Growing Dissatisfaction with CGCookie

Helo there. Newbie cgcookie member here.

Well, to be fair, what I think so far is that :

-Yes, I can see very clearly what I've already learned fromcgcookie compared to when I was trying to copy random tutorials from Youtube. I understand modelling way batter than before because some of the courses are of a very high quality in that they really help you understand the hows and whys.

-For your first suggestion, I had the same feeling, but it's not a big thing missing. Lots of tutorials are ending with a "let me see what you guys are doing with that" at the end of the exercise. It's up to you to take what you learne and use it for your own defined exercise. I did it recently and it was reaaly good for me to see what I had learned, and trying to go through the process again. Maybe it just lacks an input category at the end of tutorial for personal project built from this exercise, but it's not too bad. You can still create your own gallery. This is where people will look for what you are doing I think.

-I also had some exercises where it was just "passed" with no comments. For these, it was ok for me. You know what you need to do, if it's good it passes, otherwise you'll hear about what's wrong. I don't focus too much on that. That's also why I joined the current contest. It puts what I learned to the test, and keeping mysqelf a WIP thread allows me to get feedbakck from people, including crew. 

That's the way I see it so far. 

I can't speak for all the staff members, as I am only just back from a break from CG due to becoming a father to twins , but I know for a fact that @waylow , Wayne Dixon who is CG Cookies Animation tutor , makes a point of critiquing everyone's animation exercise submissions in great detail and he also started the 2.8 roadblocks and obstacles thread which was specifically focused on helping the community transition to Blender 2.8 and I have seen over the past 6 years , plenty of staff critiques, both on the excercises and through live feeds .

I myself ,along with many others ,  grade  exercises as well , and most of us don't have time to write much in the way of feedback either , so don't get offended if you don't always get feedback. In itself, a pass or a fail is better feedback than nothing. 

As for the rest of the staff at CGC who don't always grade excercises  , I'm sure they are doing their best and are very busy making awesome tutorials and making everything happen behind the scenes so that we can all have great learning material and a great community to learn from. 

I've always loved CCG for its friendly, personal community based atmosphere which I think comes from the fact that it is a fairly small company,  so I would suggest you focus on those positives , and hopefully understand why the guys and girls that run CGC can't always do everything. 

I have also found CGC to be much cheaper than other comparable learning hubs , and because of that I think its reasonable not to fret over some things that aren't always as you expect. 

I am only speaking from personal experience, but I have been an ongoing , paying member of CGC since 2014 , and in that time I have come to love the company, the staff who make it happen , and the service they provide.  

Hang in there and see if you can see things from a different perspective :) 

I disagree about the exercise thing.  A lot of them pass when they should have failed.

williamatics Unfortunately I agree with you. And that's also why, except for the animation exercises, I have completely stopped sending in my own exercise submissions. I still do the the exercises, I just don't send them in. The reason I still try to submit the animation exercises (when my busy schedule permits me) is because of @waylow 's comments and suggestions. To me personally, that's worth more than the entire monthly subscription fee alone. It's a great boost to my confidence. I also like to read his comments to other people's submissions, as I have learned a ton from those alone.

When I first joined CGC in December last year, I felt quite nervous the first time I submitted an exercise. It was the first time I had ever let anyone have a close inspection of something I had made. Every few hours I would check if my submission had been graded yet, worrying that maybe I had forgotten something, that perhaps it would fail. And there were a lot more submissions back then that didn't pass. Seems like the last submission that failed was early June this year. And before that, nothing has failed since middle of February!?

I guess some people feel a bit uncomfortable giving a fail to a submission, especially when the submission kind of passed. And perhaps they also want to give more encouragement by letting submissions pass. I can totally understand that. But sometimes failing a submission (with the comment as to why, and some words on how they can improve and pass next time) does a lot more to help someone improve their skills. Also, by letting certain submissions pass, that clearly didn't meet all the requirements, you are sending the message that it doesn't really matter if you do all the required steps, that those steps are more like suggestions and guidelines, and that you don't really need to put any real effort into passing an exercise.

https://cgcookie.com/exercise_submissions/15425  Here is a submission to the Modeling with Primitives exercise. Only two of the required 3 primitives were present. This one got a Fail, with 2 of the 3 exercise requirements filled!

https://cgcookie.com/exercise_submissions/19518 This one on the other hand, (from a few months ago, I guess!?), only submitted 1 out of 3 primitives, and also just 2 out of 3 requirements filled,  but it passed the exercise!

