Every. Day.

For sure Mike’s phenomenal portfolio has a power to fuck with your mind. So be careful.

Mike is a freelance motion designer and 3D artist from Wisconsin, USA. He uses Cinema4D, After Effects and Photoshop. His short films have screened at onedotzero, Prix Ars Electronica and the Sydney Biennale.

Here are Top 30 Artworks of Beeple from 2015.

Warning: After seeing these pictures you may be tempted to create your own daily works.

BEEPLE ON SOCIAL MEDIA

• Facebook

• Twitter

• Tumblr

• Instagram

• Vimeo

OVER TO YOU

Are you up for the challenge? Create the everyday artwork for the next 10 days.

After all as Steven Pressfield noted, “the most important thing about art is to work.”

I’d even want to encourage you to share your #dailyart in the comments below.

No matter how good or bad you think it is.

A few tips:

1. Build your scene around ONE emotion or concept. You should be able to describe your idea in one sentence.

2. Keep it minimal.

3. While creating a scene in Blender, follow Pareto principle (80% of the effects come from 20% of the causes).

4. Post process the hell out of it in Gimp or Photoshop.

I will be happy to share my thoughts and review it.

The post Top 30 Artworks of Beeple from 2015 (WARNING: Can Cause Brain Damage) appeared first on Creative Shrimp.

Alchemy Tutorial: Getting Through Creative Block to Create Concept Art

But actually, there is a way out of this sleep of reason.

Download Alchemy

Feed some 2D shapes to your brain first. Create an improvised Rorschach test using a free drawing software called Alchemy. And I guarantee you will get your ideas back.

Goblins? No problem.

Robotic aliens? You name it.

Step 1. Draw a Bunch of Random Shapes in Alchemy

Start spilling the ink.

Listen to Matt Uelmen Tristram theme from Diablo. Just make sure you not allowing logical thinking to intervene.

Use the Pull Shapes (with the ‘Parts’ folder) tool to create the hard surface angular shapes.

Step 2. Find the Robot!

Now look at these shapes and find the robot. I’m sure that there is one.

I see not only the robot, but the Drakula-style haircut, the witch house and some ducks.

(And now imagine that you can use Mandelbrot fractals as a base for your concept art!).

Step 3. Draw the (Owl) Concept in the Image Editor

The next step is to draw the robot in Photoshop, Gimp or Krita.

Use the Alchemy generated inkblot as a base and start sketching the robo. Keep it freestyle.

Step 4. Tweak the Outlines

Now when you have created a rough outline, start making your concept pretty.

• Define the volume

• Define the key light direction to reveal the form of the model

• Lay out the fine brush strokes

Step 5. Finalize the Concept Art

Congrats, my friend. You made an awesome concept art (I really hope you did).

As the last touch you can work on presentation.

How will you frame it?

Maybe you would like to add some color or texture to it?

Personally, I love how the paper texture looks. Gives the whole thing a hand-drawn vibe.

Now It’s Your Turn

Now download Alchemy and start creating your own robots, mythical creatures and other exciting stuff.

You can use it as a starting point for your concept.

Share your works in the comments and tell me if this tutorial was helpful to you.

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Please Share This Tutorial 1075 Times

If you enjoyed this tutorial and think it may help other people to create a better concept art, please share it by clicking share buttons below (or above) the post. It means a lot to me.

Really appreciate your time.

And feel free to subscribe to the newsletter to get ahead in art, computer graphics and espresso brewing.

The post A Quick Way to Create Concept Art Using Alchemy (Works Great with Robots) appeared first on Creative Shrimp.

Indeed, we live in a world where the best way to stay invisible is to follow the best practices.

To follow what everybody else do in your niche. What is considered to be effective. What is approved.

Indeed, the reason why people create mind-blowingly similar artworks is that some things are known to work.

Like nude girls in sci-fi setting (hello, Artstation).

To not focus on those effective things is to deny the constants of the industry and the web, it seems.

But I won’t buy it.

Here’s 3 amazing benefits of doing dumb things.

 

#hipster wall, hands down. #creative impulse for the whole #day.

A photo posted by Gleb Alexandrov (@gleb.alexandrov) on May 30, 2015 at 1:43am PDT

1. Stand Out From the Crowd

Imagine it.

For the artist, it’s sometimes tempting to crush it with following the ever-green trend of sexy female cyborgs. You know, it’s sexual objectification at its best, but it works!

I’m not denying here the huge talent that goes into making such artworks. But in the long run, it’s not practical to go all in and do what’s trending.

You know, the same goes with naming. The big brand names (Google, someone?) sounds excruciatingly weird too.

For example, if you’re starting a blog about computer graphics, it’s very tempting to name it CgBlog. The conventional wisdom here is that a SEO-friendly name will rank you higher in Google and will attract more eyes to your work.

It’s right and it’s SEO, after all. Who wants to shoot herself in the leg by not letting the keywords drive the content strategy?

Despite the first impression, creating memorable stuff can be more valuable than creating something that follows a trend.

I especially like the quote of Eli Altman:

“At the heart of anything good there should be a kernel of something undefinable, and if you can define it, or claim to be able to define it, then, in a sens, you’ve missed the point”.

Don’t Call it That, a Naming Workbook

2. Gain a New Experience (Which You Wouldn’t Gain Otherwise)

Making stupid things also can have a very far reaching consequences. Often the nerdy work we do on Fridays translate into fun and profitable projects years later.

From my personal experience, I can name a dozen of such coincidences (which are not coincidental, by the way).

