The below is the work from an 11 week zbrush course I taught at the Art Institute of Los Angeles - California. Students are anywhere from 2nd quarter - 7th quarter and had little to no understanding of zbrush. Each piece is from a different student.
The class was so much fun to teach. A great experiment on my part. I decided to teach zbrush different than I had been teaching it with great results. Instead of me teaching the students zbrush to the students…I had the students teach each other zbrush.
The first week I did a 15 min WOW demo of zbrush.Something to make them see the cool and power of zbrush. I made an orc head in like 15 min and their jaws dropped. I then told them…cool…now teach yourself. I told them of the importance of learning to teach yourself in the world we live in. Not waiting for a teacher to spoon feed you information.
The first week I had them look at the great zbrush “ getting started movies” on zbrush.com. There homework was to watch all of them and do the sword and vase videos. I then broke them into teams of three and assigned them a topic in zbrush…subtools, brushes, etc. I broke zbrush down into logical chunks of information. They then had to go back for homework and research that topic…using anything they could find on the internet. Then come back the next week and teach it to the class. It went great…because it was students teaching each other they listened more and had way more fun. I was there to right the ship if it went wrong and offer some other solutions to problems but they taught it to themselves just using the great zbrush.info wiki and other internet resources like youtube.
It is part of this new philosophy I have as a teacher. The old days of teaching are over…where a teacher has a book for a class…he gives the book to students and then just interprets book to students for 11 weeks. I believe that became irrelevant when the internet happened. Instead of just having that teacher knowledge and expertise…you have the whole world. You just need to teach the students how to navigate that world. Now because of youtube and so many other resources…students should be taught how to self teach. I believe then can learn much better in the long run if you teach a student to teach himself or herself. Especially in today’s quickly changing world of technology. Give a man an apple he will eat for a day…teach a man to plant a tree…he will never be hungry.
So below are the results of a class that taught zbrush to themselves. 99% of all geometry…even the hard surface stuff was made entirely in zbrush. The new hardsurface tools are amazing in zbrush.…Most students didn’t even know how to open 3dsmax. Also I taught them to render and composite there materials and lighting in photoshop. All renders were done in zbrush and photoshop. The results to me are staggering.
Zbrush had been considered a " and then learn this " program. Meaning…learn max and maya first and then zbrush. I however am taking another approach to our program at AILA. I want to teach zbrush first. It is the most artistic program for 3d in the world and I this students will become better 3d artists by learning it first.
Enjoy!
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