I'm not saying that the grading should necessarily be super strict, but at least it needs to be more consistent. Otherwise it's not really fair, and I think does more harm than good in the long run. We are here to learn from our mistakes, to practice what we have learned in a course, and to fill in the gaps when we lacked something.

@theluthier maybe some grading guidelines should be added, for people to follow when they help grade submissions. What should be expected of a grader, how strict (or not strict) we should be and so on. Perhaps that would make the grading more fair and consistent and could improve the quality of doing an exercise in the first place. Submitting an exercise is kind of like a mini version of an art critique, so I think more effort should be spent to make the best of it.

These are just my opinions. I love this community. Even though I haven't been very active the last few months, because of my increasingly busy schedule, I still try to log on every day, checking out the forum and grade exercise submissions, and I have no intention of leaving in the near future. Joining CGC has done a lot to help me getting more confident and actually start modeling things.

williamatics Sadly I have to agree with you..

But keeping in mind most are hobbyists who just doodle a bit for fun, most probably don’t care if it’s actually good enough..

It sucks for those who do take learning seriously (whether hobbyist or wanting to learn the craft and find a job).

thebergh Grading guidelines won’t help.. Most people at the Cookie are hobbyists who just want to have fun and learn a little bit how to do something. I’m pretty sure they will ignore the guidelines..

And there are many people on the Cookie (especially those type of hobbyists who aren’t too serious about learning it proper) who do not have the knowledge to properly grade exercises (there are a lot of people out there who think they are good and someones work is also good, while it’s actually terrible).

And that okay, if it’s just your hobby and you just want to have fun and such. Have fun I say!

But it doesn’t help with grading at all.

ssmurfmier1985 I'm sure you are right that many people would ignore the guidelines... I was just trying to think of something...anything... to bring the quality back into the exercise grading. But to say that there are many people who do not have knowledge to properly grade exercises is a bit exaggerating. Sure, some of the more advanced stuff, especially animation, is a lot harder to grade properly for a beginner. But the beginner exercises are not, and most exercises submitted are the easier kind.

E.g.
1. Use mesh tools learned in this course to modifying the provided primitive objects.
2. Modify only the three provided mesh primitive objects
3. Submit your finished exercise to https://sketchfab.com

Basically you only need to check if there are 3 model present that has been modified from their primitive form. If they did, great, it's a pass. If not, fail, with a friendly comment letting them know why. And more advanced students could maybe add some pointers how to do it if they mentioned any difficulties in completing the task. Maybe some link etc. I guess my expectations are too high...

I do agree that having fun is super important. I wouldn't be trying to learn 3d modelling if I didn't enjoy it. I would love to be able to reach a level where I could make money out of it, but that's never gonna happen unfortunately. So it's just something I do for fun, but I'm still taking it seriously, or I would just stay on Youtube, saving my money.

Anyways, I don't know what the original goal was when CGC first introduced the grading of exercises. Maybe it was just something for fun, nothing to be taken too seriously. Or perhaps it was, but weren't able to sustain the quality of it. Either way, I do think that many people who are serious about learning, maybe after seeing some CGC ads, they come here only to find it's "just for fun", will most likely start looking elsewhere. I do feel CGC needs to be able to cater both the serious student and the doodler/hobbyist, or sooner or later all that's going to be left is the latter.

Maybe it would be better to just get rid of the whole grading part itself, and just leave the submission and comments. I guess that could free up a lot of time for people to spend more on modeling instead. And students could still get feedback on exercises. But again, I do think that would be a shame... or perhaps grading should be restricted until a certain amount of XP has been gained....or just let you grade exercises you have passed yourself... but is just complicating things...

But from your reply it almost sounds like the CGC community has given up on it. "That there are too many doodlers here and nothing we can do about it, so it's better to just let it be and let everyone do what they want as long as they are having fun." Again, a shame if that's true.

Anyways, whatever the thoughts, opinions, decisions etc of the CGC crew are, I will respect that. And if most people are happy, then that's all that matters I guess.

thebergh I’m sorry, I should have been clearer that I meant not having the skill level to grade the more advanced exercises. If you are creating a realistic character for example, you would like to be graded and get feedback from someone with experience modeling realistic characters. But as far as I know, those people are very very rare in the grading section..