Ranging from awkward Rock’n’Roll experiments to other not less exotic exercises.

When I was asked to help my friend to make VFX for his Star Wars fanfic, I was totally skeptical about the outcome. While deeply respecting George Lucas’ universe, I wasn’t sure about spending a month creating Star Destroyers crashing one onto another. Not speaking about rotoscoping the lightsabers.

For some reason, I’ve accepted the challenge of living the life of my friend for a month. And now I’m grateful for that , because this project demanded me to learn After Effects (alongside with numerous compositing tricks).

And when I face the need of doing a complex shot in After Effects, I’m feeling good about taking not-so-well-thought decisions.

3. Make Your Voice Heard

“A lot of people take the desire to not pigeonhole themselves way too far and avoid showing any personality whatsoever”. – Eli Altman

Do you remember Samorost game?

It is unique. It has personality. And it just connects.

Clearly, every piece of art that comes from Amanita Design possesses such undeniable personality. It’s almost like a human being— not perfect, lovely and… stupid (in a good sense!).

By embracing bizarre and humane, peeps from Amanita design established their unique voice. You won’t forget their art, when you see it.

There are more examples.

Check Ryan McGuire’s photos on Gratisography. And when your friends will call it stupid, just call it unique.

Because  being stupid really means being unique.

Over to You

Indeed, it’s often needed to go in the opposite direction and do really freaking stupid things.

In the end it all comes to this: you broadcast your voice alongside with thousands of similar artists and bloggers and starters of all kinds.

To have chances to make your signal heard in this noise, you must broadcast on different frequency.

To set the practicality aside (and end this article on Forest Gump note), doing stupid things is fun.

Do something bizarre now and see what happens.

…And please share this article by clicking the huge and very sexy buttons below (and above!). It means a lot to me.

You Will Also Like These Stupid Tutorials:

Scan Your Face and Create a 3d Pumpkin

The post Here Are the Benefits of Doing Stupid Things (If You Are an Artist) appeared first on Creative Shrimp.

The Topics of Today’s Podcast:

1. As a CG artist, should I practice in traditional media?
2. Why is it important to develop an artistic eye?
3. What is in common between photography and computer graphics?

Please subscribe, because it will help this project to grow.

You May Also Like:

#AskGleb Podcast 01: When Should You Start Making CG?

Question of the Day:

What is your favorite traditional medium?

Let’s show some pictures/photos in the comments. Your paintings, paper models, anything!

The post #AskGleb Podcast 02: What Are The Benefits of Practicing in Traditional Media? appeared first on Creative Shrimp.

Sometimes we can’t wait for inspiration to just come to us. And what I find interesting about these dead-end situations, that once you feed some images to your brain – it begin to generate. The more, the better. That’s why I encourage you to visit places like Flickr and Pixabay and just search for something, that sparks your imagination.

Deep elven forest at dusk? Frozen river, reflecting sky? Maybe weird abandoned places?

In this forest we find elves by Peter & Ute Grahlmann

That all sounds like a perfect words to begin searching process.

The main thing with this technique is to listen to your feelings, while scrolling down dozens of images. And when something stops your attention, analyze what you see.

Super bonus for nerds:

Variation of this method – Start generating Fractals with Mandelbulber. Nice starting point too.

Highlights of the podcast:

1. Surfing Flickr while generating ideas

2. Using Lightscreen free software to easily grab the part of the screen to the image file

3. Some random thoughts on composition

The post Gleb’s Podcast #04. How to Get Through Creative Block using Flickr appeared first on Creative Shrimp.

Are you into digital art and at the same time, love blogging & social media? So are we, and here is a huge list of the resources for digital artists. 

Pretty much every resource mentioned here is proved to be essential in our daily work. It all comes from our experience it other words. Hopefully you’ll be able to discover some helpful tools and websites.

Resource section is being updated, as we’re getting to know the new online services, open-source goodies and other stuff. So stay tuned to the updates.

Disclaimer: nobody pays us for mentioning their content here. We do this just so you can benefit from it.

MY PERSONAL FAVORITES:

Blender – best free open source 3d content creation suite being developed by Blender Institute and thousands of people around the world. All-in-one tool, featuring everything you may need to kickstart your digital artist career. Whether you aim to create an animated short or want to do architectural visualization, it’s the tool for you.

Unreal Engine is one of the best all-in-one game environments available to mortals. Should I mention that it is now free you pay only some percentage from your revenue (and only after your game earns more than 100.000$). Grab it and test your weird game idea.

Unity – Lightweight, fast, relatively easy to learn, has an amazing community. Can publish to a dozen of platforms.

FREE 3D SOFTWARE

Blender –  the best free and open source 3d content creation suit, but more importantly, a gorgeous community of enthusiastic people.

Sculptris – a younger sybling of Zbrush, but easier to learn and it’s free. Features dynamic tessellation or so called digital clay.

InstantMeshes – have a high poly model and want to rebuild it to use in a game engine? InstantMeshes allows you to rebuild the mesh automatically while preserving the shape of the original model.

Meshlab – a free 3D mesh processing software capable of dealing with super dense meshes and point clouds. Useful for editing and cleaning photo scanned assets.

xNormal – a free tool for baking normal and occlusion maps, transferring textures from one model to another and other cool tricks.

MakeHuman – open-source tool for making 3D characters. Remember customizing your character in Skyrim or Mass Effect? Now imagine a more elaborate character generator, based on real human anatomy.

SculptGL – a digital sculpting web app with sources available on Github. Features dynamic topology, remeshing, matcaps, you name it.

