Why you can’t afford to be a cheap artist


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The hidden costs of choosing “free” and why sometimes spending money to further your training will save you years and years of pain. This video talks about why paying for training, models or plugins can be better than doing it for free, and how to compare paid vs free.
Watch advice for beginners: https://youtu.be/7_1i4djTBR8

Image previews from BlendSwap. CC-BY images from Shadosk.

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50 responses to “Why you can’t afford to be a cheap artist”

  1. i remember before vray have brasil and and finalrender engine but they are close and no tutorials available online , but when vray come to market they come with many vray tutorial free ,and now get getting very famous

  2. So, there is this guy I know and he is giving me a free course learning Blender. And I loved it. But I have to stop and ask him if he can charge me $200 So that I am not cheap and he is a good teacher… Yep that makes sense ๐Ÿ˜‰

  3. tbh I always go free if I can, but then again there is 3rd type of person casual clara. I model in blender for fun of modeling. I don't feel pressure to make so many models and I don't think of 3D as my main occupation. also funny thing, I take joy from figuring stuff out, yeah, maybe pro tutorial would give me all the answers, but then I feel pressure to not only finish the tutorial but also do smth more with that knowledge?

    but hay, I was weird kid. my bro wanted games, I wanted new art programs to figure out X"D

    (my next big adventure is to get some nice character done… maybe in 2 years in free time in casual mode X"D )

  4. You are so right. Especially when it comes to addressing why you do something a certain way, and a correct workflow. I started off watching some of your EARLIER videos (sorry) alongside others I found on youtube for about 2 years. I felt like I could do some basic modeling but that was about it. Then I shelled out some money for a CGCookie subscription. Within less than 2 months I felt more informed and had adopted a more streamed lined approach to specific concepts of modeling. So yes… Unless you are just one of those geniuses that gets it all right away, you do get what you pay for.

  5. If I had $200 to spend on a tutorial, I wouldn't be using blender, Andrew. Basically there's a huge barrier between people who don't have enough money to create their art and those that do. So it's really hard, time consuming and frustrating to create a great indie game that has a great idea and concept behind it and meanwhile, Ubisoft can spend billions on another Assassin's Creed that they'll charge $60 for, though it's riddled with bugs, repetitive and derivative.

    How fucked up is that?

  6. I know a lot of people hate to admit it or hate to hear it, but he's right. Sometimes you just have to pay for good education. Otherwise you often get bad education and sometimes you don't even know, and sometimes you end up in a valley of being badly educated that is hard to get oiut of because you don't even know what you're doing wrong.

  7. Huh 200$ is 15 days of 'normal' work in many EUE countries, I will just go rent course and buy it if it makes profit (eventually) Yeah I live in Europe and think It's even harder in Asia, I'm sorry for you guys as well, we just always have to find the way around ๐Ÿ˜€ gl, hf

  8. Tools is what helps us create our idea (programs)
    We need knowledge to define our idea (ex:Anatomy)

    IMO yes their are some great teachers for free but those with a credible bg and with proof of their work are mostly found with a price tag. Those $300 could be 10 years of trial and error that someone else went through. Of course that could all go to waste depending how they teach you.

    Knowing your tools will save time. Time is money.

  9. Dear Andrew Price, at the moment it is not advisable to buy from the artists – tutorials who are stuck in their Stone Age. You need to create your workflow with minimal time and cost with the use of a lot of software, this does not teach these paid tutorials. 3d world evolves, and the best that can be advised artists – be aware of the trends of the latest techniques and software.

  10. If you can see for free you can draw for free.
    The lip service is probably warranted in an ocean full of communists but the fact is the guy charging $200 could have very well been just as shit as the guy giving it away for free. Regardless, if the free course wasn't very good it's still a tool for someone with discretion. To learn from fools as much as sages. No one's going to look at a pretty poorly recreation of Woody from Toy Story and think this guy is about to blow my mind with incredible modeling information or program knowledge, so why would that person then invest so much time into following his step by step; he's obviously aware that there's better stuff out there, much better free stuff that does explain in-depth program knowledge and modeling information.

    When you pay in excess for things you can obviously find equally effective, especially art courses; then what you're really paying for is either Convenience (ie. I didn't have to read the entire Z brush manual to figure out that 90% of it was useless 99% of the time for the things I want to do with it) OR the hope that they have some ancient chinese secrets (and they usually don't.)

    The question is thus, do you want to pay someone to pump your gas for you or do you want to pump it yourself? Either way is a positive in my opinion.

    You're not going to learn something that wasn't already in a free library book or google search, you may or may not learn it quicker and more efficient but the fact remains that the only thing that person can actually sell you is their experience, which covers only the cost of your time. All of the principles, facts, anatomy, composition, and fundamentals are things readily available in detailed dissection or through sheer observation of the world around you or reference photographs; You're going to have to do all those things yourself and practice anyways, so how much time do you really save from having someone point out that they can't stress enough how important perspective is?

    I don't mean to downplay the professionals but freebie fred is not limited by his frugality, he's limited by his laziness, and frugal people are generally the furthest thing from that so I disagree that he would be unable to figure out what went wrong or refuse to pick up a software manual for free unless he was lazy. Can't be lazy if you're starving. Gotta be making moves, be on the grind. Call a ripoff a ripoff and gain experience in the field the same as you would someone who paid too much for their mediums, by observing and doing.

