I'm a bit of a noob, I have been playing around with 3D and blender for years but mostly following tutorials without much direction just reproducing the results i see. Now I'm trying to go a bit deeper and i felt i needed things like exercises and a bit of direction. I'm trying to build my artistic skill basically from scratch and looking for some inspiration.
What i would love to see now is some stories of people who have taken themselves to the next level with stuff like CGcookie type content. I love seeing timelines of people going from the childlike sketches and simple blender shapes all the way to high detail and well defined work perhaps of industry standard.
The gallery is full of great work but I was wondering if there were any artists with a long timelines that shows progression from noob to pro. Also any stories of how your feel your work has improved over time.
I joined CGCookie to learn Blender and to strengthen my skills as an artist. I’m a 3D CAD designer by trade so I knew about working in 3D but doing this in Blender brought things to an entirely new level. I had no idea what I was doing and it definitely showed in my work, as I followed along in these tutorials. What I liked about CG Cookie compared to other tutorials, is they gave you the tools to trouble shoot and problem solve rather than just providing the step by step process to make something. I was able to take those problem solving skills to my personal work. I was taking on projects that I had no idea how to do but I was confident that I would be able to figure it out.
A cool side effect to all this training was it was forcing me to think in new and exciting ways to accomplish tasks at work. I was getting jobs done faster and more efficiently and it wasn’t long before my boss took notice. I was getting elected to take on more and more complex and interesting work not because I had experience doing it but because I knew how to problem solve my way to a solution. I’m a top performer among my peers all because I took a year of my own time to learn Blender through CGCookie.
Quick case study:
Our company uses anatomical models to simulate conditions of the human body and test our products. As a quick lesson in CAD and Solidworks; it HATES high triangle counts! Anything over 15k and it bogs down and quits. These CT scans easily pass the 2million tri count. Problem is we didn’t have any software that could reduce the triangle count and still keep the detail required to run the tests. The answer? Blender! With knowledge of retopology from CG cookie and a bit of trial and error I was able to provide a low poly version that preserved the detail we needed and was able to import into Solidworks.
Raw CT scan >2million tris
Retopo ready for export <15k tris
This is the majority of my noob to pro story. I regret, I don’t exactly have a gallery of my old works and a lot I can’t share due to NDA. But hit up my profile and see what I've got posted. I’m currently pursuing a career as a character animator. With the help of CG Cookie and other training, I’m hoping one day I can share a new noob to pro story for you guys in the next few years.
I have been learning with CGC for over two years now, and back then I was completely new to Blender and 2D modelling. All of my progress from starting out to pretty much where I am today can be found in my Polybook in the forum. It details my learning journey, including the courses I followed, my feelings on them , and links to each one. It can be found here : MY POLYBOOK
I personally, am working towards a career as a freelancer, and CGC has helped me so much to begin realizing this dream. I hope to be making the leap to starting out freelance next year and I couldn't have done it without CGC and the community.
Hope this helps :)
Hi there.
I thought id share my story as well. I have been doing CG For about 2 years now and started here with CGC.
Their content really shaped the kind of artist I wanted to become and they have helped me to get there :)
The best Piece of advice I can give you which I learnt very early on, is to not follow along Blindly. What I mean by this is to take a Course (For instance the Creature course) And create something of your own. This will mean you have your own Problems to try and figure out and you will understand things a lot better.
This is what I have done with most of my work.
All my recent stuff is done like this and its what has helped me to become a better artist :)
Here is my Polybook if you would like to check out my progress from start to where I'm at now.
Nope, this one was faster. From 0 to this in less than 31.536.000 sec. But still using a gallon to the mile.
I've started 3D by curiosity with Rhinoceros 3D on november 2011 and switched to learning blender on the very beginning of august 2012.
I've subscribed to CGcookie as soon as I've opened blender and also got some books from the foundation.
This is one of my very first descent render in blender afetr a month I believe at that time from an OLd Cookie tutorial.
