My favorite 3D magazine, 3D World, has published an interview with Blender Guru Andrew Price.
You're blocking ads, which pay for BlenderNation. Read about other ways to support us.
About the Author
Bart Veldhuizen
I have a LONG history with Blender - I wrote some of the earliest Blender tutorials, worked for Not a Number and helped run the crowdfunding campaign that open sourced Blender (the first one on the internet!). I founded BlenderNation in 2006 and have been editing it every single day since then ;-) I also run the Blender Artists forum and I'm Head of Community at Sketchfab.
46 Comments
awesome!
Thanks for the plug Bart :)
-- removed, insulting (Bart) --
Ah BlendNmix Spoken like a person who has no talents at all. Though I wish Andrew would do some more tutorials, Andrew has more talent at connecting with his audience then you have at being intelligent! Which is saying a lot. Good job Andrew but please don't forget how you got there and who your fans are.
@BlendNmix :
I sincerely hope that you know that there are in life other pleasures than saying bad things about people. I have never seen any kind comment from you, as well as I have never seen any artwork from you. I see you as The Grinch on Blender forums.
Andrew has shown us many nice works, and has always shared with us his tricks. He does much for us for free for a long time now, and doesn't desserve this nasty attack.
Thank you Andrew !
I love you BlendNMix.
That was exactly what I was thinking.
The "WOW factor" is for 12-years-old blender so-called "users" who do not know they are actually buying the documentation, with just some "cool" (not good, just cool) pictures.
But it's always fun to see that a lack of talent can help make a lot of money
^Well I guess it was only a matter of time... ;)
LoL @ trolls I have never heard of either of you but you both act like the authorities of blender.
Ha ha jealous much?
Good Job Andrew, Haters will hate, and congrats.
oh yeah post some more tutorials I miss em'.
@TheGrayK
I miss them too! I've been swamped doing conference stuff but I promise to post one up next Tuesday :)
Levisarts, you insult all of the talentless hacks in the world (and beleive me, we outnumber you). Remember, lack of talent doesn't HAVE to mean lack of class (though in the case of Mr. BlendNMix, it obviously helps).
Personally, I appreciate ANYONE taking the time to make a tutorial, and a *well-made* tutorial (a category most of Andrew's work falls into), is a source of joy. Capitalism might be out of fashion at the moment, but I'm delighted that Andrew's now actually making money from his time, effort and talent. If he does open a "pro" section, I might actually open my wallet and subscribe (did I mention that I'm also a *Cheap* TalentlessHack?).
Keep up the good work, Andrew.
@blenderMix & & CocaKnut, You win this months award for totally irrelevant post. Please except (its in the post) a years supply of toilet paper!
Please sit back and enjoy the accolades, there are some luminary posters that have gone before you, like those who be-little'd the girl who dared to make a cover of the Sintel theme tune.
When you have gotten over yourselves, maybe you could spare a few mins to list your website so we can drool over you awesomeness.
regards
TFS
Andrew,
If I were you I'd be pissed at these jerks and want to respond. But that's just me, and I'm rather think skinned. Instead, I recommend ignoring people with attitude problems. Some day I'll learn to take my own advice! Keep up the good work, I've learned a lot from you. More tuts though!
Let me introduce to you BlendNix and CocoNuts the new Blender-clowns.
Let's not forget to ask Ton to invite them for the next Blender-conference.
It seems such a waste of expertise not having them as speaker or member of the susanne award jury.
In the mean time the rest of us are going to enjoy Andrews good work as usual.
Way to go Andrew. I'm thankful Blender has people like you who give great advice for free and for charge.
It has helped me a lot. I'm also thankful you have the tough skin to weather jealous comments from some.
You have to pity those that don't have anything nice to say because in their past they have been hated on, so
they don't have it in them to be nice. They're not bad people, just damaged souls.
But anyway, Cheers and congrats making a living doing what you have passion for.
blenderMix & CocaKnut you are so inspiring - do it better or shredder your IP´s!
Andrew good job so far - go ahead man.
Good tuts ! Showing how you tweak your work to best result thats what i like.
You´re using all possibility's of the net to promote your work - why not?
-- removed, insulting (Bart) --
Good interview.
@BlendNmix
If you don't like it, so be it, just bug off... We all don't give a damn anyway...
This BlendNmix guy is a royal ass hole. Yea, if you need me to spell it for you, just ask.
Your level of comments show your minimum intelligence level. Please use the toilet paper offered an shove it in your mouth, or ass hole. One in the same.
