Where are you from and what projects are you busy with?
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Hi @Brad! I live in south-west UK. I used to work in magazine publishing, but now I run my own company designing and manufacturing craft products, like papers, stamps and dies (I do the designing/illustrating, my husband does the organising), and that's what we both do for a living. Nevertheless I'd like to illustrate children's books one day, because I want to tell stories, not 'just' make art, even though that is fun too.
My current projects are:
- making a new website for my personal art
- making better pieces for my portfolio (I'm using the 3rd Thursday challenges for this)
- very soon, I will have to start on a new round of product designing for early 2017 release.
@IanS Welcome to the SVS forums! Hope you like it here
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@mikesikes Thanks for posting! I'd love to visit San Diego! (also a big Switchfoot fan)
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@Chip-Valecek Thanks for the warm welcome! That sounds really great, keen to see your finished product!
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@Lydia-M Sounds great! Thanks for the reply
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@evilrobot Thanks for sharing! Looking forward to seeing more of your work
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@smceccarelli Thanks for sharing! You have such great work up on here!
I'd like to ask - I'm considering a full time course in animation/ concept design (covering basics in maya, drawing, design etc) but there are so few colleges offering it where I am from, would you recommend any online courses other than SVS that could offer similar learning material as in your course? -
@QuietYell Thank you so much for the kind words!
Great work in so many disciplines! Thank you for sharing -
@IanS Thanks for sharing! That is pretty awesome that you live near the manor
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@Dulcie Fantastic! Thanks so much for sharing!
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@Brad It depends in which direction you want to go...I mean, Maya alone takes about 2-3 years to master, and normally people who work in Maya are not focussing on drawing and design that much - they focus on modelling and/or rigging-animating designs from others (each of this items is a separate specialisation, by the way, if you want to do it at industry-level). You may want to check out Gnomon - a pretty renowned online school for VFX https://www.gnomon.edu
I learned ZBrush, which is a pretty intuitive modelling software, and I use it sometimes for illustration work. Again, if I wanted to do professional modelling, I would have to focus a lot more on that and stop drawing and painting that much
The SVS courses are really good overall, and there are really good courses on design principles here. I use Digital Tutors a lot - they have courses for Maya, ZBrush as well as Photoshop and a lot of other software - more on technical skills than design skills though. Schoolism.com has a varied offering too, that you may want to check out - but I feel it is a bit disjointed overall, and some of the courses are not that useful (but some, again, are awesome, like the ones run by Sam Nielson).
Hope it helps! -
@smceccarelli yeah! I totally echo the ones by Sam Nielson! Great stuff!
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And I'll be the third one to say Sam Nielson's classes are amazing. He really explains how light works and why it effects colors the way it does. But also I'll say I didn't get a lot out of many of the other classes on there. The money I spent for the full year subscription was worth what I got out of Sam's classes though. I'll also echo that Zbrush is pretty easy to learn. I took this gumroad tutorial and the next one after and was able to learn the program really well and make this image in around two weeks but it may have been a waste of money for me because I'm really more into illustrating..
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Welcome, Brad!!!
My name is Eric, and I live in Southern California. I am currently a stay at home Dad, and am working towards getting into Children's literature as an illustrator. It has been my dream for a long time, and I finally decided to completely focus on getting as good as I can. I am currently working on September's 3rd Thursday, as well as working on a comic strip for a pest control company (I know, weird).
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@Eric-Castleman Awesome! Thanks for posting and the welcome!
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@smceccarelli This is such helpful information, thank you! I have been wondering about whether Maya would be beneficial if I wanted to focus on doing more drawing and design based work and this has really addressed that concern. Will definitely look into Schoolism, looks like some great material there!
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@evilrobot This looks so good! Thanks for the help, will definitely check out Sam Nielson's stuff!
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Welcome, Brad
My name is Cathrine, and I'm from (and currently living in) Norway. I work full time as a graphic designer, and see myself doing this at least for the foreseeable future. But I love art, and I have this urge to draw and create (I believe Will Terry called it "the creative itch"). Now that my children are older and more independent, I feel I'm in a good place to explore this side of me more. And it's really enjoyable (and very frustrating at times). Hopefully I will reach a skill-level where I can do the occasional freelance assignment, as well as creating personal work -
Hi Brad my name is Lisa. I was a Neonatal Intensive Care Nurse, but I am a stay at home mom now to my 16 and 2 year old, I have been focusing on my portfolio for children's book illustration, I came across SVS and felt like I had won the lottery! I recently switched to childrensillustrators.com to advertise and was hired by an author to do a self publish book on createspace so I am working on that now. Welcome!
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@lmrush Hi Lisa thanks for sharing! Sounds exciting!
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@Camomilla Hi Cathrine thanks for sharing!