I personally do not do the exercises anymore. I use the skills learned and create my own personal projects. Those I could potentially submit for a Live Critique Stream if I want feedback, that’s at the moment the best way to get valuable feedback at CG Cookie imo.

It was fun when I was doing the beginner exercises, but I quickly realized that submitting exercises wasn’t the best way to improve. Doing them, yes, that was very valuable starting out. But submitting them, that didn’t contribute to my learning at all.. 

Class is still the best way to skyrocket your learning progress imo, especially when starting out. As well as applying what you learn in the courses to your own projects.

Animation exercises excluded from this opinion of course, Wayne is doing an excellent job giving feedback on those!

Hey everyone,

thanks to all of you for taking your time to read and comment on this.
When reading your posts I get the impression that those exercise submission thingy is a bigger problem, that not only gets me a little disappointed but many others too.

For me it would be great if someone from the (active) CGCookie-crew would maybe comment on this if they have the same impression or if they've made a totally different experience so far.
(At this point I'd like to mention that I'm not angry with anyone, nor do I want to attack anybody)

Cheers,
tobles

ssmurfmier1985 Thank you for clarifying. So it seems like a lot of people have more or less given up on the exercises, and it's basically just something to entertain newcomers. This goes to show that the whole idea of exercise submission and grading needs to be re-thought. Unless it was just meant to be a fun thing, then I guess it doesn't really matter. For me personally, I just help out grade exercises I have completed myself, or exercises I feel comfortable with enough to say that I can tell, based on the rules of the exercise, whether they passed or not.

Doing your own project is always going to be the best way to learn. And submitting something for the Live Critique Stream sounds like good advice, although personally I neither have the skill nor the confidence for that. And then the fact that I can't really participate in the live streams anymore. (Because I have to use VPN to access youtube from my current location, and it hasn't been working smoothly for a long time now. Only works sorta OK on my phone, but then the image resolution defaults to 144p and can't be changed it seemed). Yes, I realize I can watch it later.

Classes sounds great and fun...but it's during my busiest time of the year and I don't have the energy or the time to do all the work each week. But I'll probably watch them later at a time when I am less busy, and maybe do the homework as well.

So, probably CGC should put even more focus on Live Critique, Classes and also on the Competitions in the future, since it gives more value to those members that really wants to learn. Because continuing doing things that even the members doesn't even find that useful, might just reflect badly on CGC in the 3d community. Anyways, this will be my final post on the matter...

I can't speak for everyone at CGC, but we do our best to grade exercises. Thing is we're a very small crew, and most of the time we're focused on creating more content whether that's a video course, article, live stream or something else along those lines. It's not unusual to dedicate an entire day or two to just responding to questions or grading exercises. We also need a better way of getting notified of exercises. Currently we do not get directly notified if an exercise is to be graded. It is something that we are trying to improve and I apologize if we miss these. Thank for bringing up these concerns, we do appreciate you all being here. We're always looking to improve. 

jgonzalez Thank you for taking the time to respond to this thread. I'm sure that most people that have been around for a little while knows you're a small crew and you're all working hard. And we're all grateful for the time you guys put into this. And that's why we only blame the doodlers, and not the CGC crew! Ok just kidding, we're not blaming anyone.

Probably I'm just wasting bandwidth here, but I'll chip in with some ideas. And if they are bad ideas, then at least we know what wouldn't work. :)

1. I don't really know how the grading is implemented on the back end, but let's say for argument's sake that each submission requires 5 votes to be considered either a pass or fail. I'm guessing an instructions vote is also considered as one!? If so, probably it should be either counted as two or maybe better, as 5. Otherwise, if 4 members vote a pass but then an instructor comes in and finds an issue and votes a fail it would still pass?! At least would help get through the grading faster. 

2. Maybe a counter on the "view submissions" page. Something like, "X exercises left to be graded". Perhaps redundant. Just an idea to further stress how much is left once you open the page.

3. I do think that maybe you should only be able to grade something you've passed yourself. But yeah... Would possibly increase the load on the crew and go against community spirit or something like that. But would improve the quality slightly.

