Hey guys, I want to know your opinion...
The list of courses that I want to follow here at CG cookie keeps growing by the day (you guys are not kidding in that kitchen). But one of the ones that caught my attention at first was "Human". I knew it was going to take quite some time before I build enough skill to tackle it.
While I few incredibly more comfortable within Blender, having used it daily for 6 months, I don't know if it's realistic to expect good results on that kind of project with just 6 months of experience. What do you say? Is it silly to even think about it?
I also intend on retaking/reviewing a lot of the basic concepts that are listed as pre-requisites as soon as the CORE package is released.
I might be overthinking this as usual, but thought I'd ask anyway.
I think you can watch it with your current skill level and you'll do alright. It is a super dense course but you have all of the core knowledge already. The thing is, and Kent will tell you in the first lesson, it's not the kind of thing you have to watch once and you're set for life. Humans characters, and specially realistic ones, is a difficult thing to master, since it's not the classic push this button and this will happen. It's more like hand drawing in that I can tell you here's a pencil and a piece of paper, you can push the carbon graphite against the paper and it will scribble, now you know how to use the tool, but can you make awesome drawing? Can you make awesome drawing if I explain to you how to make an awesome drawing with pencil and paper? You wont be able to, because you need to draw a lot and practice a lot before you start getting it and developing the skill.
So Kent will teach you every technical detail you need to know and he will communicate all his experience with the course, but it'll be up to you to practice a lot and start getting the hang of making humans look awesome in 3D. And if anyone can, you can do it Nat, you've been leveling up super fast and you're super committed, so I'd say jump whenever you want.
That makes a lot of sense. I definitely don't expect to get a sculpt at Kent's level on a first try, but it sounds like I might be ok to go through a first exercise on it then.
Thank you for the insight and motivation Omar!
I've seen the work you've been posting and have noted that you display a really keen sense of detail and desire to push yourself to do your best. I have no doubt that you would do well with the course.
Kent has designed an excellent workflow for blocking out the basic proportions, based on the Loomis method. This method will help you better "see" the correct proportions and sense how and why things may have gone wonky. When I went though that part I had a total epiphany on what I've been doing wrong in my sculpts (real and digital) for YEARS. It was game-changing. So starting with the right information will be a jump-start for you!
I'm sure you've heard it often but it bears repeating - I say this because I need to hear it, too - it's okay to fail! Honestly, in my opinion, the only real failure is to not to try at all. (I know you'll try) If you try and the result is less than impressive you have learned from that. You've become more comfortable with the tools. You've practiced the workflow. You've likely learned how to collect resources, build reference files, and leverage those tools. By being able to see that something is wrong with a sculpt is the first step to developing an "eye" to do better on future sculpts.
Try it and have fun!
Just do it. If you get stuck then fall back to another course that is similar. It's not a question if you can do it...Incase you need to know YOU CAN... it's just a matter of of following the 3 Ps. Practice, Practice, and Practice.
Also this community is here to help if you need it.
Wow! Thank you for the such nice words guys! You convinced me to give it a whirl, and you are right... worst case scenario I just start over, with lessons learned.
Very cool to hear too that the method Kent teaches on this one is game-changing. I've taken a few of his courses and he has a way of making it look simple indeed. Looking forward to it!
In my opinion, and he's not the only one, you've got all the talent to do Kent's class, the only thing you need to watch and listen to Kent is when he starts "the eyes", that's the tricky bit, but as you're gifted I know you'll get the hang of it. Take a model: face and profile. Voilà! ;)
This has got to be the most supportive community out there. Thank you guys for the boost in confidence 😊
Imposter syndrome is very common among Blender artist. So sometimes we need a swift kick in the pants and other times we need it pointed out that we can do more than we think can.
I think this come from when we start out we think we can go in and do these amazing things in no time and are quickly humbled by the massiveness of Blender and 3D in general.
So very true. I postponed getting into 3D for a few years because of that. So many topics, so many skills that are a career on their own.
A peer said yesterday: Sometimes it's nice to be reminded that it IS nice to move around lil shapes on the computer. We have so much talent around that often we forget that what we do is more than enough most of the time... just never as good/enough as we aspire it to be.