I went through hell over the past few months I've been working until midnight almost every single night my eyes were permanently bloodshot from being on the computer for 15 hours a day and people are noticing and now my hands look like this why did I put myself through this you might ask well of course for the hunt of knowledge as some of you may know I've been taking ausa tojo's blender course over the past few months and went from a 2d artist who has been trying to learn blender for the past 5 years I started
modeling the credit scene in 3D in blender for no apparent reason other then I thought it would be cool but like I've been looking up tutorials all day and like trying to figure it out and it's just taking forever and I'm so mad to a 2d artist who can now convey an idea in 3D as some of you may also know I've been feeling very down about my art for a very long time and during this course I've actually felt really proud of what I've created and what I've accomplished so I wanted to compile my
entire experience of this course so you could see my progress from zero understanding of blender to like a little bit more understanding blender cuz I I still have a lot to learn so let's start from the beginning 8 weeks ago okay so before the class started all the students had to complete the ramen Bowl following Zeus's online tutorial it's basically to start understanding blender's interface and keys and like a good student I started making this bowl and gez if I am not pissed off the entire time learning something new is so annoying and it is
so difficult especially a new program it's like learning a new language I wanted to give up so many times I hate using my mouse for this I feel like a baby trying to use tools beyond their comprehension but after like probably like 4 hours I finish my very first Ramen bowl and then I do my second bowl this one's a little quicker but I still have to pause the video every like minute and honestly it's pissing me off but it actually feels nice to be slightly more confident than my first attempt which is nice and
I start my third bowl and I stop halfway through because I don't want to do this anymore I'm sure I'm fine to start the class okay my first official assignment another exercise in learning basic modeling skills and using basic materials I wanted to make a cute almost isometric Beach moment the emphasis on the class was to rely on references rather than sketching anything in advance so I didn't go off on a sketch and because of this I feel like my size hierarchy and composition lacked a little a little bit but I gathered some fun references
and I'm sure some of these rests are AI but you know I guess I guess that's life now it was really slow goinging since everything I added had to be considered and thought out well what would go on this island I made sure not to like really get caught up in the details until all my big shapes are blocked since it's easier to change my big shapes early on than when there's like a bunch of clutter on the Cannabis I wish I could just like liquefy the entire thing in the end but I don't I
don't think it's that easy I also always have my camera view visible so I can you know see the composition and only work on what will be seen I'm not focusing on making this a 360° model it's just going to be mainly seen from the front so I want to focus on getting that composition strong from the perspective of the camera so in the end I think it looks great for just being a model with some materials I did a draw over to show what I'd like for my piece to look like like adding a
waterfall out of the shark's mouth making more gbly like water texture on the surface adding more realm lights on the edges of the surfaces and having some like paint Rel Strokes in there I haven't had time yet but I'm planning to rework all of these pieces now that I know a lot more I was most excited for this assignment because I love painting movie studies and now I get to 3D model a movie still this assignment was to learn about lighting and to replicate the lighting in a film sty so I don't know how to
model characters at this point and honestly I remember at this week I couldn't even imagine being able to model characters like in just a few weeks from now so I just used cubes to imply their form since it didn't really matter it was about the colors and the light I picked out like dozens of movie Stills and ended up choosing this first study from parasite I thought lighting would be interesting since it's an overcast day and mostly light from the outside but man was this hard this took like two entire days to do this study
modeling took so long and lighting was incredibly difficult it's definitely a practice makes perfect scenario but doing it for the first time was very rough ausa took a look through my file and gave some advice and feedback and her lighting looks much closer to the reference and she pushed to keep the simple cubes so the planes would reflect the light closer to the film ra but you know I just I just want to take things further and sculpt at those faces but you know I think I I still am going to do that I'm going
to go back and do that I don't know we'll see if I have time okay then on to my next movie study so my last study took way too long long and I got caught up in the details way too much so I wanted a piece that was simpler to model but still a challenge when it comes to lighting this still from saltburn has this cool lighting scenario and a very hot man so I was excited to get started it was a real challenge to figure out how to make the materials allow for the light
