Create Anywhere With ZBrush for iPad Freelance Artist Ashley A. Adams on how well the iPad version handles her free-form sketching.
Ashley A. Adams started using ZBrush in college while completing her bachelor’s degree in 2D animation. It wasn’t taught in her classes, but she saw a classmate using it outside of school and thought “digital clay was the coolest thing.”
Ten years later, ZBrush is one of the main tools she uses in her career as a freelance artist in Montreal, Canada, specializing 3D/2D visual development and character concepting, painting, and sculpting for shows for children and teenagers. Maxon invited Adams, a ZBrush Live presenter since 2017, to beta test ZBrush for iPad.
Here is what she has to say about her experience with the app so far, as well as her professional and personal work.
Please tell us how you got into digital sculpting and what you’re doing now.
Adams: During college, the jump from 2D to ZBrush felt fluid and fun, and I was able to mess around with digital clay with no technical expectations. Since I loved video games, I was finally able to experiment with making game characters and that passion for games, and the curiosity to learn ZBrush, pushed me to create a 3D short film in my final year, which led to my first character modeling job.
While my professional work is mostly in the kids/teens animation sphere, my personal projects include a lot of creature concepts and aged-up stylized work. I creature sketch on the ZBrush Live streams where people sometimes assume I work in games due to the nature of my personal work, but it’s simply a criss-cross of varying interests. Don’t get me wrong: I’d love to work in games should the right opportunity arise, but I also love my work in animation.
Describe your creative process for using ZBrush.
Adams: I work differently in ZBrush for professional and personal projects. I love that I can customize the UI to feel natural and fluid, allowing me to focus on the artistic aspects of 3D. When working in a professional pipeline, I focus on optimizing the sculpts into models after I have achieved an approved look, allowing for the many back-and-forth changes common in film.
For personal projects, I use ZBrush to quickly sketch creature sculpts, which I render in Keyshot, then paint over and comp in Photoshop. I jump back and forth from ZBrush to Keyshot to get the right composition and send it over once for a render and paint-up within one or two sittings and sometimes I also use Substance Painter.
What’s it been like giving ZBrush for iPad a try?
Adams: I saw the opportunity to sketch literally anywhere I went with an iPad and it was too good to miss! I’ve enjoyed a lot of what the beta version has to offer and the product team at Maxon has been very involved with all the testers and receptive to feedback and suggestions.
I also wanted to know if it could handle my free-form sketching style the same way the desktop version could. I’m impressed with how well it handles higher-resolution meshes.
How did your creative process on the iPad compare to the desktop?
Adams: I did some sketching on the iPad the same way I do it on my desktop to test how the beta handled frequent hi-res Dynameshing and ease of navigation. Though I started the Space Cat in the early alpha/beta, I found I could work freely at multi-million polygon resolutions.
I sculpted the cat in pose and achieved the gesture I was going for by navigating around my 13-inch screen. To create the final color illustration, I used the same Keyshot and Photoshop render and paint workflow as I do for my desktop ZBrush work. The iPad also handled body blocking and some stylized sculpting with a demon character I made very well.
What excites you about the potential of ZBrush for iPad for your work?
Adams: Although the bulk of my professional work will still be done on the desktop, there are times when I need to be away from my computer. Taking ZBrush for iPad with me to iterate on concepts I’m working on will be helpful, and for personal projects it will be fantastic for sketching out ideas wherever I go.
Helena Swahn is a writer in London, UK.