I've started my freelance career in march 2014 and rapidly become a BlenderFoundation Certified trainer as I wanted to be part of CGCOOKIE. Unfortunately it was just before they change their team management to in house tutors but that was fine. I've learnt most of what I know as fundamentals on CGcookie and I always pushed my students to go here because I believe (And I've seen a lot of tutorial) this is definitively the best place to learn blender for beginners and average users.
And if I was to be considered as an expert, I always enjoy coming back and wathc new and old tutorial because you always learn something and The CGCOOKIE crew always try to cover the BEST technic to answer specifical artistic issues.
I now make 100% of my living with blender as the spine software to my job (I was an Adobe illustrator and photoshop specialist in printing production) and combine it with After effects, Photoshop, Illustrator, Audition, a bit of Zbrush and very few Substance stuff.
(I'm now secretly in love with @theluthier and stalking the blendermarket team for Marketing magic XD )
@theluthier
yeah i agree, I'm a pretty slow learner as i have no art background and i use peoples timelines and sketchbooks to give me a little boost when I'm loosing motivation. its nice to see everyone starts somewhere and not everyone is some kind of wunderkind lol.
thanks all
I think it depends on your definition of Pro.
Pro as in business professional who lives off of his art or pro as in high tier skill and knowledge artist?
For me personally, I am currently making gigantic steps in 3D and concept art compared to my knowledge and skill that I had prior to my CGC signup.
Ever since I signed up on CGC and took the courses, I have started understanding my trade more and more. When before, most of what I did was experimental as in "I'll just play around with this until it looks good to me", it is now at "I know what will most likely give me the result I am looking for and if not, I can think of some other things that might work out too."
And if it doesn't, I can search for a course on here or ask the community.
Once I finish my current project, I can try to see if I can find any files of my first steps in 3DCG and upload them, you will see the substantial amount of improvement immediately, I promise.
I don't want to sound like a slimey bootlicker (I have no reason to, either), but getting the citizenship on CGC was by far one of the best decisions I have made, regarding the improvement of my skills.
@elensanima
I wouldn't take it to literally , what i really mean by noob to pro is simply from bad to good in any terms as an artist. when i wrote this i wanted motivation as i was trying to convince my self that there was hope for someone as low skill as me. im by no means a fast study and i really struggle sometimes when my brain gets tired from all the learning its not used to since i was young.
i know there are a ton of study sites that say even the masters started somewhere but its nice to see a timeline. to watch another artist go from mess around work to fully developed pieces.
i mainly wanted a motivational kick to get going something to give me a good feeling and from what i have seen so far from many of the portfolios it has given me that.
thank you for the talk though, im still plodding along but mostly I'm just fighting my own procrastination now. Ive probably taken bigger steps here that in the last 10 years ive been messing around with 3D with not much to show for it. once again im motivated to see someone progressing so well.
Its still nice to visit this page from time to time and look at how others have progressed.
Although I am by no means a pro, I never could have made something like this before I joined CG Cookie.
ggutendog Me too! In Australia, People just care about Sport, education, health, engineering, science, community service, and life. But they almost completely ignore the importance of 3D movie and Gaming Industry. Even if they have some, but not that much at all. North America, Europe and Japan are very good at 3D and Gaming Industry and it is expanding rapidly. More and more companies (Movies and game Studios) need more artists with a different background.
The companies (AAA or indie) don't care you are using Blender or Maya. And they will train you to transfer your skills from Blender to Maya. The most important things to get you hired is your portfolio and your skills.
I am so glad I signed up CG cookie ($80 for 3 months vs $300 per month from some other schools!) for 3D animation. the school is trying hard to mimic the program similar to standard 3D game school where may cost you thousands of dollars. For me, due to financial problem, I can't afford for any 3D game school (online or on campus) anymore. CG cookie is my last hope to get my skills flourished in animation.
Even though I am mainly an animator, I have some sorts of level of 3D modeling (as supplementary) , here they are: :) 