to pass through like through the curtains and the edges of the skin I really pushed the subsurface scattering and in the end it doesn't quite look like the reference images values but I only know what what I know so far right I received some feedback and this looks much more accurate the light through the curtains is much more similar and the darks and the lights on the character are also closer I have to study a bit more on what changes and materials there are but we moved on so quickly to the next assignment I barely
had time to process my feedback the next assignment is to create an interior while learning how to use the Shader tool I gathered way too many AI references of sci-fi underwater sub submarine locations on Pinterest and started building aimlessly with only the idea that I wanted a big round window looking into the water and I want the color scheme pretty green it would have saved me a lot of time if I had planned this project out a little bit more and I could have perhaps using today's sponsor XP Pen's magic notepad is a digital notebook
that helps me plan sketch and organize everything in one place with the XB pen Notes app I can drop in images map out ideas and build my project Allin one space and without cluttering so I can actually figure out what this concept is going to look like dragging in images that hopefully aren't AI thumbnailing possible composition and much more and with three color modes I can switch from distraction free notes to full color visuals whenever I need the X3 Pro pencil 2 feels just like a real pen with zero lag and no need for charging
which I very much appreciate and the screen itself is very bright very clear and very crisp this tablet is super light and feels very durable you can bring it anywhere to jot down ideas whenever you're inspired so whenever you have an idea be efficient and get that written down before you forget you can get the XP pen magic notepad today through the link in my description now let's get back to making some 3D art so it was cool to find textures online for the ground and the metals but it was a bit hard to find
the balance to keep it looking 2D I don't want any of my pieces to look too 3D by the end of it so I kept most of the things little poly with like hard edges this assignment probably took the longest because I didn't know what I wanted to do at first my camera was pretty zoomed out to see the entire room but it was like so overwhelming to fill this room with stuff and to tell a story and keep that focal point so I took ausa's advice and I made a tighter camera frame so I
can have a better focus the story was starting to develop at this point was turning into like a scientist's underwater lab with like tentacles and jars and then even like a monster outside the window techical monster I don't know so I'm finally able to start detailing and refining ideas and figure out the lighting lighting is still something that I'm struggling with at this point it's so hard to get it to look the way I want it to look and there's like literally endless possibilities and no correct answer and it's very overwhelming so even at this
point I feel like my lighting doesn't have like a real Focus I'd like to go in and kind of play around with it more now that I know more so I went in with Photoshop and did a paint over to make it look a little bit more like a visual development piece and try to kill some of that 3D look I wanted to add a character but I didn't have time but I'm still planning on it I I still want to add that character so I think I'll probably block it out in 3D and then
paint it just just give me time please finally we start designing characters the last video I posted was all about this assignment so if you want to hear a very detailed account on my process then definitely check that out but tldr I felt like I unlocked something deep in my psyche something that I never thought I would have unlocked in inside me before making these sculps engage me creatively in like such a way that I'm immediately hooked the learning curve was definitely steep but I feel like my design sensibilities transferred really well into this new
medium my first character pushed me to learn how to make organic shapes and apply to DEC composition when I felt a bit stuck my second character taught me go out of my comfort zone since I didn't really feel pushed enough with this one it also taught me to know when to pull back and my third character pushed me to explore like more push shapes and I learned how to sculpt hands and and to and to simplify when I can I love Cowboys I love women I've had this Cowgirl In My Head the entire time of
this class I knew exactly what I wanted to create for my first full character model so I gather my refs and I do a quick 2-minute sketch I knew this final design would be 10 times better with like at least the jankiest sketch I can make so that's what I did with so many loose pieces it's hard to change change proportions later on since you have to basically individually scale everything separately and and move everything around so it was important for me to follow set proportions so I began with blocking in all her basic shapes
keeping it pretty blocky and loose since I'll be posing her later and if I was if I was too precious I would definitely have to change parts of the design to make each pose work so everything is pretty low poly and our face is super simple I definitely made her hair too polished at this point since I never actually have her hair look like this in any of her poses and the hair was my biggest hassle in the entire process you know since most of the time I had a hat on her head so why
