Scientific Illustration Brings ZBrush™ to the Dodd

This semester, instructor and Dodd alum Wes Price (BFA ’93) joined the Lamar Dodd School of Art to offer a one-of-a-kind workshop course, Special Problems: ZBrush™ for Science Illustration. 

Traditionally the techniques used by scientific illustrators have been pencil and paint on two-dimensional paper. Nowadays, these visual communication professionals are also employing three-dimensional digital sculpting into their workflow, using a software that is more prevalent in the gaming and film industries, Pixologic ZBrush™. Recently, the Scientific Illustration area purchased ZBrush licenses for their students to have full access to this unique 3D software that is not available to them on any other part of the UGA campus.

For this nine day intensive course, Price designed a curriculum that would demystify the ZBrush interface and establish a reliable method for sculpting organic subjects in three-dimensional form. He called this approach a “Creature Sculpting Lab”, where students could bring their own fantastic beasts to life by blending together bits and pieces of common everyday critters. The students pitched their ideas on paper, studied the details of real specimens for authenticity, and learned how to use the powerful tools of the software itself, a software which many of the students had never tried before. As a bonus, the students were exposed to current 3D scanning techniques and guided through 3D printing of their sculptures in the Dodd’s Object Lab.

Led by Professor Gene Wright, the students within the Scientific Illustration area are developing their skills and portfolios to further their education at the next level and to gain acceptance into graduate programs in medical illustration. Price shared that “this course has been instrumental to them in their pursuit to learn new technologies that are current in the industry of science and medical illustration.”

Wes Price is a certified medical illustrator with over 20 years professional experience in illustration and education. For 12 years he served as an associate professor at the Art Institute of Colorado, where he was named Faculty of the Year in 2011. He enjoys experimenting with 3D illustration techniques using photogrammetry, digital sculpting and 3D printing. Currently he is faculty in the department of Anatomical Sciences at St. George’s University School of Medicine in Grenada, West Indies, with a special interest in medical illustration. Price uses digital sculpting techniques to build three-dimensional models of complex anatomical regions, mostly for research publication purposes.