MagicaVoxel – a free lightweight 8-bit voxel art editor and interactive path tracing renderer.

PAID 3D SOFTWARE

Zbrush – I guess Zbrush doesn’t need introduction, right? Probably the best (most responsive, innovative, optimized) digital sculpting tool for artists. 

World Machine – 3D terrain generator famous for producing an ultra realistic natural erosion. Can export meshes, heightmaps, normal maps and textures.

Gaea – advanced toolset for procedural terrain design and world building. Has a free version.

PHOTOGRAMMETRY SOFTWARE

Meshroom – a free open-source 3D reconstruction software featuring the full photogrammetric pipeline from point cloud generation to texturing.

VisualSFM – a free (for non-commercial use) application for reconstructing 3D from photos. Setting it up can be a little bit tricky, so I recommend watching this tutorial first.

CMVS-PMVS – after using VisualSFM, this CMVS-PMVS tool is needed for the dense reconstruction with more points for a more detailed result.

Photoscan – almost magical way to create 3D models from photos, one of a few major photogrammetry software. 

Reality Capture – one of the fastest and most precise photogrammetry solutions out there. Subscription-based.

fSpy – open source still image camera matching.

FREE 2D SOFTWARE

Gimp – free raster graphics editor capable of doing what you’d expect from it. A nice community too.

Krita – free digital painting application. Stylish and feature-rich.

Alchemy – an unconventional project that explores the new ways of generating shapes in 2D. Think of it as the Rorschach inkblots generator. Super useful for getting new ideas for concept art.

Inkscape –  open source vector graphics editor similar to Illustrator.

PureRef – the simple way of viewing and organizing images. Plus it has the Always on Top mode and its UI color scheme resembles Half-Life (or is it just my taste).

Pixlr – a set of cloud-based image editing tools (imagine Photoshop, but in your browser).

Mischief – An inventive sketching and drawing app for brainstorming. Has an infinite canvas. Has a free version. Hipster-friendly.

PAINT APPS

MyPaint – a nimble, distraction-free tool for digital painters. Supports innovative features like spectral paint and linear color mixing.

IMAGE-EDITING APPS

8Bit Photo Lab – a photo filtering app capable of simulating the ‘8-bit’ look of various computers and consoles from the 80s and 90s.

Canva – create designs and documents in your browser, drag-n-drop style.

MATERIALS

Substance Designer – 3D material creation tool, de facto the standard in the 3d graphics industry for PBR texturing.

Materialize – a stand alone tool for creating materials for use in games from images.

PixaFlux – PBR texture composer, visual scripting of image operations.

ArmorPaint – a stand-alone software designed for physically-based texture painting.

COMPOSITING SOFTWARE

Natron – an open-source compositing software which I personally haven’t used, but people tell it rocks.

VIDEO EDITING SOFTWARE

Shotcut – a free, open source, cross-platform video editor.

Kdenlive – free non-linear video editor aimed at GNU/Linux, but also works on BSD and MacOS.

Cinelerra GG Infinity – a resource-saving 8k video editing software for Linux.

Davinci Resolve – cross-platform professional 8K editing, color correction, visual effects, audio editing and more. Has a free version.

HandBrake – an open-source tool for converting video from nearly any format to a selection of modern, widely supported codecs.

AviDemux – a free video editor designed for simple cutting, filtering and encoding tasks. Can also be used for datamoshing.

AUDIO EDITING SOFTWARE

Reaper – digital audio workstation with a free trial.

BLENDER COMMUNITY

Blender Community – an independent community agregator.

Blender Guru – this learning hub by Andrew Price is probably the Videocopilot of the Blender community. Andrew is the perfect example of how you should approach tutorials and the entrepreneurial side of things.

Blender.today – a modern looking crossbreed between Reddit and Blender, with a super fast news posting interface included.  Whoever did this, they have my deepest respect for that kind of modern thinking.

Blendernation – if you want to keep track of what’s happening in Blender community, this IS the resource. Bart Veldhuizen, together with community reporters, is doing a great job here, putting it all together every day.

CgCookie – the quality of CG Cookie tutorials is mind-blowing. Stuff that Jonathan Williamson, Kent Tramell and other artists produce is really professional & clear.

CG Masters – the finest Blender tutorials and video courses by computer graphics veterans Aidy Burrows, Chris Plush and Lee Salvemini.

Aidy Burrows – CG artist, veteran game developer, lead instructor at VertStretch.

Blender Network – Blender Foundation’s official partnership program, an online directory and social network for Blender professionals.

James B. Candy – 3D scanner and film maker at Classy Dog Films.

Bill Barber – tutorial maker, runs BlenderBrit website.

Leonardo Braz – 3D artist with a huge potential.

Grant Wilk – 3D generalist, creator of Remington Graphics.

Troy Sobotka – acolyte of moving pixels, an expert of color science.

Manu Jarvinen – top-notch artist, illustrator and modeler that loves open-source software. Look at his artworks! So damn stylish and also… efficient? Can’t find the appropriate word. Love it though.

Reynante Martinez – an artist with a very distinctive style, who also loves sharing his knowledge online. He is writing a book about materials, so if you are into shader work, check Reynante’s blog right away.

Adaptive Samples – Visit Greg Zaal’s blog to learn some very intricate Blender tricks, and to download free goodies like panoramic interior HDRi. Greg, thank you so much!

Colin Levy – The voices in my head ordered me to include Colin in this list. Right now. I obeyed, because I think that Colin is such a creative talented guy! Not only because he directed Sintel and have been working in Pixar, one of the best animation studio in the world (keep an eye on his Skywatch short).

