Your CG routine - how do you keep up the pace ?

Just to throw in my 2 cents, I was immediately drawn to the cgcookie site structure. With the new learning flows (like MMBootcamp) and live-classes, I'm happy with where the site's going.

Compared to Plural Site, Lynda.com & (one from my industry) Egghead.io, I haven't seen any other site formats that come close to what you guys are doing.

I also just started on CG Cookie. I would also dig the even more Learning Flow minded approach. I always feel lost in the loads of video's on most learning sites without a structure to guide me through my learning experience.

I'm starting to wonder if our "buffet" approach to offering training is more negative than positive. A huge collection of courses can be distracting and overwhelming, as you imply. It makes me think that reformatting course offerings into guided learning flows is best. I.e. Learning Flows on steroids.

Do you think that could help keep you on pace and motivated?

I have been going through the courses for about a month now. I originally joined with a specific goal in mind. After seeing all of the content and training available, I started to get excited and overwhelmed. However, the learning flows have been the jewel here allowing me to put a plan together for which courses I want to take and in which order depending on how it is recommended in the learning flows.

Regarding keeping on pace and motivated, there are a couple of things I have taken note of so far. 

First, and again, the learning flows have really helped out. Seeing myself progress through not just the courses, but also my progress in the entire learning flow is reassuring.

Second, the length of the videos are generally appropriate, with 10 - 15 minutes being the sweet spot for keeping my concentration. Shorter than that and I am left with a feeling of "was that all?" while more than that finds myself thinking about how I will apply what I saw to project x.

Third, the biggest speed bump to me keeping pace is the scope of the exercises. This is not the say there is a problem with the exercises, and in fact I look forward to them. Rather, I know that for each exercise, I will be spending hours or days completing each one as I plug away at whatever issues comes up as I try to implement what I just learned for the first time. When I balance the time it will take to complete the exercise vs going through a new course and learning something new, I find myself struggling.

On one hand, I want to complete the exercise and reinforce the knowledge there by tattooing the knowledge in place rather than just applying it like a stencil. On the other hand, I very much want to get to the next course and learn the next skill that will bring me closer to my ultimate goal.

This very well might just be me, but I wanted to at least add my notes for consideration.

Some things I have learned when it comes to 3d modeling is that speed is key to accomplishing your goals. To accomplish that you need to really know and live through keybindings. In a way this helps you keep the pace as you are spending less time roughing it and more time developing your models. Speed modeling is also something I think everyone should consider doing to a lesser or greater degree as it helps speed up common processes by training your brain. This takes a lot of practice of course, but I do it with my friends and we are developing competitively to where we are producing full models in 4 hours or less. Granted there is some sacrifice when you speed through things, but as you learn short cuts around tasks the quicker your process and more effective your actual time modeling. This of course comes along with others have said about dedicating time to the process.

As for the lessons, I am an old lifetime member and I remember a time before the flows and as I have seen this site develop more and I have more time to invest into it, I am seeing a lot of progress when it comes to organization of content to make it easier to go through. I think there can be some improvements. The Flows and Bootcamps are wonderful, but I think something like a Production Pipeline training from beginner to intermediate to advanced would really attract more content seekers and help the Blender community overall. I think this is a learning process and as time goes on this site continues to grow and improve. 

I would love to see the old tutorials get a refresh with some goals, xp, exercises, etc, too if I was picky. :)

It seems there is a lot of support for the flows over a catalog of courses and I'm for that as well. What I would love to see in courses is more relationship between them to form like a tech-tree in games. If the course descriptions had recommendations of which courses to explore first (and maybe some indicator if you have completed it or not), which courses to explore the topics more in depth (or external resources if none exist within the site), and which courses relate through maybe side topics.

It also seems on the dashboard that the recommended courses are just related to what we have indicated in our interests but it would be good if this included what we've completed so far with maybe a leaning towards what we've completed most recently.

Something else I think would be better than filtering courses by a set of categories such as animation or compositing would be a glossary of features (this may be more for Blender or Unity) such as mesh editor, VSE, UV map, etc that would provide a link to specific lessons within a course. Today I had a question on how to use the VSE to take rendered frames and output to a video file because they were using Premier Pro and having some frame rate conversion issues and I couldn't quickly find a specific lesson to guide them towards. I know it exists somewhere on here because it is how I learned to do it myself.

In response to Jonathan's comment about setting xp on older tutorials, maybe there should be some more consistency to how it is awarded too. On some the quiz gives 4XP which seems reasonable to me, but then on recent Unity one it was 64XP for answering 3-4 questions on each one and if you get it wrong you can just redo it and pick a different answer. Compare this to exercises that can take many hours to complete and still only award a few XP seems slightly unbalanced.

I was going to reply directly to Kent's initial comment, but the mechanism for replying to a comment isn't working for me. Anyway...

I looked at the workflow for animation and was surprised to see a bunch of stuff on rigging. Is rigging expected of animators or is this just so they know a bit more about what they're working with?

I actually think there's too much pipeline stuff.  I would rather there be more courses that don't rely on modeling sheets or concept art.  I don't want to depend on modeling sheets while I'm training only to find that when I want to sculpt a Quoddan (A being from Planetainya) there are no Quoddan modeling sheets.

