First of all, thanks to Jonathan for bringing this topic. For me this is one of the most exciting conferences. So much is going on. Eevee and all this good stuff. But transforming passion into business, I think it's one of the hardest stages. As someone from the audience rightly said that business requires a lot of hands to work together. I work alone and I use Blender mainly for asset modelling for Unreal Engine 4. After hours of modelling it is not easy to find time for example to position the page to become visible to others in the web browser. Building traffic, or translating everything from native language into English, etc. It consumes our time, and where is the family? This is a very difficult subject, personally I am interested in more tips on how to deal with all this to turn passion into the small successful business.
I believe lack of time out of work is inherently connected with running a business. It's not just 3D graphics, it's pretty much every business imaginable. If you want to do something on your own, just mere accounting will eat significant amount of your "free time". Running any kind of business as a lone wolf will never be easy - at the end of the day you either will overwork yourself and burn out or will have to pay someone else to take some of that burden off your back.
Hi Micromation! ...Running any kind of business as a lone wolf will never be easy. - It's true! You are right. This is one big and very hard challenge. This is my 3- th business and I failed already two times. But this time I have huge support from my family (kids & wife) and i see the light. From Mixed martial arts to Game arts. About 4 years ago after almost 20 years of hard training I have decide to learn something new. I meet Blender and I have learned enough to design my first product - wooden stand for smartphones made of high grade wood. I made small production line - but this was my second time and as I said I failed. And again I did not give up, I just changed direction. Now this became my passion - it doesn't make money yet. But I see successful artists out there, so its the room for me and other "wolfs". I believe, just need to work more, learn more, work more and learn more. We 'll see what happen. Thanks and have a good day!
As for starting tutoring for Blender I believe there's still plenty of space on the market. Sure there might be CGCookie, CGMasters and alike but when you look at their offerings they focus for the most part only on modeling as far as in-depth courses go. For example try getting into advabced rigging and animation - there are very little resources for someone completely unfamiliar with the topic to get into it - the best you're gonna get is how to use rigify or create extremely simple armatures that aren't very functional in the long run beyond simple posing. Even course showing good practices when it comes to retopology is pretty much non-existent. For pricing aspect I believe there's no need to listen to morons that say it should be all free. Paid courses and tutorials and extensions are literally the best thing that has happened to Blender and was one of major reasons why it has exploded in recent years and gained recognition as more people got into it. I for one wouldn't mind to pay up few hundred $ for comprehensive, in-depth course on subjects I'm interested in because at the end of the day there are no alternatives.
Thank you for this, especially for telling how you are working to keep your team healthy.
Great talk. The QA was super helpful as well.
First of all, thanks to Jonathan for bringing this topic. For me this is one of the most exciting conferences. So much is going on. Eevee and all this good stuff. But transforming passion into business, I think it's one of the hardest stages. As someone from the audience rightly said that business requires a lot of hands to work together. I work alone and I use Blender mainly for asset modelling for Unreal Engine 4. After hours of modelling it is not easy to find time for example to position the page to become visible to others in the web browser. Building traffic, or translating everything from native language into English, etc. It consumes our time, and where is the family? This is a very difficult subject, personally I am interested in more tips on how to deal with all this to turn passion into the small successful business.
I believe lack of time out of work is inherently connected with running a business. It's not just 3D graphics, it's pretty much every business imaginable. If you want to do something on your own, just mere accounting will eat significant amount of your "free time". Running any kind of business as a lone wolf will never be easy - at the end of the day you either will overwork yourself and burn out or will have to pay someone else to take some of that burden off your back.
Hi Micromation! ...Running any kind of business as a lone wolf will never be easy. - It's true! You are right. This is one big and very hard challenge. This is my 3- th business and I failed already two times. But this time I have huge support from my family (kids & wife) and i see the light. From Mixed martial arts to Game arts. About 4 years ago after almost 20 years of hard training I have decide to learn something new. I meet Blender and I have learned enough to design my first product - wooden stand for smartphones made of high grade wood. I made small production line - but this was my second time and as I said I failed. And again I did not give up, I just changed direction. Now this became my passion - it doesn't make money yet. But I see successful artists out there, so its the room for me and other "wolfs". I believe, just need to work more, learn more, work more and learn more. We 'll see what happen. Thanks and have a good day!
I Love theblender community its open source at its purest literally.
As for starting tutoring for Blender I believe there's still plenty of space on the market. Sure there might be CGCookie, CGMasters and alike but when you look at their offerings they focus for the most part only on modeling as far as in-depth courses go. For example try getting into advabced rigging and animation - there are very little resources for someone completely unfamiliar with the topic to get into it - the best you're gonna get is how to use rigify or create extremely simple armatures that aren't very functional in the long run beyond simple posing. Even course showing good practices when it comes to retopology is pretty much non-existent.
For pricing aspect I believe there's no need to listen to morons that say it should be all free. Paid courses and tutorials and extensions are literally the best thing that has happened to Blender and was one of major reasons why it has exploded in recent years and gained recognition as more people got into it. I for one wouldn't mind to pay up few hundred $ for comprehensive, in-depth course on subjects I'm interested in because at the end of the day there are no alternatives.
Very motivating. I'm currently creating a feature animation using blender, and I hope with its success I can build outward and upward.
Good luck Warren! The Blender Community is a great place to be.
Thanks Jonathan! Yes, Blender Community is fantastic.
Warren did you finished that
I love blender
are the talks being reuploaded?
No, they were just unlisted before, I guess.