Jay Kushwara / Digital Renaissance

Jay Kushwara

Star Wars, Iron Man, Indiana Jones – heroes and villains to some but a legacy of epic achievements for Jay Kushwara.

Jay Kushwara’s practical experience in a creating exceptional, high end production ready digital prototypes is second to none. His work can be seen in any toy store in the world, having created many of the digital prototypes for Hasbro’s Iron Man and Star Wars action figure lines. In addition, Jay’s been the digital sculptor for EFX collectable’s exclusive Ralph McQuarrie concept helmets. The first offering, referred to as the “McVader” was a huge success, selling out in a day.

Along with “cool toys,” Jay’s been instrumental in bringing the U.S. Mint engraving department into the 21st century. He was the digital modeling component of a three person development team hired to create a digital engraving and manufacturing solution from the ground up. Working closely with the team, Jay built a digital relief sculpting workflow that was fully integrated into the downstream manufacturing process. Areas of development that Jay oversaw included high precision digital modeling, conversion and lossless integration of scanned data into the digital modeling process, accurate deformation of scanned data and high fidelity STL output for use in the high tolerance CNC micro-machining process. He also trained several of the US mint engravers in use of the digital methods.

The Backstory

Jay’s design career began with a passion for creature effects. Working with several east coast based legends, Jay learned the ins and outs of working in the film industry. After a fulfilling run, Jay then turned his attentions to commercial sculpture and prototypes. Receiving classical anatomy training at the Philadelphia University of Art he continued to hone his skills as a sculptor at several prominent commercial prototype shops and eventually landed a position with Kenner Toys in Cincinnati. At Kenner, Jay was able to put all of his experience and skill to use managing the sculpting on several prominent toy lines.

While at Hasbro Jay was introduced to an early pre- release build of the FreeForm Modeling system, fast tracking his career as the primary digital sculpting resource in Cincinnati. This led to a full time position at SensAble Industries where he continued to push the boundaries of digital sculpting technology. Split between pushing FreeForm to it’s limits and delivering workflow training to Fortune 500 companies all over the world, Jay started his own contract business and has been quietly making history ever since.