The 3D Cartoon Blog

Depending on your tool of choice (mine is Autodesk Maya), you’re going to be faced with dilemma - "where do I start".  I personally found that Video Tutorials were the most effective in learning, mainly for a number of reasons the main one was that when I travel etc, I can watch them on a device to kill boredom (when you’re the most bored, you retain the most).

DVD’s.

DigitalTutors.com - They have a great Cartoon series that are about $69 a pop. They cover a lot of specific topics at hand ranging from Modeling through to Animating & Rigging your characters. The two that I found worthwhile the most was the Security Guard and Stylized Girl tutorials.

GnomonWorkshop - These folks don’t really spend a lot of their time teaching you cartoon characters, but they do cover a lot of advanced topics. I only have a few videos in their series, but I found they do an amazing job at teaching you the most complex subjects in a matter that is easily to on-ramp to. They’re about the same price as DigitalTutors.com in manyways.

SimplyMaya.com - This site seems a bit dodge at first glance, but they do provide some quality tutorials by all appearances. I’ve only done their free tutorials so far, but I’m keen to buy some of their paid ones, specifically the Santa one etc. As I’m always curious to see how they approach modeling different to the above.

It’s expensive to skill-up on your own when it comes to learning. I’ve easily spent under $1000 USD so far on tutorials and I’m actually quite fortunate that at Microsoft we have an internal library which has some videos of the above sites we can check-out. I think the library has saved me a further $1k as well, so bare in mind learning 3D isn’t cheap.

Books.

I’ve got a few books, mostly the "Learning Maya xxxx" series (from Learning Maya 7 through to Maya 2009). The reason I bought the entire series as I was curious to see how they approach the example Models within the book each time. In that Learning Maya 7 will show you how to make the lead character in the Academy award winning short film ChubbChubbs. In Learning Maya 2009, you’re being taught how to Model the lead character at out of Delgo (a movie being released this year at the cinemas), the main body of the book doesn’t change all that much and so once you get the basics of Maya down pat, it’s now about learning the various models and how to approach them. It’s well worth the $69 USD a pop in my opinion.

I also bought some other books, namely "Stop staring", which covers a lot of the facial techniques associated to characters in general. I also bough "An Essential Introduction to Maya Character Rigging" which, also is a great resource to study when it comes to getting your head around adding bones to your characters.

There’s heaps more and it really comes down to your own bookstore, how much money you have in your pocket and so on.

The one thing I should make note of here, is the fact that Maya despite it’s evolution throughout the years, doesn’t change all that much, so a Maya 7 book is still relevant today in Maya 2009, so that’s really going to give you bang for your buck in some stores (Borders essentially don’t care, and will charge you the same price as 2009 - despite the book being so old? wtf Borders!).

Below are the Books i’ve mentioned above at Amazon:

In-Person Training.

I’ve seen a few degrees you can get throughout the world (Australia, Canada, US etc). They’re all pretty expensive in that ranging from $40k - 60k depending on the degree in total. I think these are typically aligned for folks with no careers in general and are looking to start their lives with 3D in mind. In my case, I’m 15 years into my career, working at Microsoft and simply cannot take time off work to study via these programs and in the end I’m not looking to do this as a full time job, more as a creative outlet.

That being said, places like Gnomon Workshop seem to have an interesting price model, where about $1500 USD + your hotel / air fares etc will get you into one of their workshops. This seems more appealing and I plan on taking one of these in 2009 at some point (given I’ve moved from Australia to the US, seems foolish not to use the US ecosystem for good instead of evil hehe).

I really am keen at some point to also put my name down at "Animation Mentor", as I’ve seen some video reels these guys have put together and can see really smart approach to teaching people how to animate via this company. I’m so impressed with their approach, I’m looking at ways to mirror the technique in Microsoft with our various products. I’m not sure on the pricing models, but I think whatever they charge seems well worth it.

Piracy.

I’ve done many a Google search and seen a heap of Torrent style links relating to the above and more. My main annoyance with this is firstly the search results get in the way of my hunt for more online tutorials and so that’s damn annoying.

Secondly, Is it really necessary to pirate them? I get that folks will pirate Maya etc given it’s various price structure and working for Microsoft I see a lot of mixed reasons for piracy, most of which I disagree with. Tutors whom take the time to setup a tutorial however, is something I just cannot express how important it is to support as when someone dedicates time/energy to tutorials in all software, it’s a thankless job - (money isn’t that great to start with). I don’t know, to me, I’ll support them whenever I can and sure I’m fortunate that Microsoft has an internal library which has most of the above selection available to staff, but I’d still pay for them if i wasn’t at Microsoft is more my point.

Fight the urge to pirate as if you support them, they’ll likely deliver more tutorials in the end.

Hope this helps all!