I am just trying to figure my routine out still ... lol ... trying to pick up 3 programs and make something remotely decent out of it.  And further down the road, the daunting techinal aspects of trying to make a good animation.  ((( AHHH )))

And you may ask yourself
How do I work this?
And you may ask yourself
Where is that large Vram GPU?
And you may tell yourself
This is not my beautiful Model!
And you may tell yourself
This is not my beautiful Anniamtion!
Letting the days go by, let the workflow hold me down
Letting the days go by, inspiration flowing underground
Into the blue again after the renderings done
Once in a lifetime, inspiration flowing underground

@theluthier

Honestly I think that motivation and a sense of "purpose" (being part of a community) is the real answer to these issues. As a society, in general, we suffer from severe attention deficit spans as the whole world around is designed to make it so. As a result we soak up an incredible amount of information which we want more and more of but which most of it is completely meaningless, it is there just to chase. To counter this "addictive" effect of information people need a sense of purpose. A sense of actually striving towards an achievable goal.

The live classes are a fantastic step in giving members just that: a community of motivated friendly people who strive towards a similar goal. I would take this "class" concept and work upon that. Maybe split off classes so people can focus on their specific goal (animation/game art/concept) and really grow towards their desired destination.

Also, have you thought about making an official CGCookie Discord ? It could be a fine addition to the live classes.

I am still learning  the very basic to do very simple models 

My main goal at this moment is to get where I can just very basic models from a sketches 

So I tip my hat to anyone that is doing this and keeping up ya!! 

God  Bless 

I think it can be tough to keep up pace. Especially when you're working full time and going to school. For me I usually go through a tutorial then leave the tutorial and do a few of the projects on my own. So, for example I am taking a sculpting course and finished the first part. Now I'm doing a bunch of smaller projects taking what I learned in the other course. Then I start something else after that.

It all comes down to this! If you have a job or not, and what kind of job it is. The day has 24 hours, about a third goes away when you sleep. Another third goes away at work. You are left with one last third to study and have a life besides it. Then i guess if you have a job that requires thinking or perhaps mentally being present, it will be harder to study when you get home. If you have a mindless kind of work where physically pressence is the only requirement, you will have more energy left for studying. 

But if you dont have a job at all, you will have more time to put into it, but one cant quit a job if you dont have anything to replace the income with.

My Routine is to get up 2,5 hours before i have to go to work

1 hour goes into blender 6 / 7days the other 1,5 hours is for exercise and breakfast and so on

doing blender early in the morning is for me extemly useful 

because im at peak when im learning at that time 

and i dont have to think about other thinks 

at the moment im learning normal modeling and sculpting

my year goal 360~ hours in blender im at 182 right now

but sticking to my routine is hard for me even more after 2 weeks of vacation x.x

but the 5 second rule helps there a loot^^

if ur brain starts to "demotivate" you in a area just count down 5,4,3,2,1 and get moving stark ur pc - laptop whatever open blender and ur ready to go^^ (this works on all other aspects of life aswell alsong u count down and do ur move)

I come to CGCookie on and off. I watch some tutorials here as well those at Youtube and Vimeo. As time is short in day, I speed up videos at 1.5x or 2x. 

My studying techniques, I keep Google Slides on iPad, which I use as my scrapbooks or notebooks. I use Google Slides to simplify all my studies of softwares. I keep my notes and hotkeys in there.  Google Slides are BIG HELP.  

Whenever I forget old tutorials or get stuck in Blender, I always consult my Google Slides and my memories come all flooding back. Therein, thumbnails in left column act as my visual bookmarks and screenshots as memory triggers. Everyday, I have my old iPad standing besides monitor. If I need hotkeys, 

For my Google Slides, I take screenshots of vital parts of video tutorials and scrapbook by attaching brief notes and links to them. At websites like Blender Nation, I also take screenshots of pages with vital infos. I do this too at Stackoverflow, Facebook groups, forums, etc.  I screenshoot node compositings and also users' bags of tricks. Valuable lessons that are just too important to lose or forget, so I always screenshoot them and store pictures in Google Slides.  🙂  

Below is an example from Google Slides.  I saw this in CGCookie and I thought of better saving this for future works on Blender. 

Hey i am here now 1 month . 

I always loved CG and after finding this community, knowing blender itself is free, i took the leap and went all in. at the first day i asked a lot questions. heard there would be this beginner class.  Perfect for me since i am completly new to blender. i started right away and took 1 month membership. The first 2 weeks i studyed as much i could. then classes started and i learned so much in this month. I tryto spend 2 hours each day at least.  Sometimes i work 4-10 hour each day for the homework. i sure love it and hope that i can make this my work . That is what i want to archieve.

My pace has dropped drastically. I have big problem to find some free time for CG since the vehicle modeling class which was awesome by the way.  

Have family, kids and a full time job.  If i want to make CG i have to invest all the time to it instead of my family. But, there is one big BUT. I can do this from time to time, however if i do this twice in a row my wife starts to complain. To be honest i agree with her. Kid will be little just very short time and i cant miss my sons childhood.  

So here is another way. I will spend my time with kid until he goes to bed and then i can fully dive into CG and guess what... another but occurs. I am not spending time with my wife.  So i will also spend time with her. Then when she  goes sleeping i can finally do CG, however it is almost midnight and i get up early in a morning so cant spend as much time as i want. 

And the cycle repeats.

To be honest i try to steal some time here and there, however it is too unconsistent and it brakes ability to focus.

David Köhler Congratulations on your pace, wish i can do the same :)

tthepainter I'm in some similar regime. Spending time with wife and going to the kitchen with my notebook and doing CG stuff while she sleeps. I'm working for like 3 hours at night and it sucks in terms of my health and mood, to be honest. I feel a bit depressed for the latest month.