Hello! I'm new to Blender and would like to get recommendations on which skills to prioritize and useful courses for this. In general, I plan to use my skills to create characters (both humanoids and mechs) stylistically similar to Forever Winter, Trench Crusade, Jan Buragay's artworks, etc.
Thank you in advance for any help provided
If you're entirely new to 3D (presumably by what you said in your donut post in the gallery) I'd definitely start with the 4.X basics. I think you've already done that based off the badge in your profile (I'm not too sure though, the badge display system often doesn't appear to work).
I'd recommend doing the Core fundamentals of Mesh Modelling, followed by Materials and Shading, and Texturing if you know for sure what you want to get into. Press Start is a great course, and then Pothead is perfect for hard surface modelling and making mechs - JL challenges you at the end of pothead to create a companion bot for Pothead (I had a lot of fun doing that and got a lot of help from the community here). Also don't skimp out on learning some lighting skills - that can hugely influence your creations!
I'd also suggest trying to get into a small habit of doing a quick warmup before you sit down for a session of a course. IE, grab an item near you and spend half an hour trying to model some (if not all) of it before you continue with your courses. That way you get to practice more of what you learn while not getting burnt out and lose interest entirely.
That being said... try everything that's on offer here! At first I thought I wanted to focus on modelling, but now animation is my favourite thing and I'm putting all of my energy into it!
And I'm sure others here will be able to suggest more courses and skills too!
PS, if you like Jan Buragay's work, check out Emerson Tung and his book Tankhead if you haven't already!
Listen to this man, Harris has made immense progress and got one of the best Pothead results out there, even made it to Kent's annual student reel. It's on YouTube if you want to see the awesome things the community did in 2024.
And yeah, if you're super new to Blender, you can start with the Blender Basics. Always a good idea to check them out, even if you have some experience. Linking up:
https://cgcookie.com/courses/blender-basics-an-introduction-to-blender-4-x
After that it's the Fundamentals, starting with Mesh modeling and then you can go down the list of Fundamentals if you want:
After that you're free to watch any tutorial. But I like to easy into modeling. So I can list a couple of beginners modeling stand alone courses that little by little up the complexity. Linking up a couple:
https://cgcookie.com/courses/rev-model-a-low-poly-muscle-car
https://cgcookie.com/courses/press-start-your-simple-first-blender-project
https://cgcookie.com/courses/cubicity-creating-and-utilizing-asset-libraries-with-blender
https://cgcookie.com/courses/sessions-minimalism
https://cgcookie.com/courses/sessions-macro
https://cgcookie.com/courses/catch-creating-a-pokeball-in-blender
https://cgcookie.com/courses/tread-hard-surface-asset-creation-for-video-games
https://cgcookie.com/courses/relic-game-asset-creation-fundamentals-in-blender
https://cgcookie.com/courses/basemesh-create-stylized-characters-quickly-with-blender
https://cgcookie.com/courses/pothead-create-a-hard-surface-character-in-blender
I'd also consider looking into Paul's Concept course - It'll likely help you flesh out your ideas when you're ready to make them!
And if you don't already have it, download Pureref, it rocks! It's great for setting up inspiration boards and there's plenty of good tutorials on youtube on how to use it well!
Thanks a lot for the suggestions! Now this is about persistence, patience and hard work, step by step.
First time I found out about this place from video of Ducky 3D, I immidiately dived into community gallery. It just happened that the work of Harris was one of the first and most impressive things I saw here, along with the GUN by sepno panggi redo. I'll definetly check out the book Tankhead, so far artworks by this artist look amazing!
With all those linked courses it will be much easier to plan my future researches <3
was it this video? I watched his '24 version which is how I found CGC myself!
Again, I'll stress the value in how important it is to work on other things inbetween tutorials. You'll probably see people saying this a lot through your journey, but going straight from tutorial to tutorial without flexing what you learn is a much harder way to progress.
If characters and mechs are what you want to do, then perhaps you can start small. After learning hard surface modelling (and even sculpting) skills, you could make smaller things like pieces of armour, or a component on a mech like a battery for example. Then when you've learnt a bit of materials, shaders, and texturing, you could make various metal materials with their own colours, scratches, dings, and dents. Or you could make cloth materials for characters. IE, go small to start with before you go way too large and attempt to set off to create a complete mech kitted out with all the whizzes and bangs.
I say all this as if it was what I did. It absolutely wasn't. I started by rushing through too many courses without taking time to put anything into practice and later felt like I had forgotten a lot of what I had learnt. Everyone learns differently, but if you can, try to not do what I did! Wayne mentions in one of his courses that finding the right balance for you is important - there understandably is such a thing as learning too fast
Using references is a valuable way to stay on track while working too - without them you may find your imagination runs too wild and you eventually get bogged down. While I was working on Noodlehead, I opened up Cyberpunk 2077 and took a load of screenshots of vehicles (like this for example), pasted them into Pureref and used them to help create particular parts. Here's the whole reference board if you're interested.
Also save everything! Even just to look back on and see how far you've come! And post as much as you'd like here on the community page if you need critique and advice!
Something else that 
dostovel always says is to watch through courses fully once and then watch it a second time while going through and completing it. It might feel tedious at first, but when you watch it through first, you get a sense of what is to come, and when you then rewatch it and follow along, you've already got "this bit" and "that bit" on your radar and things make a little more sense!
Yeah, that was 2024 version for me either. Watched it like a week ago and found out there is a new one published couple of days earlier.
"Wayne mentions in one of his courses that finding the right balance for you is important - there understandably is such a thing as learning too fast". Yep, rushing to the destination and forgetting about the path, that's surely how we get crushed by our own broken expectations. Sometimes it's easier said than done, but let's do our best.