This year, the Pixologic team is pleased to announce our participation in the CTN Animation Expo. This event is the only one of its kind, bringing together a diverse group of artists from both the 2D and 3D worlds. Join us as we celebrate the past, present and future achievements of industry-recognized artists at this year's event.
In case you haven't heard, CTN is short for the Creative Talent Network and the expo will no doubt be a hot bed for creative talent. With live demonstrations, networking receptions, master workshops, panel discussions, and professional exhibits to name a few, you can bet this year's expo will be even more popular than last year.
Don't miss this amazing opportunity to join the Pixologic team at this year's show, along with so many talented artists across the broad spectrum of our industry.
Make sure to stop by BOOTH #43 and visit the Pixologic team. We'll have a whole host of industry-leading ZBrush artists present, demonstrating how ZBrush is used in their day-to-day work. With live demos every hour, you can be sure there will be something for everyone.
Remember, the theme for this year is, "See the Future: The Renaissance Has Begun". We here at Pixologic like to think we are helping to make that future a little clearer.
Pixologic's ZBrush: The Future is now.
Click here to expand the schedule of presenters
Featured Artists:
Bryan Wynia
Senior Character Artist, Sony Santa Monica
Bryan is currently working as a Senior Character Artist at Sony Santa Monica. Previously he worked at Naughty Dog where he contributed on Uncharted 2 and Uncharted 3. He also works as a freelance Character Designer and Sculptor. Some of his clients include, The Aaron Sims Company, Gentle Giant Studios, Electric Tiki, and Masked Avenger Studios.
His work has been featured in Famous Monsters of Filmland, Imagine FX, 3D Artist, and 3D World. Bryan has a passion for teaching and sharing his creative process. He has taught classes and workshops at The Concept Design Academy, Gnomon School of Visual Effects, and Art Center College of Design.
You can find out more about Bryan and his artwork at bryanwynia.blogspot.com.
Bryan will be sharing his basic workflow for Concept Sculpting. He will focus on how to sculpt expressive, dynamic, and unique characters using the newest brushes and features of ZBrush which allows Bryan to freely create his designs.
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Dustin Blattner
Dustin Blattner is currently an Associate Character Artist at Sony Studios Santa Monica. His work is characterized by a remarkable attention to detail and realism. As a recipient of multiple Best of Term Awards, and graduate of the Gnomon School of Visual Effects, Dustin is just getting started.
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Katon Callaway
Santa Monica Studio Character Artist Katon Callaway has been working as a character artist and modeller for eight years. Katon has worked in the video game industry since 2004, he has had the opportunity to work on many games such as 50 Cent: Bullet Proof, True Crime Streets of New York, Spiderman 3, and most recently God of War III.
Through out the God Of War III production, Katon played an elemental part in taking the franchise to the next generation of consoles. His involvement in the project from preproduction to final, allowed Katon to experience first hand the rapid advancement of new technology and helped set the benchmark and standard for all characters in the game. His mentoring of artists to raise the production standard is clearly seen by the end product.
Katon is currently hard at work as a Senior Character Artist inside Sony Santa Monica on their next unannounced project.
Katon will be doing speed sculpts, showing how he uses new tools in Zbrush R42 to quickly block out sculpts for practice or conception purposes. "During our lunches at work it is common for us to take a topic and do speed sculpts around and idea. It really stretches us as artist and keeps us up on the latest tools." — Katon Callaway
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Kevin Garcia
Kevin graduated from Cal State Fullerton in 2006 with a degree in Entertainment Art/Animation, and spent his last semester interning at Disney Consumer Products as an Associate Character Artist. From there he began working as a Character Sculptor for product at LittleWonder Studio beginning August of 2006. He started working as a designer and eventually made his way into traditional sculpture. ZBrush entered their workflow in his second year at the studio and has been a great help with his speed and finish. In the beginning of this year he started volunteering as a sculpting instructor at the Braille Institute of LA. Kevin is currently teaching the first ZBrush digital sculpting class at the Institute, thanks to the great help and support from the Braille Institute and the Pixologic team.
