With our mission to bring you college-level Blender education, our instructors spend months (or even years!) crafting new courses that meet the CG Cookie standard.
With Kent Trammell, Jonathan Lampel and Wayne Dixon giving their all, we agreed it's time to bring in reinforcements. On that note: welcome, Paul Caggegi!

First of all: Paul isn't entirely new to our crew: he's working on a new version of our passion project "Eat Sheep". Now, he will also be creating Blender training focused on 2D Illustration and animation with grease pencil.

Something is already in the works...

Watch Paul's showreel

Paul, welcome to CG Cookie, please introduce yourself to our members.

Hi there!

I’m a motion graphics artist and illustrator with over 20 years experience producing content for a whole range of clients.

From TV commercials to comic books, I’ve worked in various creative capacities including video editing, storyboarding, asset creation and more.

My passion lies in illustration and bringing ideas to life.

 

My interest in making comics led to the creation of my comic style shaders to assist with rendering backgrounds and assets quickly.

I produced several videos for Youtube on the topic, and amassed a modest following.

With the introduction of the grease pencil tool, my focus shifted from shaders to straight-out illustration inside of the Blender Interface.

Paul's own Blender comic, "Homebased"

What is your history with Blender? 

It goes back a long time!

I was still at University, completing a BA/Communication studies degree. I was also lecturing part-time, and making dumb short films with my fellow staff and some students.

I was looking for a way to make 3D titles, and Blender was one of the applications I tried. It took some wrangling back then (there was no undo function, for one thing) but I was obsessed.

I went on to work for a string of post-production studios, and my attempts at introducing Blender into their pipelines were met with varying degrees of failure. I went freelance in 2007, and since then I have used Blender in many professional capacities, most recently rendering full projects for local and international clients.

How do you know CG Cookie and why did you decide to join our crew?

I’ve been aware of CG Cookie for about a decade.

I always saw the content produced by CGC as a benchmark for my own content.

Whenever I would make a tutorial, part of my research involved low-key stalking CG Cookie for presentation tips, and also to make sure I wasn’t doubling up on content already provided!

 

Last year, a mutual friend made me aware of a project CG Cookie was working on and suggested I make contact about filling a pre-production role.

(Editor's note: This is our project Eat Sheep, currently in production.)

I began working on storyboards and illustrating some rough concepts for characters, sets and assets, and in the process developed a good working relationship with the team.

Transitioning to a full-time instructor felt very natural.

What can our members look forward to from you?

Probably a lot of nervous energy as I try to live up to an already high benchmark of quality content here!

I’ll be focusing a lot on the 2D tools inside of Blender, and demonstrating the range of capabilities that Grease Pencil has to offer.

What do you do besides Blender? Hobbies, passions, vices?

 

I’ve been the primary carer for my two girls for many years, and work has awlays been shaped around my household responsibilities.

I am fortunate that my partner works a full time job as a media adviser, otherwise I don’t think I would have been privileged enough to take some of the risks that have led me here.

 

I like gaming.

My current library includes Elder Scrolls Online, Fallout 76, Mass Effect and Cyberpunk 2077. I like a good storyline, but also a world to explore and immerse myself into.

 

Vices? Well... none (that I can talk about in polite company, lol!). Ok maybe coffee and the occasional wine.

And finally, 8 rapid-fire questions.

Favorite Blender add-on?

“Storyboard” by Ed White.

Favorite Blender artist?

For Grease Pencil it's Sophie Jantak.

Productivity life hack?

Stepping away from a task to give my brain a break.

Go-to source of inspiration?

Twitter and Instagram.

Complete this sentence: "In 5 years, Blender will..."

...be a desired skill on my CV rather than listed as a hobby.

"My least favorite thing about Blender is..."

...the sudden explosion of interest by industry heavy-weights. It is a wonderful thing, but many of us who have been in the community for a long time are suddenly getting flooded with requests for help, and it’s all great stuff to want to be involved in. There’s just not enough hours in the day!

"My most favorite thing about Blender is..."

...the community and developers. Without them, Blender would not be evolving as rapidly and in such amazing ways as it is.

Last TV show you binged?

Archive 81!

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Thank you, Paul, and welcome to the Cookie family! Next, we'll be talking to Paul in detail about his transition to a Blender freelancer - any questions you would like us to ask - share them in the comments! 👇