Paul Chambers – professional CG generalist, runs a blog.

Mason Menzies – environment 3D artist

Rachel Frick – a super stylish CG artist

James O’Brien (Vadim Ignatiev) – CG artist. Check his car and city renders!

YanSculpts (Yanal Sosak) – a passionate hard working character artist.

Penfinity – Blender tutorials and amazing hard-surface modeling expertise by Wesley Vanitou.

Ian Lloyd Dela Cruz – Blender 3D privateer, creator of Ice Tools Pro

Lawrence Jaeger – 3D Generalist and Visual Effects Artist.

Jim Morren – 3D character artist and asset creator.

Sean Kennedy – professional VFX artist, runs OpenVisualFX blog with tips and training for free & open-source VFX software.

Daniel Martinez Lara – the director of award-winning animated shorts, artist, developer of Grease Pencil

Daniel Bystedt – Blender artist, senior character artist at Goodbye Kansas Studios.

Jerry Perkins (masterxeon1001) – creator of HardOps and other add-ons for Blender, member of TeamC.

MACHIN3 – creates modeling add-ons and 3D assets.

Blenderartists forum – one of the best places to see the artworks of other beginners/professionals/nerds and to ask for feedback.

Gooseberry Open Project – the first fully open-sourced feature film ever, and we are able to see every detail of creative process.

Blendtuts – educational resource with a very tasty collection of Blender tutorials. Maintained by Oliver Villar (check out his newest book!).

BlenderDiplom – tutorials by Gottfried Hoffman.

BlenderSushi – dark magic and procedural tricks by generalist and technical cg artist Jimmy Gunawan.

Creative Shrimp by Gleb Alexandrov – sorry, couldn’t resist the temptation. Bam!

Blender Unleashed – the website with Blender training, reviews (and some seriously cool products!) by charismatic Brandon Hix.

Zacharias Reinhardt – Loads of CG tutorials, workshops and incredibly stylish artworks (oh I drool over the cookie monster) by Zacharias Reinhardt.

Blender Stack Exchange – the go-to place for asking a Blender-related question. An extremely caring and knowledgeable community, ready to help.

Partners in Crime – What to do when you crave motion graphics made in Blender? Check out Partners in Crime. These guys know their mograph.

BLENDER ADDONS

Node Wrangler – This is a built-in Blender add-on, which makes working with shader nodes so less tedious. To name just one feature, you can hold ctrl+shift and click on any node to preview it.

Filmic Blender – Filmic replaces the default color management system with the improved one with much higher dynamic range, for more photo-realistic renders.

Animation Nodes – a node-based parametric modeling and visual scripting system designed for motion graphics in Blender. How cool is that.

Sverchok – a powerful parametric modeling toolset for Blender, featuring >150 nodes for creating and manipulating geometry.

FLIP Fluids – a paid liquid simulation add-on for Blender, based on a modern FLIP-based fluid solver.

D-Noise – a free ai-accelerated denoising add-on for Blender, based on Nvidia Opti-X technology. Only supports Nvidia GPUs.

Theory Studios Blender build – a branch of Blender that includes Intel Denoiser, Embree, Scramble Distance and Dithered Sobol features.

PAID 3D ASSETS

BlenderMarket – the biggest asset store for Blender by CgCookie. This marketplace contributes to Blender development fund by donating some percentage of the revenue to it.

Chocofur – 3D assets and ready-to-render scenes for architectural visualization by Lech Sokolowski. The most of the assets are set up for Blender and Cycles.

FREE 3D ASSETS

Archive 3d – huge archive with free architectural models, no strings attached. Though most of the models are in 3DS and GSM formats, so you will need to convert them to OBJ (if you want to bring them into Blender).

Blendswap – the best selection of free assets for Blender (licensed mainly under CC-BY or CC-0). I have composed a bunch of scenes using  the assets solely from this resource.

yobi3d – a robust 3D model search engine with the Search by Image and Search by 3D Model functionality.

HDRI Haven – One of the best websites with the high dynamic range images licensed under CC BY 0. Greg Zaal is doing an incredible job with updating the library non-stop.

ART CONTESTS & COMPETITIONS

Weekly CG Challenge – The place where digital artists compete to win a prize and ultimately take their art to the next level.

ARTISTS AND CONTENT CREATORS

CaptainDisillusion – a famous superhero debunking internet hoaxes.

Vitaly Bulgarov – concept designer, 3D artist and hard-surface modeler, level = godlike.

Tor Frick – art director, concept designer and 3D generalist.

David Revoy – a digital artist using 100% open-source.

Ben Nicholas – senior concept artist, designer and photographer helping people to deal with depression by tweeting his journey.

Beeple’s Blog – let me say just a few words. Mike Winkelman is producing an image each day, for 2931 days already. Each image is remarkable in its own fashion. Bizarre. Stylish. Craploads of daily awesomeness. 

Neil Blevins – astonishing sci-fi, robotic, alien artworks (and advice!).

Adam Pizurny – Adam has such a distinct style, you won’t mistake it with anything. Ooze-dripping fragmented body parts, psychotic post-modern GIFs. Incredible.

ARCHITECTURAL VISUALIZATION

Ronen Bekerman – if you are into architectural visualization, this website is just what you need to get ahead in archviz. Ronen is constantly posting top-notch making-of’s, case studies and architectural renders.

MOTION GRAPHICS

Video Copilot – the insanely popular website for motion graphics artists, and frankly for everybody else. Personally, I learned so much from Andrew Kramer’s video tutorials. Hollywood-quality visual effects at your fingertips.

