Looking Back at Five Years with Blender
Jonathan Lampel shares an overview of his personal development with Blender.
Remember trying Blender for the first time?
It was about eight years ago for me. I downloaded the program and opened it up with high hopes. Then I was immediately confused by all the buttons and menus, and promptly closed it down and uninstalled it when I couldn’t figure out how to do a darn thing.When version 2.5 came out a few years later, I saw the nicer interface and decided to give it another shot. My goal was to make art for video games, and any way to do that for free seemed like a good plan. Thanks to CG Cookie and Blender Guru tutorials, I was able to learn much faster than when I was puttering along in 3ds Max on my own.
Five years of doing anything is a long time, at least when you’re 20 years old. I’m way better now than I imagined I would be when I started, but I’m still way behind where I probably should be.
For anyone curious or for those just starting out and are needing encouragement, I’ve made an abridged timeline showing my progress. It’s scary showing my bad artwork along with the good, and you can bet that there’s a lot more where that came from! This is just a snapshot.
http://www.blenderhd.com/article/looking-back-five-years-blender/
Thanks Bart! The link to the article is not live, just so you know.
What should I do when I am 28 and for five years I just researched?
Never too late to start. I’m 55 and having a blast. Am not very good, but enjoy making the stuff I do.
I started blender a little late in life as well. The journey has been fun and challenging at times. My best advice and approach is to keep it simple and fit it into what you enjoy doing as blender offers something for everyone. I enjoy making things and practicing animation. I believe that with most things practice and patience pays off. I wish everyone luck and good fortune in your blender endeavors
“It was about eight years ago for me… and promptly closed it down and uninstalled it when I couldn’t figure out how to do a darn thing.”
Me too, exactly. The 2.4x interface took as much effort to learn as actual 3D modelling. But the examples I saw of what other people had created in Blender drove me to reinstall it and learn it properly – thanks mostly to the fantastic Blender Noob to Pro Wiki, which is still available. That got me over the steepest part of the learning curve, and set me on the path to boring anyone who’ll listen about this amazing program called ‘Blender’!