Blender Basics Videotutorial by CartoonSmart

Published by Bart on March 27th, 2008 in Videotutorials

Well-known animation tutorial provider CartoonSmart.com have recently added Blender to their list of supported products. Their first Blender tutorial is a two-hour introduction to Blender's interface, modeling and rendering. Priced at $15, this great quality video is really a bargain. As I was preparing to review the two-hour tutorial they made quite an unexpected move!

John R. Nyquist wrote:

I wanted to let you know that CartoonSmart.com is now offering Blender courses. CartoonSmart has been dedicated to mostly Flash tutorials over the years. Justin Dike, the owner, recently asked me to teach Blender and be his first teacher (other than himself). The first in a series, Blender Basics, was released last week. I've worked with a lot of software over the years and I find I love Blender. It may be quite different from other programs, but it is stable, fast, powerful, configurable and logical.

The course page

Justin's blog announcement

My blog announcement

I received a review copy and asked if they could offer a few minutes of the tutorial for free so that people could get an impression of the quality. Here's their reply!

John wrote:

We took your suggestion and went a bit further. Instead of just having a sample of the movie, Justin (of CartoonSmart) and I thought it would be good to have something that showed the quality and was useful to the community. So we took the first 40 minutes (over 100MB QuickTime movie) of Blender Basics and made them freely available [emphasis mine, Bart]. Hopefully this will help folks get through those scary moments of when Blender is opened for the first time. Thank you for the inspiration. It can be found on this page.

BTW, in addition to the above, CartoonSmart and I are each contributing monetarily to the Blender Foundation from the proceeds of our sales. I'm not saying that to boast, but I wanted to let you know we both appreciate what a great program Blender is and hope to help its adoption grow.

What can I say? These guys have their heart in the right place. If you've just started to learn Blender then this will be $15 well-spent. (Full product and ordering information here).

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16 Responses to “Blender Basics Videotutorial by CartoonSmart”

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1 Robin Mar 27th, 2008 at 9:23 am

Wow,
thats great. CartoonSmart is the place where I learned the flash basics.
This will be very helpful for beginners!!

/rbn
2 Felix_Kütt Mar 27th, 2008 at 11:44 am

a little over 2 weeks ago i posted this thread @ blenderartists:
http://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?t=119045

for discussion, too. :)
3 Dread Knight Mar 27th, 2008 at 1:11 pm

Always loved CartoonSmart!
It's a fair price, "too bad" i know the basics now, this would have been a great asset …. :-)
4 RedBirdiii Mar 27th, 2008 at 1:31 pm

Wow!!
I'm buying!
5 dave ward Mar 27th, 2008 at 4:37 pm

this is where i learned all my flash animation knowledge! glad to see ol' justin is expanding the knowledge base :)
6 rexprime Mar 27th, 2008 at 5:02 pm

this is great news, the more documentation the better
7 LL Mar 27th, 2008 at 8:26 pm

Interesting!

This will garner Blender some serious exposure (me thinks) as alot of Flash newbies (an perhaps many others) use CartoonSmart, no doubt the buzz will travel.

I really appreciate that they decided to offer a FREE portion of the tutorial.

I guess you cant fault people for trying to make money…. but for all the effort that has gone into Blender and for the Blender Foundation and all the others involved to offer such a great resource for FREE and give there time earnestly, it kind of makes me cringe alittle deep inside when I see others charge for the tutorials etc… I think we might start seeing more of this from others as time goes by and Blender gains further popularity more and more. But some where inside me I really appreciate not only the people whom make Blender and make it all possible for its user base but also the open community which it resides in and those that offer numerous tutorials and resources under the same framework of FREE and open source.

I dont say that to be against CartoonSmart or others that may do or have done the same. It is just kind of how I feel and I mean no harm by, and yeah $15 bucks is not much, but imagine if Blender had a price tag on it with all its capabilities…(I doubt 5% of its current user base could even afford it if that was the case, and it would probably be more expensive then any other 3D package out there based on its overall features across so many areas that come in one software title). I think Blender and its community is one of the most unique and wonderful software titles and user communities that there is, and somehow the onslaught of inevitable commercialization on any level big or however miniscule just feels wrong within the context of the Blender ideal that has been set forth.

I know there are a million ways to view this and million opinions, I just wanted to voice this little thought. Its not meant to start a huge debate but rather just something to ponder. Thats just how I feel. I feel the same way when I see Flash Source codes being sold for any amount and the same thing can be found all over the internet for free :-(

Love live open-source and FREE and love live Blender ;-)

PS: Thanks again CartoonSmart for the FREE portion, already downloaded ;-)
8 John B Mar 27th, 2008 at 8:58 pm

Blender is great, and it's freely available which is even better. If someone else wants to sell their own work be it documentation or anything else, I think that's fine too.
9 Olaf Mar 27th, 2008 at 10:17 pm

A pretty good tutorial, and at a very fair price. I will purchase it as soon as I have some time to watch it!
10 Vek Mar 28th, 2008 at 3:21 am

This is a good sign.
OF course, there is always the completely free and extremely good blender basics series from blender underground… really in depth and of course, free…
http://blenderunderground.com/
11 RedBirdiii Mar 28th, 2008 at 3:28 am

A suggestion to CartoonSmart:
I wish that any key pressed is shown somewhere in the screen, so to follow up easily.
12 mib2berlin Mar 28th, 2008 at 3:40 pm

Website do not work with konqueror, opera or firefox on opensuse linux 10.3.
I have only a blank page.
Other flash sites are working well.
13 Roy Mar 28th, 2008 at 6:49 pm

Its a shame I cant get a review of learnblender3d a free site that introduces blender. It has had great comments by users but has been consistently ignored by the blender 'experts' I am giving up now out of frustration.
http://www.learnblender3d.com/
14 Tadd Mar 31st, 2008 at 4:23 pm

I love CartoonSmart videos.

I'll probably snag this.

And for those complaining about the fact that they're charging for their time … well, so what!? They put time and effort into these training videos. It's only $15. There are Blender books like 'Essential Blender' which run around $45 in local stores - but no one says anything there.

Come on. Let's just smile at the extra tutorials (unique tutorials) and move on. I for one will probably grab these. The more things to help me (and others) understand the GUI and such for Blender then better.
15 Tom33 Apr 3rd, 2008 at 10:23 am

Blender Basics 2 is now online !
16 mrafif Jun 22nd, 2008 at 11:08 am

Blender Basics 3 is released.. get it now.~