Ok, you can ban me now. But this jerk needs to be removed, period.
Hey Bart,
Do you think it is about time you had the ability to remove offensive comments? They just distract from the real content and their rantings are just plain boring.
@BlendNmix: your post was outright insulting, I won't have that here.
Can we get the insulting stuff back to blenderArtists please?
This is a site for professionals, as much as that's possible with blender.
Get real, that's not at the same level as Pixar, so what? Does that mean the people are less? I think not.
@Bart:
I'm sorry but it is dishonest as accusation. But i understand, you can't loose what is feeding your website.
Moreover here you do disrespect your audience by censoring my posts, are they too stupids to evaluate a comment?
@Joeri67:
It is not a question of Pixar level and there were no insults - btw Terry was -, it is just a matter of honesty.
Mr Guru is over-rated... why not, but making money from his mediocrity and weakness of blendies, is simply bad.
Call me jalous or anything, but i'm not pretending anything and not abusing people.
He is not doing more than reuse informations from Miika or Daniel and takes benefit from it.
And Mr Guru proved his intention with his last presention at the BConf2010, getting a fanbase.
What is funny, it's that a guy with no relevant artworks (pro and perso) is telling you how to achieve a "career" he doesn't have himself.
Ok, i'm a bit out of topic. ^^
Stop trying to show yourself, stop narcissism, do art for you and share it without trying to be a star.
My apologizes if it hurts someone but do you think it is better to abuse people?
I have nothing to win here, i'm just fed up of this trend in the Blender community.
Hey there blendnmix. I think it's an old Chinese proverb which goes something like "those who can, do; those who can't, teach." We all have only so many hours in the day and if Andrew had put all the time he's put into BelnderGuru instead into making a portfolio, it'd probably be pretty awesome, but then we'd be without the instruction so it's a catch 22.
Well, I have to say that Andrew does fine work, but the SEO marketing tactics ARE starting to become a bit heavy-handed.
While trying to submit four of my tutorials for placement consideration on the Blender.org Tutorials page, I noticed something.
If you go to the blender.org Tutorials page, you'll see about 28 tutorials highlighted on the main page. Fourteen of those links are going to the blenderguru website. That's called very strong backlinking, where you leverage the traffic and google index ranking of another website to feed traffic to your own. Now, most webmasters do this by nature and that's to be expected. But, at what point does it become spam? Is 14 out of the 28 links enough?
To make things worse, one of the links is for a neon sign effect where the subject is a glowing blenderguru logo. Now, that's called page presence.
And, it gets even worse. One other "tutorial" link doesn't link to a tutorial at all. It links to a video advertisement for the wow factor e-book, complete with an opt-in email request! Now, that's called balls.
Now, couple all of this with his push to have a link to this Tutorials page placed prominently on the Blender.org homepage, PLUS the push to have a link to this page placed in the Blender splash screen and what do you have?...backlinking heaven. Cha-Ching!
All I'm really saying is calm down, we get it already. Focus on creating content.
@blendmix
I see your point, and you aren't the only to feel this way. Look at the latest comment on the 3D World article.
@Kernon
wow, thanks for pointing this out. I hadn't noticed that before, but then again I wasn't very keen on SEO either
@Kernon: How is that any different from having the BlenderNation news feed on the front page?
Blender is community driven so it is only natural that there will be links to great content hosted on other web sites? That's how it works. The more the better.
@Reece
I'm not sure you're understanding my point.
But, you're correct that Blender is community driven. So, if you go to the blender.org Tutorials page, do you see a representation of the community driven effort to provide tutorials? Fourteen out of 28 links going to just one site does not hardly represent the community. There are plenty of people creating excellent tutorials these days. Perhaps there should be some degree of balance achieved?
My bigger point is that there is a marketing effort to create the biggest funnel possible to drive traffic to one site in the community for the purpose of converting sales. Why else would someone spend $6,000 on SEO marketing training? My question is, should Blender.org be leveraged in such a way? Is anyone paying attention? Remember, one of those links, disguised as a tutorial, goes to a not-so-subtle marketing page.
--------------------------------------------
Small Statistic: There are more blenderguru tutorials on the blender.org Tutorials page than on the homepage of the blenderguru website.
--------------------------------------------
I simply think it's inappropriate and abusive of the privilege of being linked at Blender.org. But, this is the way of SEO marketing.
