Boy, oh boy. I want to rush through the fundamentals so that I can take on courses like Human, the new motion graphics course and so many others (3D mesh modelling boot camp, and animation boot camp look great!) . I know it takes time and I was away from my Blender learning for a bit due to some unexpected events in my life. But yeah, one small step at a time.
Right now I feel like my skills are limited and that I can’t do very much in the software yet especially in regards to my own projects. The fundamentals are really helping though, but at times it feels like it takes awhile. I may study about 30 minutes to an hour each day on just one course. Thought about tackling two courses at the same time (really want to tackle Draw!). But that seems like it's a recipe for disaster.
Any recommendations on what to do after finishing the fundamentals? My goal is to make animations and create VFX combined with live action footage.
Yeah man, it takes time, a lot of time and effort. Good thing is, it's just like when learning or mastering anything else in life, there is no getting away from having to make that sacrifice ever, so might as well go with it and before you know it, you're mastering the skill.
If your goal is to make animations, then of course practice a lot of animation, go for the animations courses, though I always suggest to learn modeling at least just enough to be comfortable with a mesh. So I'd go for a bit of modeling then start to focus on animation.
It really depends on your learning style and ability. If you feel like you're picking it up pretty quickly then after you finish the basics course and while your going thru the different fundamentals course you may want to do one of the sessions projects. Each project is self contained and has a watch time around 2 hours. This allows you to learn and apply what you learn at the same time. Plus the fundamentals go into more detail on the things you learn in sessions. This can be difficult for some people because there's an assumed amount of knowledge in sessions, but I think Kent does a great balance between beginner and intermediate skill sets. The added bonus is that there is a lot of area for exploring and customizing to make it your own which your inter artist will love. Sorry, I didn't mean for this to be a sales pitch :-)
Now about Draw: This is all about Grease Pencil and is the 2D animation part of Blender. While it uses a lot of the same tools and similar workflow it can be learned independently. Along the same vain you may want to check out Paul's other course Panels which is a course on creating comic books in blender using grease pencil. If you're going to really get into the 2D I'd recommend checking out some of the other 2D courses. This is the playlist that I've made for myself.
dillenbata3 I love, love, love this. I have saved the playlist and will get into it shortly. Thank you!