Born on December 6th, 1974, after Brent J. Zorich graduated St. Charles Preparatory High School in 1993, he went into the industrial design department, ranked in the top five nationally, at The Ohio State University, was a member of Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity, and graduated as the undergraduate design school student body president with a thesis project rebranding Nike retail. In undergrad, Brent worked in store sales and visual merchandising for Tommy Hilfiger. In 1997, as a young entrepreneur, Brent mocked up a prototype industrial design concept of a Reebok Golf Sandal incorporating the brand of Greg "The Shark" Norman, and presented the concept to the office of the CEO of Reebok, Paul Fireman, for production. While a student in the design department, Brent had a summer design internship doing illustration work for a nationally ranked luxury SUV design facility named Custom Coach in Columbus, Ohio. There he worked on transportation design for their client, John McConnell, owner of the NHL Columbus Blue Jackets (note: other clients of Custom Coach included John Madden's "The Madden Cruiser"; Deion Sanders; President George H. Bush; and Minister Louis Farrakhan- The Leader of the "Nation of Islam"- who Brent met in person while on site). Afterwards, Brent completed an internship doing corporate interior space design at Continental Office Furniture (Herman Miller) in Columbus, Ohio. Once graduated from The Ohio State University, Brent worked at the architectural firm ranked number 2 in the world, NBBJ, as a post graduate architectural intern with the client being the “Republic of China”. He was fortunate enough to be in several "crit" sessions while on The Beijing Hotel for The Republic of China with the Chairman of Global NBBJ, Friedl Bohm. Brent then moved to Atlanta, Georgia, to work for Gensler, the architectural firm ranked number 1 in the world as an interior architect, focusing on retail design for Gensler Fortune 500 clientele. Brent was lucky enough while working in the studio to attend a firm practices session and meet and greet with M. Arthur Gensler, considered by many to be the most powerful architect on the planet. The key lesson he learned from Mr. Gensler was to be humble in business dealings. Arrogance is the quickest way to lose a client.

      He left Atlanta and went back to Ohio State’s ACCAD program, where computer graphics were invented in the 1960s by Professor Emeritus Charles Csuri, to complete a masters in computer graphics/ technical direction. Note: key alum of this program had made the liquid alloy T-1000 in “Terminator 2: Judgement Day” starring Arnold Schwarzenegger; the velociraptors in the original 1993 “Jurassic Park” directed by Steven Spielberg; the founder of FOX Blue Sky Studios who created "Ice Age", "Horton Hears a Who", and "The Peanuts Movie"; and the Chief Technology Officer of PIXAR Animation Studios. Of the 50,000 plus students at The Ohio State University, only approximately ten to fifteen students had security access to this ACCAD graduate program building. Graduate admittance into this program is determined by portfolio, and professional and academic achievement.

      During Brent’s tenure at ACCAD, the facility received a research grant through Brave New Pictures to develop a nationally televised one hour documentary on a newly discovered nano tyrannous dinosaur in Hell Creek, Montana. This one hour documentary, entitled “The Mystery Dinosaur”, aired prime time on both The Discovery Channel and The Science Channel. Brent was key in both modeling and rigging on this feature. As apart of this grant, ACCAD was in full collaboration with The Burpee Museum in Rockford, Illinois, who were having weekly discussions with this ACCAD research group on physiology, anatomy, and biomechanics. Paleontologists from this museum had worked with Dr. Robert Bakker who was Steven Spielberg’s paleontologist consultant on Jurassic Park. ACCAD alum of this project went on to work at studios such as PIXAR, Walt Disney Feature Animation, EA Sports, Sony Pictures Imageworks, Dreamworks Animation, and Activision; with Brent ending up at Lucasfilm. The ACCAD producer on this feature was the former department head of computer animation at The Ringling College of Art and Design. Note, Brent’s graduate thesis was entitled “Rigging a Prehistoric Animal” where he automated the rigging process in PYTHON.

       Finally in graduate school, he was in a DreamWorks SKG Outreach program being trained by Dreamworks supervisors in animation; and was also fortunate enough to be in a lecture session with Jeffrey Katzenberg. During the lecture, Mr. Katzenberg was asked what the most key role was in the production pipeline; his response was "the rigger." Brent altered his CGI focus from modeling to rigging upon hearing that. This outreach program duration was 20 weeks, with supervisors in the industry who were currently working at DreamWorks Animation bringing such previous film experience to the ACCAD building’s students as "Spider-Man 2", "Finding Nemo", "Shrek", "Shark Tale", and "Madagascar". Brent was also asked to give a lecture, while as a student, to the College of the Arts at Ohio State student body at the Wexner Center for the Arts. There were a total of seven guest lecture supervisors from the program that went into extensive CGI techniques with each of the students on an individual basis. This gave Brent access to a professional pipeline in early development in his computer animation career that is still applicable to the types of work he is doing today. In these sessions, one of the people that he shadowed was the DreamWorks Animation SKG Rigging Supervisor that went over advanced rigging techniques, and first introduced Brent into the power of programming and scripting for automation. This particular supervisor, was the lead on Finding Nemo from PIXAR and who first taught Brent about "proxy rigging."