Eh! Its getting nasty here. BlendNMix seems to be alienating everybody (though I can't read what was it about). Though BlendNMix comment about people being "too stupid to evaluate a comment" is ridiculous. Calling someone stupid for not liking your comment is egotistic. We should not assume that everyone will agree with you or not be antagonised by our words.
It also seems to ask for forgiveness then... back it up with insults. I wonder how could it be forgiven. Are you even trying?
Well back the topic... I never have the opportunity to have the ebook so I cannot say anything about its usefulness though I really had a great desire to know a lot about image post processing. Its one thing I'm weak at (Well I'm weak at many things).
Well, I think the wording and tone of BlendNMix could have been tempered, but I don't think it's alienating everybody.
My commentary is on a different issue and it's certainly not nasty. I'm just highlighting some facts.
@Kernon
I can understand how you would come to your conclusion. I've made some mistakes in the past (spammy marketing emails) but I'm trying to cut down on that.
The Blender.org tutorials page was being maintained by no one. If you have emailed your tutorials to the email listed on the site, then it will NOT be added. I don't know who it is, but they aren't maintaining it. I tried emailing to that address for several months and it never happened.
So, I approached Tom Musgrave for the rights to edit the tutorial page, and he gave them to me. After a week of learning to use the CMS of Blender.org, I scoured the web for good blender tutorials. I included several links from BlenderCookie. I created thumbnails for each tutorial and added descriptions.
Obviously I also added my own tutorials. I tried to make it fair but I wasn't aware that the ratio was 14:28.
Also, I shared a hostel room with Jonathan Williamson whilst at the BConf and we discussed the blender tutorials page in great length. He wasn't aware that I was maintaining it, so I told him to email any new tutorials to me and I will add them. Tom has since given Jonathan the permissions as well so he will be able to update it himself. The tutorials page will change shortly.
I will have to disagree with one point you said: "one of those links, disguised as a tutorial, goes to a not-so-subtle marketing page." I assume you mean the Introduction to the Compositor? That is definitely a tutorial, NOT a marketing page. Whilst it is part of my book I made certain that the sales talk on that page was at a *minimum* before adding it to the blender.org site. The only reason I added it in the first place was because it it is one of the most requested tutorials that I get.
Hope that all this makes sense.
I wish you all the best in your upcoming DVD.
-Andrew
Your explanation of this only serves to highlight the massive conflict of interest that's at work here. The fact that you placed all of your links makes it worse.
So, after "scouring the web for good blender tutorials" you could only find your own tutorials for the 2.5 section?
The fact of the matter is that if one looks at each section on that page, it's very clear that the only sections that don't have a majority of your tutorials listed are the subjects you haven't covered. And, some of the tutorials are clearly forced into categories for the simple sake of placement. For example, the Rain tutorial is not an animation tutorial. The Lightning and Snow tutorials are not modeling tutorials, they're SFX.
There are quite a few excellent tutorials all over the community for each of those categories. If you had actually "scoured" the web you would easily have discovered this.
I find it interesting that you only disagree with one of my points. But, I even take issue with that disagreement because the compositing tutorial link clearly links to a marketing page. This is why I say this:
- the url is to a domain outside of your tutorial site
- the domain name linked to is actually the title of the product
- the large banner graphic at the top of the linked page is the name of the product
- immediately beneath the banner graphic, and to the right, is an opt-in box for people to receive a free chapter from the product being promoted
- an email address is required to receive the free sample chapter of the product being promoted
- in the "tutorial" video, you open by explaining why visitors are viewing the video outside of your normal tutorial site. You explain that you are wanting to promote your upcoming ebook, and that further details about the product will be given at the end of the video.
- THEN we finally get to the actual tutorial
Of course this is an advertisement. It's called a teaser with an opt-in for list building. This mailing list is used to market to pre-qualified potential customers.
There are better ways to get publicity than to abuse people's trust. I can't figure out how to define this in any other terms.
The Blender Foundation really ought to consider having better control of the content on their site. If they are okay with this sort of thing, then so be it. Perhaps I have mis-hitched my wagon.
@ redbyte: So do we send inclusion emails to you? Or will some generic contact details be used and added to the page so people know maintenance is under new management.
@ kernon
"The Blender Foundation really ought to consider having better control of the content on their site. If they are okay with this sort of thing, then so be it. Perhaps I have mis-hitched my wagon."
Yeah, those greedy capitalists. How dare they create free software and then provide links to free tutorials which can help you learn said software! Who do those guys think they are?
You have completely missed the point.