FREE IMAGES, ICONS AND PHOTOS

Pixabay – The friendliest license out there. Creative Commons CC0 – that means that we’re absolutely free to do whatever we want with the images (to the extent possible under law, of course). Modify, use in the scrapbooking, pack in a game, send it over to your best friend or broadcast on Youtube channel.

License: Attribution not required, but appreciated. Absolutely free images and textures.

Image After – another great resource in terms of license. We can modify, redistribute as a part of printed work and use in the commercial projects. One thing that we can’t do is to resell the images on the competing resource. No surprises here, I guess.

License: Free for personal or commercial use, no hidden obstacles.

FreeImages  – the pictures can be used for free in many cases (related to digital distribution) such as: in magazines, books, dvd-covers, on websites and broadcast film and video.

License: Free for personal or commercial use, with some restrictions.

Flickr –  very talented people and one of the sexiest photo collections out there. But there is one little thing that sometimes stops me from downloading. While technically we can filter the content by Creative Commons license, it precisely means Attribution 2.0 Generic type of license.

License: There are free photos, but attribution required.

CC Search Free Images – not exactly the source of the images, but could be the starting place for any Creative Commons related search.

7 Cool Websites with Free Images and Textures – my article about Creative Commons licensed images and textures. There you will find the detailed list of resources, which I use when searching for a free stuff.

Gratisography – hipster alert! Photos of a great style, made by Ryan McGuire. I enjoy a unique artistic approach of this guy.

License: Free of copyright restrictions.

Unsplash – hand-picked daily photos of outlandish quality and clarity. Very blog-post-thumbnail-friendly type of stuff.

License: Free of copyright restrictions. Do whatever you want.

Iconfinder – What I usually do is search for an icon with these filters turned on: Free and No Link Back. When I manage to find an icon, it makes me happy. I’m a simple being.

FREE STOCK VIDEO FOOTAGE

Videvo – thousands of free stock videos (royalty-free, no attribution required). For the premium videos, 5-50 downloads a month with a paid subscription active.

TEXTURES

TextureHaven – high quality textures (8K, PBR) by Rob Tuytel. Licensed under Creative Commons 0.

Poliigon – a huge library of textures, materials and HDR’s.

Textures.com – despite the paid subscription (non obligatory, but 15 images a day is never enough) CgTextures license is quite permissive to make us, texture geeks happy.

License: Free to use in the projects (no reselling and redistribution).

CC0 Textures – public domain PBR textures by StruffelProductions (Lennart Demes).

Texture Ninja – public domain textures by Joost Vanhoutte.

2D CONTENT PUBLISHING PLATFORMS

Gfycat – upload and share high-quality looping GIFs. The embedded player looks neater than your usual GIFs!

Imgur – an image sharing platform and a passionate community where memes and viral images flourish.

3D CONTENT PUBLISHING PLATFORMS

Sketchfab – the biggest 3D content publishing community, aimed at turning 3D into a mainstream media format. Sketchfab is a marketplace as well as a hub for Creative Commons content.

3D ART MAGAZINES

3dArtist Online – had a pleasant experience of writing an articles for this magazine for CG artists. Also I’ve heard that reading the articles can be interesting too The issue costs around £6.00, give it a try.

3dWorld (at CreativeBloq.com) – one of the most bombastic international magazines, dedicated to 3d art. Wrote several tutorials for them and can recommend it. Very nice people.

Itsartmag – a lively community with the constant updates on art, interviews with special guests, shorts, making-of’s and other inspirational stuff. I heard many people praising this resource, so I decided to include it.

ART TUTORIALS AND PODCASTS

Level Up – free online art community for teaching and sharing. I’ve discovered this awesome website while reading the comments under this article – and I’m hugely impressed by the art podcasts available. Thanks, Steve.

Ctrl+Paint – a great resource for digital painting by Matt Kohr. Art school-style tutorials and other free goodies for those who are into drawing.

GALLERIES

Artstation – sharing the aesthetics of a famous CgHub, this online gallery with a grid layout is attracting enormous amount of talented artists from all around the world.

CgSociety – ever popular gallery & community of… hmm… cg artists. Take a look and see for yourself!

Blenderartists – Have I mentioned Blenderartists? Anyway, it’s worth mentioning the second time, as IT IS the place to share your art if you use Blender. Feedback guaranteed.

3DTotal – online gallery, tutorials for artists, downloadable magazine and much more. 

Deviant Art – the place where you can share your deviations. See? You are not alone, there are many artists that sublimate their fears/desires into art.

FREELANCE

Upwork (ex Odesk) – I have tried a lot of online workplaces and had a great experience with this particular platform. Pretty intuitive process of jobs searching, for those who are interested in graphics and design.

GAME DEVELOPMENT

Polycount – an old and respectable forum where game developers and artists gather to discuss their real time content. If you are searching for an advice and inspiration on game visuals, check it out.

Mathew Wadstein – Unreal Engine 4 and the Blueprint tutorials, lots of them. 

Matthew Palaje – helping out the game development community by sharing awesome indie devlogs.  

Game maker’s toolkit – Does Half-Life teach without tutorials? How games get balanced? And other game development theory gems by Mark Brown.

GAME ENGINES

Unity – Lightweight, fast, relatively easy to learn, has an amazing community. Can publish to 16 (?!) platforms and that list is growing.

Unreal Engine 4 – one of the best all-in-one game environments available to mortals. Should I mention that it is now free you pay only some percentage from your revenue (and only after your game earns more than 100.000$). Grab it and test your weird game idea.

