Advice for a 3D Printing Newbie

[MeoWorks]

^This is why I feel home printers is the future in rapid prototyping for artists such as myself. Services like Shapeways are very useful and high quality, but the price is unreachable to most, especially when it comes to large prints that will most likely get reworked in another medium such as wax. With home printers it's cheap and honestly, you can fit a lot of details as well. It might not as clean but like I said, for larger pieces you'll want to transfer to wax to sort out balance issues etc anyway. It's a good $500 investment IMO. In fact...shameful plug...that's what I'm doing in my kickstarter project right now!

As for software mentioned in the OP, I use ZBrush exclusively but they have a free one called Sculptris you can try out. It's a very straightforward software and once you get introduced to all the tools and brushes, you'll be sculpting in no time! Feel free to PM me if you have any questions