…

Not being too good at drawing, I also think quicker to sculpt roughly a shape to show something special, but it still takes about 2-3 days for a full face… I was , too, wondering if ZBrush might be a quicker solution, and thus worth the enormous investment (specially for Mac computers), but it is really hard to get a simple and easy info and demo is outrageously expensive here…

So, the idea of an expert in ZBrush and other softs alike, would be a nice idea. Could Steve O put this idea up to an actual Q&A session ?

[Steve-O]

I will do just that 

[Werewolf33]

I must say that like both Steve and Alain, I am hopeless at drawing, so I just go from what is in my head to the final sculpt and refine it as I go, I have a very vivid imagination luckily, so I usually have a very clear picture in my minds eye of what I want to achieve and it's far clearer than anything I could draw, so for me, it's from my head straight to the clay form.