Godot – free and open source game engine, being developed at a high rate. The Blender of game engines.

Armory – an open-source 3D game engine with full Blender integration.

DESIGN

Zimri Mayfield – graphic design inspiration, logo redesigns and charming personality of Zimri.

PHOTOGRAPHY

The Art of Photography – the best photography channel on Youtube by Ted Forbes.

Peter McKinnon – photography and cinematography tips by a vlogging coffee adept.

COLOR AND LIGHT

Adobe Color CC – struggle with color harmony? This tool is gold. It makes picking a color scheme a breeze. You can select from the different color rules: triad, complimentary, monochromatic and so on.

Color Hunt – trendy color palettes for designers and artists.

Crafting Physically-based Materials – from Google Filament documentation.

TYPOGRAPHY

Google Fonts – an extensive catalog of open source designer web fonts.

Fontsquirrel – as they describe themselves, Free Font Utopia. High quality free fonts licensed for commercial use.

PRINT SERVICES

Printful – on-demand online printing and shipping, can be paired with Gumroad for semi-automatic orders.

Redbubble – printing and shipping services. T-shirts, device cases, posters, stickers, you name it.

Zazzle – an online marketplace that allows designers to create customized products like clothing and accessories.

Teespring – a platform for custom merchandise with no upfront cost.

PODCAST SOFTWARE

OBS Studio – my favorite free and open-source software for video recording and streaming. After trying it I don’t want anything else. Fast, lightweight, great video quality.

MEDIA PLAYERS

VLC – a free and open source cross-platform multimedia player that plays almost everything.

INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY

Two Minute Papers – bite-sized science videos by Karoly Zsolnai every week.

LIFESTYLE

The Puttytribe – a vibrant community of multipotentialites (people who have a dozen projects or jump from passion to passion).

SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING

Casey Neistat – YouTuber that loves meritocracy, democracy and indie filmmaking. Lives in New York City and loves direct connection between creator and audience. 100% authentic and I can’t stop watching Casey broadcasting his life.

Darren Rowse – Darren shares his advice for aspiring bloggers and social media enthusiasts. Must read for those who want to make living with her or his blog.

Gary Vaynerchuk –  throws tons of useful content at us – which is MUST SEE if you are into social media. Crushing everything with his charisma and deep knowledge of social media, business, wine and hustle.

Smart Passive Income – very, I mean VERY deep advice on blogging, social media marketing and passive income from Pat Flynn. Learned so much from this guy. Recommend, especially the podcasts.

CopyBlogger – I’m returning to this place from time to time, just to make sure I haven’t missed anything important on content marketing. And if I have, I read through the articles like there is no tomorrow. Well, maybe it’s an exaggeration, but anyway CopyBlogger publishes a bombastic content, aimed at social media peeps.

Chase Jarvis’ blog – if you have a passion for photography and at the same time want to know the today’s social media landscape, consider visiting this blog. Personally, I find Chase Jarvis’ advice to be very inspiring and helpful.

Austin Kleon – a writer of Steal Like an Artist book and an artist with exceptional personality and a keen eye for typography.

SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING TOOLS

Mailchimp – Email marketing platform which I use. If you are into blogging, you gonna need some kind of email marketing service. After you hit 2k subscribers, it will ask you for a monthly pay.

ANALYTICS

SocialBlade – user statistics for Youtube, Instagram, Twitter, etc.

CROWDFUNDING

Kickstarter – a crowdfunding platform with >150k projects successfully funded.

Indiegogo – yet another crowdfunding platform with a huge group of backers.

BOOKS. SOCIAL MEDIA AND PRODUCTIVITY

Will it Fly by Pat Flynn – How to know whether your next big idea sucks or rocks? Seriously, the easiest way is to buy this book and read it. It has the answers. 10/10.

Steal Like an Artist by Austin Kleon – the life-changing book for many artists whose ideas and creations are inspired by the ideas of other people. This book makes you accept the cultural influences and not be ashamed by it.

Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook. How to Tell Your Story in a Noisy Social World by Gary Vaynerchuk – Posting content to Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and want to know what are the essential differences between these social media? This book covers it all, and what I like about it, features real examples of either brilliant or crappy posts.

REWORK – Change The Way You Work Forever By Jason Fried  – this book perfectly summarizes the trend of ’employing yourself’ while working not in the context of some corporate environment, but within the frames of your own lifestyle and your own vision. Must read.

The One Thing by Gary Keller – if I had to recommend just one book, I’d name The One Thing without hesitation. I promise, it will influence how you perceive the success, the work, the life and the cookies (I have eaten a lot of those with coffee).

The Icarus Deception: How High Will You Fly? by Seth Godin – one more potentially life-changing book, that researches the change in the way we work, connect, succeed and fail. And the last point is the most interesting and refreshing part of the book.  

Manage Your Day-to-Day: Build Your Routine, Find Your Focus, and Sharpen Your Creative Mind by Jocelyn K. Glei – this book is a Cure Procrastination spell for us, nerds. The downside of reading this book is that we might as well procrastinate without pretending we learn how to deal with procrastination. But still, one of the best book regarding  productivity.

BOOKS. COLOR AND LIGHT

Color and Light: A Guide for the Realist Painter by James Gurney – A meticulous study of color and light in paintings.

BOOKS. VISUAL CULTURE

James Elkins: How to Use Your Eyes – A book that gives you a glimpse into the inner workings of our visual system.

PASSIVE INCOME AND MONETIZATION

Patreon – a service that lets you support the creators you love by donating money to them. As much as I adore everything crowdfunding, Patreon makes it right.