I really thought I was going to have more time to think of some ideas, but I have to get back to work. I apologize if I'm wasting everyone's times with my long posts.  :)

Hey @waylow,

thanks for your comment.
I'd like to say a few words to the point of learning by myself. I am totally aware that the CGC-instructors are not there to pick me up and carry me to my goals without me doing the work. But for the example I made with the arm it's a little different. Mr. Trammell made very good videos where he shows references images and tells how to read information from them like shadows and how to use those informations. I think this is a great way to teach people how to do things on their own, but with this arm thingy, I have the problem that I don't know how to read those "empty" information where the arm has no striking features. Trying and practicing it by myself always left me behind with kind of a garden hose that has an elbow and a wrist... looks kind of weird, can give nightmares (maybe?). At this point I feel like running face-first into a solid wall again and again without improving since I think I'm making the same mistakes in the same places over and over again. I would've uploaded it to get feedback but this leads to the feedback issue.
So, to round this up a little with what I said in my first post on this topic, I guess in this case it would have been good for me if there had been a short video in that particular course addressing different shapes/proportions.

Writing these posts gives me kind of a "backstabber" feeling, so I'd like to say that I'm enjoying all the content of CGCookie and I'm very happy having all this available.

Greetings,
tobles

@wesburke Hi Wes 😊 my suggestion is about the sort of exercises CG Cookie provides. I would suggest to stimulate more doing your own projects for exercises, use the skill learned and actually create something unique. Maybe not for the beginner series, but for some of the intermediate courses and definitely for the advanced courses.

For example;

Johanthan Lampel did this awesome sci-fi environment course. It is training you to be able to create any game asset you want. He is modeling an animated door. What is the exercise? An animated door. Which mean you could follow along with the course, copy everything Lampel is doing, submit that, and get a pass. Not very challenging imo..

Why not ‘create your own sci-fi environment asset, with a movable part, but it can’t be a door’.

That way you are stimulated to actually use the skills and your own imagination, to create something unique. I think this is something you could definitely ask of an advanced blender head.

Not sure if this has been suggested yet , but I am in a rush and just wanted to add this in 

Why not make it mandatory to put a small critique in when you grade a submission ? You could set a minimum character count and that way everyone who grades them will have to say something about the submission to help out. This includes myself as I try to grade excercises when I can but I am terrible at just pressing the red or green button and moving on without writing anything - a habit I am working to change.

Just a thought but surely it will be fairly easy to implement and even if less people vote, it will have a bigger impact on helping the submitter I would say. 

frikkr I think that’s a great start! 

But how do you make sure everyone doesn’t just write ‘good job’, without making the minimum characters count so high that you have to type super long stories every time? Which would probably keep people way from grading.. 

Just curious if anyone has any ideas on that? :)

thebergh I still wanted to respond to something you said earlier:

I do feel CGC needs to be able to cater both the serious student and the doodler/hobbyist, or sooner or later all that's going to be left is the latter.

But do they though? Have to cater both? As in provide different content / features aimed at one or the other? Considering the small crew they are, and how long it takes to create courses and such, that’s a hell of a lot to ask..

As far as I know (from what Kent tells during streams), they aim to offer high quality content that takes you from noob to finding a job in the industry aka the serious learner. And with that choice comes certain sacrifices (maybe less doodle members), but also opportunities!  (like growing a strong community of passionate artists) I think it’s good they choose clear path, with the small crew they are. Focus is key in providing quality content.

Doesn’t mean your typical hobbyist can’t enjoy CG Cookie, on the contrary! They have access and get to learn from this high quality content too 😊

I do think you have to be consistent though, and make sure every part of the learning platform follows the same high standards you set. Cater to your chosen audience.  

And as always the awesome Cookie crew is demonstrating they listen to their members and want to improve by engaging with us about our concerns here in this thread, which I applaud 🙌🏻

I do strongly believe meaningful feedback (from artists ahead of you in experience) is super important for your learning progress, so the more ways those can be provided / implemented the better. Especially on a learning platform like this. Yes, you have your own responsibility to practice what you learn, but if you don’t know what you’re doing wrong and keep practicing the same mistakes you’ll never get better. You’ll probably just give up in the end.. I believe ttobles mentioned this also.

Curious to see how this exercise thingy gets upgraded to the next level 😎

ssmurfmier1985 Ha good point.... well ..... "good job" is 7 characters long , and "well done" is 8 long , and "great work" is 9  , so lets just make it 10 character min... problem solved :P