did I do it like that I gave her a cape that we only see once I gave her two types of guns that we only see once and you know I went Ham on these props I was way too excited I was only a quarter way through the assignment and I don't know when to quit so if you get caught up with details and take an hour to design something that'll only be seen in the background once drop a comment in solidarity and then might as well give this video a like and it'll help support
me thank you okay so I start posing her which seems like it'll be hard but after you get her basic pose out there it's just about refining and pushing that pose which I really enjoyed doing and it was pretty therapeutic i l the scene to kind of look like a dusk moment and I painted some features with grease pencil I move on to the next pose which I fought myself about for a really long time since I think running poses can look very overdone and lame but I thought I'd give it a shot I actually
love how this pose turned out it's so pushed there's so much story and it it's actually my favorite pose so there you go I do third pose which I end up hating she's stiff she doesn't look natural it feels weird I scrap it and I move on to the fourth pose it's a simple standing pose since I don't actually have that in any of my poses yet so I think it'll complement them nicely I end up changing the lighting to like a high noon light which is way better for the scene I think it looks
way nicer but I already did all the pencil lines with the dusk lighting so it stands out in a weird way cuz you have to do grease pencil with that final lighting that's the struggle and then I spend honestly like a full day trying to figure out how the camera moves work this is my first time moving the camera it was very complicated to try to get it nice and smooth for the very first time and I exported like like 10 versions of each pose it was a nightmare and I end up keeping that sitting
pose since you know it was already done it was nice to have a different vibe for the pose and I kind of like hide it in the back so it's not it's not really in Focus this was definitely my favorite assignment I'm a character designer so creating these characters in 3D gave a whole new dimensionality to my designs and I learned so much since this Chara character that my next characters will be even more pushed which I'm very excited about what have you seen me this happy how Dandy do you know how close I was
to making this Cowboy ride a fully animated horse you have no idea even as I was posing her I was like maybe I'll animate a horse I thank God every day that I had some sense that that moment that I didn't do it this assignment was to learn the animation basics of blender and how the timeline and graph editor works so I made my character ride a bull like floating motorcycle thing and after blocking out my initial design I did a draw over to try to find more interesting shapes and then my husband gave me
suggestions in the draw over since he said my design look like a fish which I agree so I pushed and I pulled this design until it kind of looks like this I think the shape works a lot better and it's honestly cooler than a horse so that's a plus I was looking up how to do this cool Rim light that the Marvel rival characters have and I found this YouTube video that has a free free Shader to download so I put that on parts of my Mech and it has uh such a cool effect now
I tried customizing it a little bit but can really only go as far as picking colors I'm not that smart yet then it's time to make everything look like it's flapping in the wind which really started making this piece come to life it's cool you could just like Shake something in blender and blender like picks up the animation and Records it and then I animated this huge sphere to look like the ground is moving back in space and the illusion is really starting to get there once I added those flame effects coming out of the
engine and some like low poly dirt flying and grease pencil speed lines which now I know a much better way to make the speed lines look nice then I can start playing around with the compositor which was fun to learn for the first time adding some cool film grain and RGB split effects it really brings the piece together and once I added the camera moves it looks so full of life and energy I like you can't even tell she's barely moving there's so much suggestion of movement it looks like I animated everything it's so cinematic
and I wish I could make a moovie of this someday for this assignment we learned procedural stuff to make natural looking grass and leaves and stuff like that and I also learned how to make water look cool I gathered way too many references because I didn't know what I wanted I was thinking it'd be cool to have like a hill belly kid by an old pond maybe lounging by a swamp then I saw so many beautiful colors in these Lily Pad paintings and I thought maybe making something prettier than swampy would be nicer so I
set up my camera and added a boat but I wasn't sure what the story was supposed to be I modeled a man in a boat and I thought it'd be cool if he was looking into the water and there's like a scary mermaid that wants to kill him so I started to go in that direction and then I thought the colors and the light would be the ones to invoke that creepy mood right so I kept building the scene thinking well that's a problem for later I focused on only using shaders to making interesting textures
to start and I think I ended up figuring out some cool things to keep the piece stylized but still 3D like how I approach making the willow tree leaves like Vines I swear I felt like a genius After figuring out these shaders I always have the camera view on screen since I wanted the piece to mainly work from the camera angle only but I see now as I tried to make more Dynamic camera moves I could only really show a specific area since the rest of the world wasn't built and I and I didn't really
