Marc Brunet- An Inside Look
Our fearless leader, mentor, teacher, and needless to say, killer artist Marc Brunet gave us the inside scoop about Cubebrush, his career, and future plans. Check it out...
Oh hey! I’m Marc, an art teacher, a professional artist, and I lead the awesome team here at Cubebrush! I was born in Montreal Canada and grew up there with my parents and 2 younger brothers (and my Nintendo).
What did you like about the city?
Montreal is a big multicultural city and I love that I’ve grown up surrounded by people of every color and culture. All my friends were just a quick bike ride away and there was always something fun to do.
With that said, I can’t say I enjoyed the snow and -40 temperatures in the winter so when I got the opportunity to move to California over 10 years ago, I didn’t hesitate too long to jump on the offer!
When did you get into art?
I got into art like many artists do, from a very young age! What better is there to do when you’re stuck at home and you’ve used up all the video game play time parents allowed for the day? Take out the pens and start drawing of course!
In my case, art was like love at first sight - I never stopped since.
Was college ever an option for you?
College is pretty much free where I’m from so everyone is encouraged to go to college after high school. Montreal is a big city so there were thankfully plenty of options. Right after high school I went into sciences for a bit - I wasn’t a fan. I then went into fine arts at a different college - I wasn't a fan of that either.
Finally I went into 3D animation only to drop out a year into it after getting an offer to work at a local game company as a concept artist. See ya later schooling system, hello professional world!
Take us through the journey that led you to the United States.
After leaving school, I worked for about 2 years at a game company called Behaviour Interactive (formerly A2M) as a concept artist and 3D hybrid artist. I was very active on social media (aka DeviantArt at the time) then and got to do a lot of freelance work for various magazines and brands which somehow caught the eye of Blizzard Entertainment.
To my surprise, I got an offer to work on their new team at the time (Overwatch) as one of the first artists on the team and as a massive Blizzard fan, there was simply NO other possible route in my mind other than going for it.
The work visa was my main concern (hey, I was a dropout after all) but thankfully that turned out not to be a problem as a Canadian so I packed my stuff and 22 year old me made the big move to go live on my own in sunny California.
What was your first impression?
I joined an amazing team when I started at Blizzard so it really felt like a golden opportunity to soak up as much knowledge as I could from my peers. It was pretty surreal to work with some of my idols back then and even though I felt completely out of place and inadequate, it was also a huge honor so I just put my head down and worked my butt off to get up to speed asap.
I moved to California in February right as winter was raging in Montreal, so the sunny warm weather here made it all the more pleasant.
What was it like working for a studio?
The team at Blizzard was fairly small when I joined so it was a super nice atmosphere not unlike a small indie studio yet with the perks of a big corporation. Everybody there was a better artist than I was at the time so while a bit (a lot) intimidating.
The competitor in me was having a blast learning from the best artists in the industry. Suddenly I was getting feedback on my art from Blizzard art directors, leads and senior artists - how could I NOT improve significantly faster? An artist’s dream!
What did you love about it?
The camaraderie between all the artists on the team was the best - it was like a big family.
Most of the guys are still very close friends 10 years later. The job paid a crap ton more than what I was making In Canada too, so that wasn’t half bad either.
What did you hate about it?
Nothing at first, but after my kids were born the crunch time on the team became a big problem whereas it wasn’t an issue at all prior. I would get to see them in the morning for a few minutes before I left for work IF I was lucky and they were awake already, but by the time I came back home late at night they were already asleep. This was not going to work.
How did you come up with the concept of Cubebrush? Like, were you sitting at dinner one night and it just popped in your head?
Cubebrush evolved a big deal before it reached its final form; the CG marketplace it is today. Funny enough (some might remember this) but it all started as a YouTube channel under the same name which I was using to post art tutorials nearly a decade ago now. Eventually the channel got a sizable following and I felt it would make sense to create a proper community around it under the same name- cubebrush.com was born.
On the site you could find all the YouTube content + some paid courses our small team commissioned from some awesome artists, along with some of my own. After a while as the website grew in popularity and as we worked with even more artists on new courses, it became clear that the business model would become quite tricky to scale up unless the team grew significantly to help manage all the artists and their courses.
That’s when the idea for the current Cubebrush came about - a platform where creators can open a beautiful store for free, easily set up shop without the need for help from anyone and build their own little business on their own terms, without any risk.
YouTube had already proven creator-based content platforms could be very successful and so this felt like a natural evolution for the business. Turns out that was in fact a good decision!
How did you take the leap to Cubebrush full-time? Was it all at once or did you start building it before leaving a full-time job?
I started working on Cubebrush a few years before leaving Blizzard, doing both for a while. It was really in my final year there that it became clear this would soon become impossible as the business was growing and crunch hours were increasing at work. I waited until my health started to feel the impact of continued sleep deprivation and eventually just made the jump to dedicate myself to the business full time, leaving Blizzard where I had work for nearly 8 years!
How about ART School, what was the development process like? What made you decide to do it?
The idea for ART School came after the release of a few big courses that came before, each more ambitious in scale than the ones prior. The last one I did before feeling confident enough I could deliver something as massive as ART School was the ULTIMATE Career Guide for 3D Artists which is a beast of a course going over everything artists need to know to make it in 3D, clocking in at 45 hours.
Once that was released, with enough confidence I could take on an even more ambitious project, I felt like it was finally the perfect opportunity to create something to push back against the art school industry in the United States, something I had grown to heavily despise over the years.
Coming from a country where education is incredibly cheap, the exorbitant price of traditional art schools here were clearly unjustified, driven up by greed at the expense of good-intentioned students/families all over the country.
I took heavy inspiration from a number of prominent schools around the country & abroad and built a tentative curriculum for my program, with the goal of undercutting by at least 99% every institution out there while providing something extremely similar (arguably better, but I’m biased!) for students - something anyone could do from home regardless of where you live in the world.
I announced the project as soon as the first Term (out of 10) was completed with a plan to release the rest over the following months, adjusting and improving the curriculum if needed based on feedback. As the interest in it grew, so did my scope and 2 years of full time work later, the completed program was live - as found in my Cubebrush store today!
Since the start I’ve had nearly 10000 (not a typo!) students take the program in full on in parts, which I find absolutely mind-blowing. I’d like to believe this saved a number of students from a life-time of student loan debts, or made an art education possible for those in places or situations where this was not an option.
Where do you want to be in 5 years?
ART School is only getting started so I’d like to think I’ll still be helping art students in 5 years. I’ve been hosting weekly live streams with students for the last 2+ years and I definitely see this continuing in the near future, it’s been a lot of fun.
Business-wise, I still have so much planned for Cubebrush it’s hard to imagine I’ll be doing anything else. If everything goes well, I hope to be doing the exact same thing I am today but on a bigger scale. We’ll see what happens!
Any advice for ambitious artists out there?
The art industry is constantly expanding so it's a wonderful career path full of potential. It’s really one of those careers where the sky’s the limit and it all depends on how well you develop your skills!
Want the best possible start? Check my ART School program or have a look at any of the other amazing tutorials you’ll find here on Cubebrush!
Equally important, look into marketing skills! As artists we’re essentially selling a product; our art (in whichever form it might be)! You could have the best product but if nobody knows about it, it won’t sell! Get out there and increase your exposure!
Good art + good marketing = success.
Have fun!
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