Zack Lucas

2024 Senior Exhibition Artists

Zack Lucas

Concentration: Art + Design: Animation + Game Arts

About Zack Lucas

My name is Zack Lucas and I’m a senior at Umass Dartmouth with a concentration in Animation & Game Arts. My artistic strength primarily resides in 2D art, however I enjoy learning and understanding other art mediums as well. My artwork typically falls under Concept Art, Character Art and Animation.

Growing up, I’ve always had a strong passion for art & animation, aspiring to one day make a living out of it. My childhood art consisted of doodling Pokémon and cartoon characters in a cheap blue lined notebook. When I wasn’t drawing, I tried to find different means of exploring my creativity and imagination. My love for creation led me to discover hobbies in art, video games, writing and video editing. A lot of my favorite childhood shows and games are direct inspirations for most of my artwork. My dream is to one day create my own work for the world whether it’s a video game, comic, or animated series.

Statement

As a digital artist my goal is to expand upon what is possible by traditional means. Since learning digital art on Procreate back in my senior year of high school, my work has improved exponentially. I take a lot of inspiration from my hobbies and interests when creating new pieces. My style of art is heavily influenced by anime which has been a huge inspiration behind me continuing with art as a passion and hopefully as a future career. My workflow is mostly on my iPad where I draw and now animate most of my works. Being able to draw on my iPad gives me a sense of freedom where I’m not trapped at my desk and can travel and work anywhere as I please.

While my art is now heavily influenced by anime, I love testing around assorted styles and techniques. Over the years I have changed a lot both as a person and an artist. Learning from past mistakes I believe is a crucial part of development and that sentiment can easily be applied to artists and their works too. Originally, I had been a traditional artist who focused on pencil and charcoal only. Taking the step into the digital medium was a daunting but extremely rewarding process that I soon overcame. Using digital media is now an integral piece that allows me to enhance my artwork and vision that before wasn’t possible in the past.

For my Capstone I chose to refine an old personal project I had worked on for an Honors final piece before transferring to Umass Dartmouth. The project was called “Neo-Nexus”, and the story takes place in a far set future within a dystopian cyberpunk-like genre. Back when I first established the idea, it was extremely bare bones with a basic concept and character. Since then, I have taken the initiative to rework on both the ideas and designs I had created 2 years prior. My goal was to enhance my old personal project and give new life and meaning to it. I would like to continue writing and drawing on this project beyond college and potentially release it publicly when in a more finished state.