Hi Kernon,
I will discuss with Andrew proper conventions for what we link to on blender.org.
Obviously these links should be to content that matches the open/free nature of blender.org. Prominent marketing or links to commercial products don't fit there.
-Ton-
Thank you, sir.
I will stay out of most of this discussion but I did want to jump in and say that the contact info email will be updated shortly to one that sends to both Andrew and myself, as we each have editing rights to the page right now. For people that wish to submit tutorials please wait until that link is updated and then submit the tutorials.
-Jonathan
Thanks for the info.
The ad link is still there, though.
I would also like to add that I believe that one link per website is sufficient. After that, it's the individual webmaster's responsibility to maintain the interest of visitors coming from the Tutorials page, not the level of saturation. Otherwise, it's a billboard.
This multi-lingual, international community has more than enough quality content to fill the page out.
It should represent the community just as the Community and the Certified Trainers pages do. Things are organized by language and/or region of the world. Since this is such a diverse community, and Blender.org gets traffic from all over the world, I think the page's content and its organization should recognize that fact.
Right.. so you link to the authors site and then bullet point the type/language of tutorial material covered, e.g.
[Author Site/Name?/Language?/Location?]
- rendering
- node editing
- etc...
- etc..
Correct. This is not a difficult task to figure out. If it's allowed for multiple links per website, then naturally people could start focusing on creating tutorials to fill those specific voids to gain greater presence on the page.
Look at it now, it's laughable.
@Kernon: Oops! I'm not talking about you and I say "seem" to be alienating... that is how it "seem." You would also know that I was also exaggerating a bit. The others people's reaction to BLendNMix is hostile so s/he must have been insulting or something. The apology post for one is insulting. I have risked myself but I would not want to be his/her topic for discussion.
The quality, quantity and management of the tutorials is a bit problematic I agree. From what I could see, the tutorials around are basic, focused too much on modelling (I think there are not much blender users who are good at doing other stuff), or just explaining how to use stuff (especially new features ) in Blender. Many things... like animation, rigging, game creation, particles, lighting... does not receive much attention. Maybe there aren't many who knows much about it or they are just difficult to show in a tutorial (they seem to be more suited for classes ). Maybe we need more that tutorials for other stuff.
Hi Kernon,
The point is, we need tutorials that focus one individual chapters of the wiki (see its TOC).
Why take TOC as reference?
Because it starts from scratch and explains the working of Blender in graded lessons.
In that context, Neal Hirsig's series provides topic-wise walk-through.
(But he has stopped midway, just like he did for the older 2.49 tutorials)
I have also seen Ira Krakow extend his tutorials.
In contrast, the tutorials made by you, Andrew and Jonathan don't serve this particular purpose.
They employ multiple techniques as needed.
So your tutorials belong to a higher level, rather than fitting any chapter/topic in the Blender TOC.
So IMHO all your tutorials should be moved to a higher plane.
*****
If there is a gap area, why not help Ton set up the wiki rules?
Theoretically, a single person could contribute 100% of the content. Why not?
Why should he be forced to scour the net to bring the best to the readers?
This is left to the other volunteers. If you want to do it too, go ahead!
Wiki runs based on a fundamental premise that there are a large number of volunteers.
If that premise fails for any particular wiki, it will face such issues.
A major safety net all wikis enjoy is the hard work done by the editors.
So PROVIDED THAT the 50% ratio does offend a specific policy, some editor has to apply his cuts.
Or else YOU could edit some links out and insert your own.
Or just add your tutorials without cutting out Andrew's.
Or add someone else's tutorials.
But by wiki rules, you can NOT object to someone's edits.
Or expect him to behave in a certain way in uncharted territory.
BOTTOM LINE: Wiki is a COLLABORATIVE project. So let's collaborate; not jostle.
In a lighter vein, Andrew has also blown up his own logo in another tutorial. Would you prefer THAT one in place of the neon light?
Hi Raindrops
Why are you talking about the wiki? I'm not talking about the wiki. I'm talking about the page found under Education & Help --> Tutorials. Did you read the comments? Did you go look at the page?
Now, there have been some slight changes made to the page. The ad has been removed, but the page is still spammed with way too many links to one site. It's still an abusive marketing issue. And, believe me, it's marketing.
Anywho, I just thought I would point out the obvious, thinking that it mattered. But if it's not a problem, then so be it.
I'll move along.
Actually I always wondered why the tutorials page was flooded with Blenderguru when there was so much quality education available from sites like Blendercookie etc. - now I know!