Gumroad – Sell digital goods online. A minimalist, cool platform with a super straightforward checkout process and low fees (3.5% + 30 cents per sale on a premium account). Supports Paypal, credit cards and some other payment methods.

CLOUD FILE STORAGE

Google Drive – The cloud storage which is free until you hit the limit of 15 gb. After that, it’s just $1.99 / month for 100 GB. Which is as cheep as it can get.

COLLABORATION TOOLS

Trello – Have a team scattered across the globe? Try Trello to organize the project and work in a shared environment.

Perforce – collaboration tools that are compatible with Unreal Engine among other things.

PRODUCTIVITY

Google Docs – online editing, sharing, and collaborating on documents.

ASSET MANAGEMENT

Connecter – free visual asset manager for 3d artists.

E-LEARNING:

Pluralsight – one of the biggest technology learning platforms. Digital-Tutors is now part of this platform.

Gnomon – computer graphics education for careers in the entertainment industry.

Udemy – Online learning and teaching marketplace, with a huge following and dozens of courses (including the courses on computer graphics and art).

WEBSITE CREATION SOFTWARE

WordPress – My tool of choice for designing a website. Did I mention that it’s free? I mean, the .org version which is self-hosted. Though, hosting usually costs some money.

Slider Revolution – awesome plugin for WordPress, which makes creation of sliders so easy that you won’t believe that. We used it for the whole pages too, just check out the Space VFX product page.

SquareSpace – a paid website authoring, marketing and analytics platform.

MUSIC AND AUDIO (Creative Commons)

Youtube Audio Library – Music tracks licensed under Creative Commons or Youtube license (the latter is kind of free to use anywhere without having to credit an author).

Freesound – Free audio samples for all occasions. Really huge library of sounds. Licensing options vary from Creative Commons 0 to Creative Commons Share Alike, etc.

OtisMcDonald – Producer and multi-instrumentalist Joe Bagale released 30 tracks under a copyright free license on Youtube Music Library. I love these tracks.

MUSIC AND AUDIO (paid, royalty free)

Jamendo – Royalty free music for videos. I believe they have some Creative Commons tracks as well, somewhere in the backyard.

Bensound – Yet another resource with royalty free music by Benjamin Tissot. Snappy, upbeat, inspirational tracks, licensed under CC BY (you have to credit the author).

MISC

NormalMapOnline – an online normal map generator.

terrain.party – the easy way to extract real-world height maps.

THAT’S ALL FOR TODAY. COME BACK LATER.

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Stanley Kubrick gave this advice to aspiring filmmakers: “Get hold of camera and some film and make a movie of any kind at all.” You see – any kind at all. Let’s head this advice, but make the render instead.

So how to get started in CG?

Start with creating a cube. That’s what I feel. Stupid simplicity of this task just takes away the anxiety and the fear of failure. Everyone can make a cube, right? You can make it better than anyone else.

Certainly, it’s not a trial to bridge the gap between imaginary worlds and real-as-hell canvas. Imaginary worlds are out of reach for now. Instead, it’s bridging the gap between thought and action.

Tools and communities

I want to take a moment and leave here the links to the open-source software that you’ll need to make your first cube.

Blender            

Blender is the free open source 3d content creation suite, which has a gorgeous community of super connected people. That’s what you need when you start. Accessible tool, but more importantly, really smart crowd that creates value.

Value of meaningful connections and knowledge being shared. Value of remix and mash-up. And most importantly, value of people who developed the ‘just do it’ attitude towards computer graphics.

Gimp

Gimp is the free raster graphics editor, which is capable of doing what you’d expect from it. A nice community too, by the way.

Being in the middle of Web 2.0 relationships and practices, it’s easy to reject the paid software in favor of the free, community driven one. But if you feel the urge to do your first cube using paid tools and if it helps you to get things done, I’m fine with it. I use it all the time.

And by the way, watch this to learn how to make your first cube awesome.

Apply the ‘Just do it’ approach to Learning.

Now, when you have all necessary tools at your disposal, there is no excuse for not doing.

Chances are, the cube will become the metaphor of the ‘just do it’ mindset for you and the rest will seem straightforward. I’ve heard that the hardest part is getting started.

If you really want to keep moving towards your goals, the value of practicality is insanely high. But not only the practicality of taking action, but also of choosing the particular route to the goal.

Without that mindset, your first cube may as well be your last one. What about sphere? When we need to advance to the next level, learning comes into play. And we’d better apply ‘just do it’ approach to learning too.

My most recommended Blender related websites

(Of course, there are more to it. I’m preparing the resources section, which will contain the full list, so stay tuned.)

Blenderguru

This learning hub is maintained by Andrew Price – all-round great guy, one of the best tutors and bloggers in Blender space. Also, it features tutorials of Reynante Martinez – artist with a very distinctive style.

CgCookie

The quality and frequency of CG tutorials on this site is mind-blowing. Stuff that Jonathan Williamson, Kent Tramell and other artists produce is really professional & clear. Free tutorials plus paid subscription.

Has Blender oriented section, called – surprise! – Blendercookie.

Blenderartists

One of the best places to see the artworks of other beginners/professionals/nerds and to request the feedback.

Blendernation

If you want to keep track of what’s happening in Blender community, this IS the resource. Bart Veldhuizen, together with community reporters, is doing a great job here, putting it all together every day.

Gooseberry Open Project

Watching how open projects by Blender Institute unfold is fun – and is a great learning experience. Gooseberry is the first fully open-sourced feature film ever, and we are able to see every detail of creative process. So jump in the boat.

