This workshop aims to help artists develop their digital sculpting skills while maintaining artistic energy and creativity in their work. In this lesson, Krystal encourages artists to break free from production rigidity, to follow along with their own projects, and notes that the skills shown in this lesson work best if you apply lots and lots of practice on your own.

Duration: 1m 41s

In this lesson, Krystal provides us with some of her preferred research material and the best places to go looking for information regarding animal anatomy and reference. She also highly recommends that artists should have a reference board open, with as many quality references as possible. These tools will be essential for tackling any animal sculpture project with confidence and anatomical accuracy.

Duration: 1m 42s

In this lesson, Krystal gets things going in ZBrush, showcasing how to load in her custom user interface and hot-keys which help her save time while working in a professional setting. These and some custom brushes are included in the lesson files. Krystal demonstrates armatures with ZSpheres, and some basics of polygrouping.

Duration: 16m 33s

This lesson focuses on disciplined preparation through anatomical study, accurate proportions, and structured blocking-in. By understanding the skeletal and muscular foundations of her subject and using measurement sheets to build a ZSphere armature, Krystal locks in correct proportions early. The tutorial emphasizes anatomy as a lifelong study, showing how fundamental knowledge can produce realistic and compelling work that still reflects personal artistic style.

Duration: 31m 2s

In this lesson, Krystal continues blocking in her creature, stressing that successful digital sculpting requires fearless experimentation combined with continuous anatomical study and control over the sculpture itself. By constantly moving, building up and removing, and even moving the light in the scene around, Krystal makes sure the sculpture forms are doing what she wants. This iterative process is an essential path to improvement with anatomy work.

Duration: 23m 20s

With the block out nearly complete, Krystal starts to move into secondary detail with some presentation-worthy additions while still maintaining a loose workflow while sculpting. She constantly revisits and reviews the forms from all angles, making refinements to the underlying anatomy, and is careful not to rush to high resolution too quickly. Krystal works on cleaning up her sculpt and continues to push for a dynamic look in her neutral pose for this animal.

Duration: 23m 35s

In this lesson, Krystal works on posing her animal sculpture basing much of her success off of quality reference. During this process she simultaneously maintains anatomical integrity, manages volume loss, and ensures realistic weight distribution. Utilizing the Transpose Master tool in ZBrush and polygroups for masking purposes, she keeps control over each part of the body without having any unwanted deformation.

Duration: 18m 28s

Krystal starts this lesson looking at tertiary details and talking about her process regarding “fur tracking”; the process of finding and planning out the flow of hair and fur when it comes to sculpture. Once complete, she finishes up on the base sculpture, pushing finer details and cleaning up any unnecessary lines, and refining key areas, like the knees and other boney joints. When sculpting the fur, Krystal stays very loose, making broad strokes and big changes while keeping the flow of the strokes in mind.

Duration: 23m 18s

Following up on the last lesson, Kryatsl continues to work on her tertiary detail pass, keeping an eye out for how the light affects her shapes and forms, as this is where she wants to achieve the most quality from her shapes and forms. She works sharpening the shapes and the anatomy she's already established, while still staying at a medium resolution so as not to get too attached to the work she's doing. By balancing highly detailed focal areas with strategic "areas of rest" and always considering the full contour line and shape of your piece, sculptors can create more dynamic and professional work.

Duration: 24m 20s

In this lesson, Krystal dives fully into fur sculpting techniques. Understanding that fur works in layers with unique directional flow is key, but just as important is that the fur respects and still shows the underlying anatomy while adding volume to the body. In order to work the most effectively, Krystal recommends using the Morph Target brush in ZBrush along with layers so that artists can paint the original sculpt back in if they don't like the fur results.

Duration: 26m 30s

In this lesson, Krystal moves on to poly-painting her piece inside of ZBrush. She focuses on laying down layers of grey and subtle color into areas she knows will be darker, using Mask by Cavity in ZBrush to enhance the fur forms before working on patterns and color. By working in layers with low intensity, refining values, and allowing the underlying sculptural detail to inform the painting rather than fighting against it, Krystal achieves very natural results.

Duration: 25m 1s

In this lesson, Krystal continues poly-painting her model as well as making some more final touches to the sculpture. Part of this includes making a small base for her animal to stand on, showcasing some rock sculpting techniques and really adding to the finish of the piece as a whole. Utilizing the UV Master tool in ZBrush, she quickly unwraps the model for texturing and rendering later on, before moving on to make additional refinements.

Duration: 14m 57s

In this lesson, Krystal elevates her model by bringing it to Substance Painter for texturing. She runs through some basics of the program, her commonly used tools and features, and how to export. Moving into KeyShot, she demonstrates experimenting with different texture shaders, lighting environments, camera set ups and rendering tricks. Before moving her model into this pipeline, she jumps to Maya to arrange her UVs and apply shaders to the model. She then makes some finishing touches in Photoshop.

Duration: 38m 49s

In this bonus lesson, Krystal explains how she prepared her animal model for resin 3D printing including, creating keys, hollowing the model out, and making air vents for curing. She then showcases the final results from the printing process done by Miguel Guerrero, and the steps he took to clean up the model. It really pays off to see all the intricate details in the printed model.

Duration: 11m 41s