READERSVOICE.COM: What are some of your favorite books or audiobooks, and what are some interesting books you’ve come across lately?
DANIEL BYSTEDT: I recently finished Ready Player One by Ernest Cline. It’s a great treasure hunt/sci-fi story set in a dystopian future. I really enjoyed all the 80s pop-culture references in the book. Another old favorite is Phantom by Susan Kay. It’s a story about the Phantom of the opera, from birth until death.
RV: You have a video tutorial series for creating a sci fi character with ZBrush. If someone has no experience in digital art, and didn’t even know Photoshop, what steps would you advise them to take and which programs would you recommend they learn first?
DB: I would start with basic art fundamentals, which you can practise with just pen and paper. Things like anatomy, perspective and character design. If you feel ready to start drawing digitally, most people use Photoshop. I can also recommend Krita, which is a free painting application/photo editor. If you would like to start 3d art, I really recommend Blender which is a free 3d application. The best application for sculpting digitally is Zbrush. There is also a new release called Zbrush Core which includes the most important functions and is also a lot cheaper than the normal version of ZBrush. In order to learn any of these application I recommend a good old Google search or checking YouTube. There are a lot of great learning applications online. For learning ZBrush I can recommend ZClassroom at Pixologic’s website http://pixologic.com/zclassroom/
RV: When you add textures like skin or leather or rock in Blender, Substance Painter and ZBrush, do you photograph samples of these textures in real life? Do you somehow wrap these around the clay-like sculptures? How do you apply textures?
DB: I have never photographed a texture in my life. There are so many great texture resources online that I don’t need to take photos. After doing a uv layout, I usually paint textures in Substance Painter. If I’m doing creature skin I tend to use ZBrush’s poly paint for the base layer. If you need good textures you can visit textures.com or polligon.com.
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– copyright Simon Sandall
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