If you want some more tips, read Things Blender Beginners Must Know article by Reynante Martinez.

See what other peeps do

In while surfing the web you find something interesting, check out who’s standing behind this. Maybe this person is worth following on Twitter, Facebook or other social media?

How about Youtube and Medium?

Ello?

By all means, look around and see what’s going on.

Context is the king. Valuable insights can be found in Instagram photos, Twitter snippets, Facebook comments and other similar things.

Just like this handheld shot tip by Mathieu Auvray, a director of Gooseberry Movie.

Dslr’s are too light to make good cinematic handheld shots… So just attach a car battery to it ! (And work out !) #cosmoslaundromat

A photo posted by mat ray (@matray) on Nov 11, 2014 at 4:01am PST

Oh, and couldn’t resist the temptation to put my tweet here.

Hey, what Blender related websites are you visiting most often?#b3d #QuestionsThatNeedAnswers

— Gleb Alexandrov (@gleb_alexandrov) November 13, 2014

Google the rest?

Starting from simple things and listening to your needs, you will naturally stumble across the core CG concepts, one by one. And that’s great, if you can make use of the search engine. Because even selecting object or rotating around selection can be notorious (say hello, Blender right click selection – which I love, by the way).  Not speaking about painting dots across your cube.

The words of comfort: do what you want now and use Google along the way.

Say Hello World like programmers do

Let’s pretend that you actually followed this sage-like advice, decided to take a leap of faith in your life (or why on the earth had you decided to dive into CG?) and made a freaking computer generated cube.

You bridged the gap between imaginary worlds and real canvas.

Now what?

Today, it’s not enough. Share it with the world, just like programmers start with the ‘Hello World’ application. Create the basic blog using WordPress, Blogger, Tumblr or whatever, post the picture and share the link with your friends on Twitter.

Share it with me. Tell me that you just did it. Add the ‘Hello World’ note and your name somewhere, so I can reach back to you and tell you how proud I am.

If you feel like reading this article on Medium: Click here.

The post Bridging the Gap: How To Get Started in CG appeared first on Creative Shrimp.

Before we start, let me say it: I believe that every artist can make a living doing what she or he actually wants. What I mean is the projects that inspire us the most.

How many times you was inspired by something, but then abandoned your passion just because you was scared to take a leap of faith and do things, that would be considered stupid by your parents or friends?

I thought the same way about my ideas.

But now I think: Weird projects? Being self-employed? Taking a leap of faith? Fine, let’s f#cking do it!

I was introduced to computer graphics when I was 16. Like many of us, I started with 3ds max and was spending very small amount of time learning how to do stuff and connecting with people.

My first renders were so crappy that I thought I would never make a single AWESOME image.

And this perspective scared the hell out of me.

Several years later, the mechanism was launched that would led to a big change in my life. I’ve stumbled across the TUTORIAL on the internet. If I remember, it was about ‘How to render an interior’ using Vray.

You can say, ‘tutorial, what a discovery, dude!’ I know that sounds stupid, but that’s how things worked for me. Something clicked in my mind and what was merely a hobby started to transform into something bigger.

When I was 22, I got a CG Artist job and started to make the models for computer games. You guess it wasn’t too hard, because I was able to render a cube rather efficiently at the time.

In the free time I was also learning Blender (free open source software which has an awesome community) by watching Andrew Price and CG Cookie tutorials. Now I was using internet to my advantage by absorbing every bit of knowledge, because I knew it will pay off in the future.

So, this is the word number 1: Learn

When a big CG competition called ‘Her Majesty’s Zeppelins’ was about to start, I’ve jumped in this boat because I knew I can learn how to do stuff.

Nevertheless, the possibility of winning was completely out of my reach, I thought.

In fact, I was so afraid to fail in public that I concentrated on doing the best render possible. The risk of public failure motivated me so much that I persisted for a month, doing nothing but zeppelins.

Huge zeppelins, tiny zeppelins, her majesty’s air fleet steampunk zeppelins.

I crushed the competition by winning the 1-st place.

That’s when I learned the second word: Dare

Several hours later I created my personal blog using blogger.com service by Google and posted there my first tutorial: Making-of Zeppelins.

Imagine, after years of devouring knowledge I was about to SHARE THE EXPERIENCE, that I absorbed earlier.

You can say: the tutorial, not a big deal. And you’re probably right. But for me, it was the game changer. Hugely positive feedback from you, folks, motivated me to develop my own skills further. To delve into crazy experiments, to explore uncharted territories of computer graphics, to make stupid things.

As I byproduct of recording tutorials I started to develop my English, which is still far from being good, but at least you wouldn’t want to shoot me. Or would you?.

So I bought a condenser microphone, recorded a crappy tutorial with the voice-over and posted it to the new WordPress self-hosted blog and also uploaded it to Youtube.

Then another one.

For me, sharing things online made the difference.

After discovering the passion for blogging and doing my own projects, I’ve left the full-time job to concentrate on what I love to do. Ironically, now this decision makes sense from the financial point of view too.

That’s how the things work: when you share your knowledge, your passion and your vision with others, impossible becomes possible. The question is, will you listen to your inner Van Gogh-esque voice that tells you to stop scaring the world with your personality?

Tell it to SHUT UP, because people can fly when they want to.

That’s the word number 3: Share

Now it’s your turn. Share my story and thank you for being awesome and reading this article.

The post CG Artist’s Story: 3 Words that Changed my Life appeared first on Creative Shrimp.