Kevin will be presenting the basics of sculpting for products. The demonstration will be how to achieve character likeness while considering the issues of package constraints, product size, and inner mechanics by sculpting a holiday themed PEZ Dispenser. The main tools he will be using are transparency, Spotlight, and DynaMesh.
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Stefano Dubay
Art and Science had always been the main driving forces in my creative career, not quite always in full agreement if not until, after finishing my bachelor degree in Mathematics, I found in Visual Effects the perfect way to join them both.
That's exactly what visual effects is for me and why it is so challenging and rewarding, it made me able to communicate creatively while being in a constant problem solving state, always looking for ways to facilitate the process and possibly eliminate redundant repetitive tasks by automation.
The big breakthrough happened when I decided to enroll in Gnomon School of Visual effects where I received a 360 degree training in the technical aspect of the craft as well as an insight of what I preferred to do as an artist. I knew I wanted to work in character development from the very beginning although I never had any formal training in art before.
While still in school I had the opportunity to work at Gentle Giant studios for a couple of years. This experience helped me to connect together all the different skills. I learned how to use a lot of different softwares, to create and edit high density models in an efficient way. In the meanwhile I perfected my sculpting and learned how to scan in 3D. Probably the most important skill learned there is how to efficiently work as a team on projects.
Gentle Giant is also a hybrid digital/traditional sculpting studio where I got to know and learn from several traditional sculptors of humbling skills what it meant to sculpt traditionally. All these things helped me out a lot when I first had to face the movie industry working at Rhythm and Hues on "Land Of The Lost" where I first helped integrating Zbrush in their production pipeline, creating digital maquettes and developing techniques to obtain quickly very dense surface details.
I then spent an year working as modeling lead at Psyop Inc – Venice where I tweaked and refined my technique to work in a commercial production environment which is by necessity very time constrained... challenging. After that I went back to movie production joining Sony Pictures Imageworks as a character artist for their upcoming animated feature Arthur Christmas created in collaboration with Aardman (just think Wallace and Gromit!) coming out end of 2011. There I learned to work in a much bigger production facility with a preexisting pipeline that was rigidly set. Even more importantly I've learned there what stylization means in the design of a cartoon character. Simplicity is a real challenge where there's no detail to rely upon to distract from the quality of the simple primary shapes that in the end make up the majority of a character and its visual appeal.
Currently I am working at Disney Animation Studio in Burbank as a digital character sculptor/modeler.
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Young Choi
Young works as a Senior Character artist at Sony Santa Monica. He have been in the game industry for over 8 years. Some of the games he has worked on that got shipped are Mercenaries, Mercenaries 2, and Lord of the Rings. The past 7 years Young has been working at Pandemic Studios where he is also able to contribute in different departments such as in world building, environment art, animation, and concept art.
Young has graduated from Art Institute of Los Angeles, and studied life drawing and painting at American Animation Institute. He is also teaching a 3D character creation class at Santa Monica College.
Young will be sharing some of the new and old features he uses while speed sculpting a character in ZBrush 4R2.
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Zac Petroc
Model Supervisor, Disney Feature Animation
At the forefront of his field, Zack Petroc continues to develop new techniques that redefine how digital tools impact the art and design of story telling. In 2005, with a commitment to driving the industry forward, he opened Zack Petroc Studios, offering services from character design and digital maquettes, to final production models. His studio has worked on the development of several feature films and video games with a recent client list that includes Disney Interactive, Scott Free Productions, SCEA, Walt Disney Imagineering, Snoot Entertainment, Hasbro, and Paramount Pictures.
Zack will be presenting a unique look into the techniques and work flows Disney's model team uses to create their award winning characters. Topics covered will include the collaborative dynamic, design interpretation, design sculpts in ZBrush, and preparing your character for the needs of down stream departments like Look and Animation. Zack will also be sharing his techniques for creating his sculpted novel "Adaboy". From story inception to world fundamentals, attendees will get an inside glimpse into the development of this unique intellectual property.
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