       Afterwards, Brent went on to work in San Francisco, California, on Take 2 Interactive’s “NBA 2K”, working with the data of Shaquille O’Neal (TTWO market cap September '18: 15.2 billion) (note: they are also the makers of the top selling IP on the planet, “Grand Theft Auto”); and then on to Orlando, Florida, for EA SPORTS, where he worked on “Superman Returns”, “Tiger Woods PGA Tour”, and as a rigging technical director lead on “Madden NFL” (which is the top grossing video game in North America) (EA market cap September '18: 34.8 billion). While on Madden NFL, Brent was key in breaking new ground in the character setup aspect of the digital football players by working with the Central Football leads in changing the player bodies to be anatomically correct. Previously, the digital players in Madden NFL and NCAA Football had elongated arms to exaggerate a more Disney style art direction. Brent played a key role in converting the players of the top selling title in North America to bio mechanical accuracy. Lastly on Madden NFL, Brent was key in adding 15 to 20 additional leaf joints to the animation rig to add hyper realism in regards to bicep and hamstring flexing.

       Brent left the United States and moved to Singapore to become senior/ executive trainee/ best practices review committee of Lucasfilm, working with the former Chief Technology Officer of Peter Jackson’s Weta Digital in Wellington, New Zealand (“The Lord of the Rings”). There at Lucasfilm, he worked on “Star Wars” intellectual property (showing work directly to George Lucas), “Indiana Jones IP” for Steven Spielberg, was brought in to work on monthlies prep on “Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince”, and dailies shot critiquing on “Transformers Revenge of the Fallen” at Industrial Light and Magic research and development meetings, while also frequenting the Skywalker Ranch for research in Marin County in San Francisco, California. The Best Practices Review Committee was a hand selected panel by the former Chief Technology Officer from Weta Digital consisting of approximately ten people. Brent had a strong vocal presence in these meetings where the goal of each was to set the digital standard in modeling, rigging, and rendering, for LucasArts, Lucasfilm Animation, and Industrial Light & Magic. While in Singapore, before being promoted and relocated to the home office in San Francisco, Brent was in a small research group of about six people focusing on film game convergence. In that group, the graphics researchers optimized an environment that was inhabited by Master Yoda from “Star Wars: The Clone Wars”, as well as Anakin Skywalker’s Jedi Apprentice, Ahsoka Tano, from that same series. Brent combined the underlying engineering rigging aspects of the young Jedi with Jango Fett from ILM’s Oscar Nominated “Star Wars Episode 2: Attack of the Clones.” The team used those assets to create a playable level in the Unreal Engine on the XBOX 360, which was shown to Mr. Lucas in Singapore. In San Francisco, executive training within Lucasfilm Corporate was administered to Brent by the consultancy Engaged Leadership LLC. Brent’s initial goal was to become a creative studio executive at Lucasfilm. Worldwide published magazine, 3D ARTIST MAGAZINE, did a two page worldwide feature on Brent at Lucasfilm.

      Brent parted ways with California and Singapore and cofounded an animation software company in Columbus, Ohio, named BZP Pro with investors in the banking industry that are alum of Harvard and Yale from Chicago, Illinois. BZP Pro is engaged with accelerator REV1 VENTURES. The LLC had booth representation at both The Game Developers Conference (GDC) and Siggraph. The animation rigging software he wrote, called The Smart Skinner, had a university penetration of 250 universities on 6 continents (due to BZP Pro’s partnership program), made the cover of a world wide magazine, and was under acquisition review several times; the last time working with a Harvard investment banker formerly from Goldman Sachs. With the investment banker, they were in acquisition negotiations with a Silicon Valley headquartered company worth over 100 billion dollars. Note, Mark Zuckerberg's FACEBOOK LLC, according to reports, was at approximately 85 schools pre "Series A" investment; BZP Pro outpenetrated FACEBOOK in university acceptance in the pre "Series A" investment stage with a "freemium" business model similar to FACEBOOK LLC: "free-to-play" for collegiate users with sales through "add-ons".

      The initial marketing strategy was that universities would receive the "freemium" software for three years to be fully integrated into their curriculum. Then, upon the fourth year of the universities requesting an upgrade, they would be charged an annual subscription thereafter; with students in the classroom being able to purchase additional individual licenses. The Smart Skinner automates 80 hours of advanced character technical direction into about 20 minutes of labor with minimal cleanup at the technical level of the companies Brent was previously employed, including Industrial Light and Magic's Oscar winning Block Party Rigging Software. Upon purchase, The Smart Skinner perpetual license is active for the current year of Autodesk Maya. When Autodesk Maya upgrades annually, the customer would need to repurchase a new Smart Skinner license. BZP Pro froze the business operation when they were under the last acquisition review with the Silicon Valley company worth over 100 billion dollars.

     While co-operating BZP Pro with his partners, Brent will be able to continue to work on visual effects and video game blockbuster titles (see consulting rates), and is hopeful to pursue additional advanced degrees in Business and Engineering as relates to Entertainment Technology. He is also in the beginning stages of conceptualizing more potential venture funded IP. Brent looks forward to lengthening his technical direction and entrepreneurial portfolio. For fun, Brent enjoys going to four star steakhouse bars to watch ESPN, lecturing at universities around the country on the topic of video game and visual effects development, and sketching Frank Gehry influenced deconstructive buildings on his iPad. BZP Pro, going forward in 2019, will be under a new "DBA" called RIGR.