[3] Creatively frustrated, he left animation in 2002[4] to pursue freelance illustration gigs, including work on Fox's television series Bones.

[5] As a storyboard artist he worked on live-action films such as What We Do Is Secret[6] about the punk band the Germs, and Into The Wild,[7] directed by Sean Penn.

While transitioning from studio work in animation to life as a freelance artist, Terrance enrolled in an acting class at the South Coast Repertory Theatre where he met future collaborator Darren Smith.

Due to the positive response for their first ten-minute opera, The Necro-merchant's Debt,[11] they decided to expand the piece into a full-length theatrical format which was later renamed Repo!

[12] In 2001, Zdunich and Smith assembled a small group of actors and musicians and began performing Repo as a one-act set at clubs in Los Angeles, California.

[13] In 2002, Repo: The Genetic Opera received its first full-length staging in Hollywood, California at the John Raitt Theatre with Darren Lynn Bousman directing.

[18] Lionsgate and Twisted Pictures eventually brought Repo to the big screen in 2008, which starred Anthony Head, Alexa Vega, Paul Sorvino, and Sarah Brightman.

[22] In 2009, in an effort to return to his drawing roots, Zdunich began work on a solo project, an independent comic book series dubbed The Molting.

"[28] The seven chapters were: Guilty Susie, The Happiest Place on Earth, Ootheca, Lethal Raids, Mother's Day, Allied Forces and Supernatural Aid.

[29][30][31] On May 28, 2010, at the Sacramento Horror Film Festival, Zdunich debuted the first in a series of weekly online instructional videos, a project entitled The Tutor,[32] described as a "Bob Ross meets Ted Bundy" school of art.

[39] In 2012 Zdunich and Bousman, along with composer Saar Hendelman, released The Devil's Carnival, a 56-minute independent film designed to challenge conventional distribution models.

[42] The road tour broke with the normal film viewing experience by including meet and greets with the cast, Q&As, costume contests, live sideshow acts and behind the scenes footage.

[50] The videos featured performances by cult music stars like Arch Enemy's Alissa White-Gluz as Pretty Lavinia, Aurelio Voltaire as lothario wife-killer Unwed Henry, and Chibi, front woman of The Birthday Massacre, as Sweet Rosalie, an "escaped mental patient who leaves a trail of dead in her wake.