    I also refuse to believe that he would stop after doing one thing. Maybe paying for an education definitely puts your skin in the game as you're going to make the most of every dollar you put into it, but motivation can't be bought or sold one way or the other.

    Again though, I view both as a positive; free helps yourself if you need it and paid helps others if you don't. I don't necessarily think paid is the fast track or streamline if you're highly motivated and competent with the discretion in your research but purchasing high quality models and stocks are a bit different in that regard because it's actual work that you're purchasing and not the promise of a 3 year 'leapfrog' into the field, but even then it doesn't save you that much time; free models can atleast provide you raw templates for you to create your own unique and high quality stock upon, stock that you could probably turn around and sell if you do a good enough job on it; so it's not even wasted time if you can get a return on it. . .

    That's a bit that was missing in the bit I think, the whole "is it important to my Learning Goal" point should really be "can I sell it when I complete it?" which brings up the reason why many people are motivated about art. Making something from nothing is what it's always been about. Sweet ignition, be my fuse. If you do something that's good you can possibly turn it into money, it's not promised because many people think the same way, why buy it when you can farm it and maybe sell it.

    Still appreciated the video, I just disagree on premise really.

  11. This is a matter of choice. You just need to find a course which is suitable for your mindset. Sometimes the course is good but you just don't get it and then you find an absolutely different approach on the topic and boom you understand it without trouble. So, this is a path of every unique human in any subject. When you find something which works specifically for you in terms of conent you know it. This isn't a matter of $ only

  12. I agree with you Andrew on a lot of this. I think some people are confusing the whole free vs paid debate in the comments. I'm a beginner 3d artist transitioning from 2d to 3d art, and I currently use Blender as my primary 3d package. Blender isn't the only free 3d application out there, but it may be the only one that has a complete set basic 3d production tools included in one package. I think people put a bit too much emphasis on the tool rather than the creations. Yes, it is impressive to see that people can create industry quality 3d productions in a free software such as blender, but honestly, it's still the content that is most important. Every tool has its own advantages and caveats, and no one application does everything better than every other software out there, otherwise, there would be only one industry standard application for all purposes.

    In addition to the basic tools of most 3d packages, Blender also has tools for sculpting, texture baking, procedural material, and a renderer that is similar in many regards Arnold and Vray. There is no doubt a far more advanced and probably "better" software available for each of these tasks, but you can choose to use any of these free tools instead of other more expensive software at any turn. I think it's important to run a cost analysis for every task you must accomplish in a production, whether it personal art or a team project.

    Also, I think a good way to improve your skills with blender and run a cost analysis of whether paid software is worth it, is to watch tutorials of people who are using other software, and see if you have a robust enough knowledge of blender, and the problem-solving skills to work around the differences of a program such Maya or C4D. Try watching the Chamfer Zone grenade tutorial and see if you accomplish the same modeled results. All the same tools that are used in that tutorial are in blender, they don't all work the same but all the necessary tasks can be accomplished.

  13. I agree with your views in general, but I think there can be a middle-ground. There is room for both. For really young people, or people without much disposable income, free content can be a great help just getting comfortable with Blender. Learning to use a 3D program can be extremely daunting for a beginner. A large initial cost (like Maya) will turn people off even more so. This is partially why I chose Blender, and its why a lot of budding artists will choose GIMP or Krita over an immediate jump into Photoshop or Corel Painter. Secondly, it can help them discover more precisely what knowledge they lack, and choose paid content lessons to fill in those gaps, thereby spending more wisely (I did that with cgcookie to learn proper retopology and I'm happy to see them plugged here). Thirdly, they can cheaply explore whether or not this is something they actually want to be pursuing in a serious manner. When and if they do, then yes, they should invest in themselves. Finally, about having dual titan Xs, it bears mentioning that the tools don't make the craftsman. There are many artists with huge Cintiqs that draw worse than people with just a Bamboo.

  14. I use Zbrush and Blender (I happened to get Zbrush as a christmas present one year) but now, i really can't afford all that because i have bills and 2 "stepping stone" jobs. I've been wanting to upgrade my work space but everytime i think that i have some spending money, a new bill pops up. Frankly, i have to use youtube as my source of knowledge until i can be able to get a job where i can be alongside professionals.

  15. You are making wrong assumptions. More expensive courses, live or online doesn't mean you will learn best workflow, or newest tools. Because every person which will be teaching you is a person, who made mistakes or just isn't a God. Search for the Blender tutorials in google, and you will find a few 2 years old. And they cost over 100$, and one live even 1500$. You also didn't mention the origin of free tutorials. They all are from payed ones. Maybe not in 100%, but the knowledge used in them was collected from payed tutorials, online, school or whatever.

  16. Only just got around to watching this, and totally agree. I always use time as a deciding factor and will always ask how long something will take to do myself, as opposed to buying that same thing already done. So if I could buy something for $150 that would take me 5 days to do myself, then obviously paying $150 will be a no brainer.

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