I am new to Blender and 3D Graphics in general. I need to make a model for my open source project and I think robotic martial artist would be a good fit. I spoke with Adrian through my project email, and he suggested I start with the free beginner courses. Afterwards, it was suggested that I complete the Core | Fundamentals series, which is actually on sale right now. Has anyone done this course and if so can you recommend it after completing the above courses? I ask because I am very limited in funding and want to make sure it is a good fit for my project.
Yes, those are both great courses to start learning. You can also ask around the CG Cookie Discord, it's filled with guys and gals who have taken z lot of the courses around here.
One thing you have to keep in mind, learning 3D is a journey, it's not really a one stop and then you're done endeavor, you have to keep at it and you have to practice a lot and watch a lot of courses. Usually people start to learn because they have a goal in mind, usually a huge project, only to later realize all this stuff is hard and the challenge is much bigger than they expected. That is why most people opt for a yearly subscription, so they have access to the entire library. So when you start to ask around in the community, I suspect what you'll most hear is people telling you to change the expectation from quick immediate reward, to more of a long goal oriented process. It's not as bad as it sounds, it is super fun and engaging.
But yeah, those courses are great to start with, it's the best fundamentals that are out there on the internet. If you scroll to the bottom of the first course, you'll see all the reviews:
https://cgcookie.com/courses/core-fundamentals-mesh-modeling
CORE is a superb choice to start your journey into Blender. Once you've done the basics series it's a perfect choice. It will give you a very good introduction and fundamental knowledge in every aspect there is in Blender (except geo-nodes) and once you have that basis you should be able to pick your battles after that. You'll learn the tools on a deeper base than in any free resource out there. And if you can get it on sale right now, that's a great deal.
With that you'll get more out of free resources afterwards, in my opinion, because you'll understand why things are done, not just see that they are done, which is the case in most (not all) YT tutorials for example. Plus the community here and on the discord is always there to help.