Howdy! <3
I’m glad you like my stuff! 3D is a super fun hobby that I’ve found a lot of happiness in. Here’s my thought on how to get into it:
1: Have a reason to do it or you’ll get frustrated. I have absurdly deep reasons for making the stuff that I do. Some people will send you hate mail, so your reason has to be good enough to want to deal with that unpleasantness from time to time.
2: Think of it like any art. I have a background in theater and therefore I think about animating in that way. The characters are actors on a stage, and I get to decide where the audience sits. If you want to model, think of it like sculpting as you might do with clay. The end result will be more aesthetically pleasing. The tools are just that. The stuff you make has to come from your heart. SFM’s a terrible tool, for example, but look at the beautiful things that Argodaemon puts out with it. If you make something to stimulate an emotion, it doesn’t matter what tools you use. A terrible musician will still be terrible on the best instrument, and the same applies to art tools.
3: Learn lots of stuff about art. Your absolute best bet is to study fine art in school, but there are other options. If you want to animate, get yourself a video production textbook from a university so you can learn the basics of photography and camera work, and then learn the tool of your choice. It helps to watch good artsy movies, too, and not that Michael Bay pop-culture type crap. If you want to model, an art textbook is probably useful but you can probably jump straight into the tools for that one.
4: Get good with the tools you like. If I was starting from scratch I’d learn Zbrush, Maya, After Effects and Photoshop. I use Blender, GIMP, Vegas, Unity and SFM. Video tutorials are the best for me. Lynda.com has the best tutorials out there, but Youtube’s OK most of the time. Once you have a baseline of experience and know the tools pretty well (20 hours?) you’ll know what to Google when you’re trying to do something specific. Watch people do it on Picarto so you can see other people’s workflows, too, but don’t do that until you’ve studied on your own for a bit.
5: Care about what people say. If somebody’s writing you or offering feedback, he or she might be wrong, but it was still nice of that person to take the time to look at what you created. A lot of artists are mean to other people, and I don’t like when people do that. Artists set the tone of fandoms, so why not make it a happy one?
I hope that’s helpful to you and anyone else interested in trying this hobby out. It’s a lot of work, but I think it’s worth it. <3
a-l-s-t-d
asked:
Heya dude, I like the way you animate your stuff so I was wondering if you could point me in the right direction in animating 3d stuff like you do? I know some people do it in sfm and you do it in blender? If i'm understanding correctly? If you happen to have any suggestions about how to go about making models,(or even have some resources on it) that'd be great. This is a lot for me to take in, I'm 100 percent new to this kinda thing, and I dont' know where to start.