Hello,
I'm getting more interested into drawing (find it more fun than 3D modeling honestly) and it would be a great addition to skills (programming & game design), been lurking CGcookies for the past few days and though the courses available seems great, it just kinda feels like its lacking those pretty good "bootcamp" formula you guys have.
Is there any plan for doing that in the future ?
As someone who lives in a country that have one single art-school which is a public university that forces you to enroll into a dozens of other useless courses, it would really be great to have a trusted source of knowledge to follow online, i'll be getting more into the available courses (and youtube ofc) but i would really love to see a concept art bootcamp here soon.
Thanks!
I second that. I especially think it would be great to have a course about drawing for 3d modelers. Either that, or stop relying on modeling sheets so much. I am tired of having modeling sheets made specially for the object that is being modeled in the course, knowing that when I start my own project I will probably not be able to find a modeling sheet for the specific item I want to model. I feel rather forced into concept art because CG Cookie has made it necessary to learn it in order to create models. Sorry about that rant. I think a concept art bootcamp course is a very good idea.
in all cases where you do 3d concepting you need references, thats the way to do it, either someone's 2d art or real pictures of said object. If you get project to model ferrari f40, can you do that without reference? i sure can't, what i would need to do is get as much reference pictures from said car from different angles and fill in the blanks if needed.
Not really sure why you think that modeling sheet in the courses are bad, they are made for those courses to show you what you are getting into if you ever want to get job in this industry.
Which is, either you get the concept provided for you, or you make 3d concept based from the object brief that describes what you need and if you are lucky it also has some reference pictures on it, and if not you look those ref pictures yourself and then proceed to create the object.
williamatics You will always need actual references for any type of project. Doesn't need to be a complete modeling sheet, could be actual images of specific details. Say you want to design a spaceship, you'll need reference for details such as panels, landing gears etc to make a good a believable result.
I understand your frustration as you would like to create something literally from scratch but even the 2D process require other people's artwork for reference and inspiration. I've been through this as well and to solve that I took extra night courses of sketching. There's not much secret for concept art in my opionion: practice practice practice. Look at an object (coffee cup, flower, whatever rocks your world) and try to reproduce it on your notebook. Look at the perspective, the shaddow, the proportions etc. Post a picture of the model and your sketch and ask for feedback. Stuff like this really help.
Having some basic knowledge of drawing is always a plus, no one can deny it, but you don't need to be good at it to enjoy 3D modelling. Here's a example from my experience, based on the Modelling weapons for a FPS from J.Lampel. Rather than using the model sheed provided by the course I browse the internet to look for sci-fi rifles and picked ideas there and there to build my own. The sketch is terrible, but the concept was clear for me, I knew what I wanted to have and where:
Based on that I ended up with this: I have no pretention into saying this is an outstanding model :D It's a model I'm happy with and that's the essential!
All the details are not on the initial sketch and were added after, still by using references and other's model.
Again, your frustration is legit, but there's solution.
Don't get me wrong, I am not saying a concept art bootcamp is irrelevant. But concept art is so personal to me I find it hard to educate. The essentials like perspective etc could be valuable.
Cheers,
/Thibaut.
I'm fine with concept art and reference because those are easy to find. But where am I going to find a modeling sheet for a shark with bat wings (something I would LOVE to sculpt), or even just a bat or shark? I don't want to have to learn to model over an image, I want to learn to copy reference from a different angle.
for something like that you need to get reference images from both sharks and bats, from different angles, different bats and sharks. after that it come down to your own creativity what you vision that kind of thing to be. start with shark, experiment where the wings would be, have fun with it. its all trial and error to bring out that kind of thing out.
I want to learn to copy reference from a different angle.
I might be wrong and please correct me if so, but this is not something you open a book or play a video and get better at immediately. There's not that many options: try, share and get feedback.
On the contrary to 3D software where you learn how to use it (what buttons does what, use this shortcut instead of that etc.), there's hardly any User Guide for sketching. Concept art is more fuzzy in the sense that whatever works for you is just fine !
Don't give up though, and good luck !
@wesburke sorry for the late reply and thanks a lot for your response.
Yes i did check those courses and i like them, however, what's missing there is the "confidence element", not sure how to correctly explain this, but basically is when you (student) know that what you're learning is going to take you from point-A to point-B, and for me that is critical for motivation, i believe that in our current time we are fortunate enough to have huge amount of free ressources online, and if someone is ready to put the effort, then making a collection of the best free tutorials/courses available would probably completely remove the needs of any premium material, specially for "mainstream" fields like Game dev, drawing, CG, and music, with that said, i can't imagine myself getting rid of premium content, i have subscriptions here, Pluralsight, and frequently buy courses on Udemy, and there is two main reasons for that :
1) Confidence in the instructor (based on other students reviews)
2) Time, that otherwise would be "wasted" lurking for free materials, even when the end result is worth it.
And that's what am really looking for here, my main and professional skill is programming, my full time job is coding and designing mobile games, though designing was (and will always be) a trial-&-error cycle, programming was very straight forward when i first started it (16y.o, 24 now), and i really want Art courses to be like that, so far, CGC bootcamp series (specially the animation one) has been my favorite tutorials of all time (and i watch A LOT of tutorials lol), it's those courses where the goals are very clear and the instructor is 100% confident in what he says, one of the most frustrating thing that i hate about tutorials, is when the instructor says "maybe do this... or maybe this would work...", and these kind of phrases are frequently used in "Creative" tutorials (art & music). and i want the opposite of that, there shouldn't be a "maybe" when teaching fundamentals, cause as much as it sounds "normal" to an expert, it is really a scary thing to say to a beginner.
Imagine teaching someone how to drive for the 1st time and telling him :
"maybe hit the breaks when you're about to turn"
So that's what i don't want to see in tutorials, and like i said, so far the animation bootcamp is one of the best tutorials i watched, so maybe that should be a reference ?
Thanks! and sorry again for the reply, the community notification got buried within all the other "daily notification" (maybe you guys should separate that :p ?)
have a good day!