make the mermaid's face so as I played with lighting I had more and more trouble trying to keep it creepy since I was making the colors so pretty it was looking so ethereal and magical so the vibe was definitely different I also had trouble with lighting since I really wanted this like strong angled light coming through the trees but I couldn't get the volume to do what I wanted it to do I don't know by the end of the composition like it didn't have much depth and the story wasn't what I wanted and the values
and the contrast was a bit off and so many people commented that they thought the mermaid was a penguin at first so I definitely messed something up in there but I don't really care enough to like change this piece I think it's cool as my first try at like an exploration Illustrated piece and I'd rather I'd really rather create something new than trying to go back and fix this one I have other priorities our last assignment is to make a final key frame illustration focusing more on like that final draw over so basically using blender
to create like a visual development piece I felt a lot of pressure about this one it had to be my very best work you know I was looking at all types of locations I was thinking of doing like a busy Market with lots of overhead drapery and like light poking through but my pond illustration had that focus on like the big overhead moment and I wanted like such a completely different composition and vibe to this piece I was looking at a bunch of cool illustrations that I loved and trying to find something to be inspired
by cool colors cool settings but I was I was really all over the place eventually I thought it'd be very cool to do like a busy fish market so I started with that not sure on any of those details yet but I wanted just to get started on something so I buil some really basic blocks and I set up my camera to get an idea of the composition I build a little Tugboat without further idea of the setting since I know I would definitely be using it and then I was super slow at building the
set like experimenting to see what shapes work and what doesn't work I built out the props and the elements of the world and once again without like a strong idea of the composition then I started working on the character because I figured that once the character is done then the story will will reveal itself so I made this fisherman carrying like a big fish cuz yes that's what would happen on a fishing dock right so I block him out and I spend way too long on his beard that no one will see and then before
building the world more I had to figure out more of the lighting so then I could feel some immediate satisfaction right I had a rough idea and I really thought it would eventually work out so I kind of ignor things like my issues with the light and the composition until much later ausa gave me some advice and sometimes it's really about being encouraged and bouncing ideas off of someone I was feeling really directionless but then I caught some inspiration from her and I found a way to stylize the piece again and make some fun values
and contrasts and make and make it work a little bit better I started to add some details playing with the shaders putting some wet spots onto the dock making sure the composition always looks strong from the camera view and then I spent all day working on this paint over I experimented with a lot of ways to kill the 3D look and making it look like I painted the entire thing from scratch but I was really happy with where it was but you know then I saw that the story isn't clear since I moved the position
of the boat and now it doesn't look like he's got anything to do is he bringing the fish back into the water I don't know and then I got some feedback and here's my real final 3D model my confidence definitely took a hit after this were my color choic is stupid am I dumb am I bad H now I have to repaint the character again and now he now he's not in the light but once my ego settled I see that the new color scheme and the character posing works way better as a visual development
piece you know I've never really made a viev piece before and I have a lot to learn and I was really lucky that industry professionals gave me encouragement and feedback to make this piece so much stronger so it's time for my second paint over I played with the acting of the fisherman either having his arm up to open the silhouette but it was kind of awkward so I kept it down then I painted it over like I did with my previous one now I have a super cool vde painting and nothing stopping me from becoming
a vde artist so that's the story of how I started from being someone who's terrified to even open blender to a somewhat competent 3D artist I'm really looking forward to see where this takes my art how I'll Implement 3D more into my sketches and hopefully I'll just keep getting faster and faster and maybe one day I'll get a job from it we'll see so which piece was your favorite of mine please tell me please please tell me because I need to know not because it makes me feel good because because it makes me feel good
and if you're inspired by my progress you can sign up to ausa's newsletter find out when her next class is and the link is in the description for you and you can check out my Instagram to see my updates on these pieces that I promise to you because now that I said it in a video now I actually have to do it accountability all right thanks everybody and I'll see you next time bye
