[FINAL, FINAL] CLASS ANNOUNCEMENT #7 (Apr 11, 2018): Thanks to those of you who have responded to the Questionnaire. The feedback is extremely helpful. If you haven't responded yet and you participated in the class - or even if you didn't participate - please fill that out and I will gift you 20 Breath of the Wild screenshots from my Switch.
[FINAL] CLASS ANNOUNCEMENT #6 (Apr 9, 2018): We've reached the end of the homework extension period and this class officially comes to end. What a month! It's been a thrill to see each of you forge your characters, learn new things, share tips with each other, and offer critiques along the way.
This thread will be open indefinitely but it's officially at the end of it's "class lifespan" meaning I won't be able to commit weekly time to it anymore and I will unpin it from the forum topics list. I'll pop in occasionally if I see activity but you all are more than welcome to keep working on their characters here if you wish!
UPDATE: Closing post on page 44 and XP has been added to each participating account.
CLASS ANNOUNCEMENT #5 (Mar 28, 2018): Week 4's stream is archived and available via the Past Events button on the Live Event page. Also a reminder that I'm extending the 'deadline' of this month and will be keeping this thread alive through the end of the first week in April. Hopefully that gives you all a bit more time to get your characters done!
CLASS ANNOUNCEMENT #4 (Mar 26, 2018): Week 3, done! Thanks to everyone who submitted by Sunday. I'm quite impressed by the neutralization and retoplogy work I've seen. It's a lot of work and I can see that effort in the WIPs and especially completed submissions.
Week 4 - the final week - dives into adding color to our model, primarily in the form of creating textures. Check out this week's breakdown a little further down in this description and see you tomorrow at the Live Event!
CLASS ANNOUNCEMENT #3 (Mar 19, 2018): Week 2 is accomplished and I'm finally caught up on submissions! Thanks to everyone who submitted by Sunday. We have some impressive character concept sculpts underway. In fact, I have yet to bestow a grade lower than an A this week.
Week 3 continues our 3-week character building production. Specifically we're going to look at pursuing an animation friendly version of our character - both how and why we would do this. See you tomorrow at the Live Event! Don't forget to RSVP.
CLASS ANNOUNCEMENT #2 (Mar 12, 2018): Week 1 is done! Thanks to everyone who submitted by Sunday. It's been a lot of fun seeing your caricature work and concept art choices.
Week 2 begins the 3-week process of building a character based on the concepts we choose. Don't forget to RSVP to the Live Event tomorrow - See you then!
CLASS ANNOUNCEMENT #1 (Mar 5, 2018): Class is in session! Today officially begins the BC2-1803 class. Please check the syllabus below for Week 1's focus and assignments. Begin watching the pre-recorded courses if you haven't already and begin looking for a cool, stylized character design for creating in 3D this month. The first Live Event is tomorrow at 2pm EST - SEE YOU THERE! 😎
Welcome to the CGCookie Class: Creating Stylized Characters with Blender! This class is designed to teach you everything you need to know about building stylized 3D characters. If you’re diligent in watching all content and hitting homework deadlines, by the end you will have a modeled and textured stylized character! It’s an intermediate-to-advanced class which means you’ll do best by having some experience with Blender and 3D modeling before committing to this class.
This is the second "Class" format where Citizen members are invited to focus together on a particular topic/skill for a month. Participation looks like this:
WHEN? The class will take place from March 5th through March 31st
Abstract: Stylization is any deviation from realism. Thus it’s a broad spectrum from slight liberty away from reality to extreme abstraction of reality. This week we're going to sift through various examples of stylized characters, noting their qualities, and categorizing a spectrum of stylization.
Goal of the Week: Train your eye and mind to stylize your perception. Practice simplifying and exaggerating reality. Loosen up your sculpting approach (gestural sculpting).
Pre-recorded course to watch: Art of Sculpting: Caricature Chapter
Week 1 Live Event (Already happened and archived!)
Homework:
Abstract: Story plays a big part in stylization. Not necessarily ‘narrative’ but background, personality, and purpose. The success of a character is strengthened by its developmental arc. The best artists create characters that are more than the sum of its pixels; more than the sum of its brush strokes and polygons; more than its final render.
Goal of the Week: Develop a story for your character; one that can fuel your creative workflow for the rest of the month. Then channel that story into the first stage of sculpting.
Pre-recorded courses to watch:
Week 2 Live Event (Don't forget to RSVP)
Homework:
Abstract: At this point a decision needs to be made about our character sculptures: A) Leave it as a sculpture or B) optimize it for ‘production’. Leaving it as a sculpture means it’s a static sculpture that can be painted, rendered, or 3D printed but not animated. Optimizing it for production means you turn your sculpture into a model that’s easiest to work with up to and including animation. If you opt for optimization, this week is mostly a technical and problem-solving task. We need to both retopologize our mesh and also neutralize it if the sculpt is posed.
Goal of the Week: Understand the concept of “production-friendly” and practice retopology.
Pre-recorded courses to watch:
Week 3 Live Event (Don't forget to RSVP)
Homework:
Abstract: Like Dorothy, our characters have so far lived in a black and white world. This week we’re leaving Kansas and adding color. There’s many methods for creating our character texture(s) including hand-painting, baking maps that accent the painting process (great for the less painterly character artists), as well as photo-sourcing. There's also a couple different formats: Vertex Colors and UV/Textures.
Goal of the Week: Get comfortable with painting textures.
Pre-recorded courses to watch:
Week 4 Live Event (Don't forget to RSVP)
Homework:
This thread is reserved for CG Cookie Citizens that are participating in the "Creating Stylized Characters with Blender" class. Its purpose is to serve as central communication for all participating Citizens (excluding Hobby plan Citizens) to ask me and each other questions and to post homework. As the instructor of the class, I will be monitoring this thread on a daily basis (especially Mon-Thurs) throughout the month of March to review homework and answer questions.
Free members are welcome to observe the thread but please respect that communication is reserved for Citizens.
@theluthier "Geometric Fidelity" you should trademark that. Don't look too closely or you might see some "vertex infidelity" going on. Ha ha. I have to tell you that some of the texture work is borrowed from you. The pants and sweater textures are from the Pancake Hobo and believe it or not, I painted the hair, mustache, and beard with your Pore Detail modeling texture. To use it, I employed the Alpha check box and Angle: Rake check box, plus the Image Sampling: Alpha and Calculate check boxes. I liked how fun it was to paint, almost therapeutic.
Oh, and in the seventies, my dad had a belt that looked almost exactly like Ulbiricht's. It appeared in so many of my drawings that my dad gave the belt to me (in a good way). Here is a picture of it.
Oh my! He looks so much better now! The wood textures are so great, they even look like they have a normal map, but they don't!😱
Looks really nice! Each time I see him I keep imagining a short of him trying to get breakfast...
"But at VML, it’s not all about the work. We want everyone to have the best life both in and out of the office."
Looks like Dad is having that best life out of the office right now. Great job on the sculpt and texturing Ryan 
stonewing !
This class was an absolute blast. As the first advanced-level curriculum, I was kinda expecting participation to dwindle - maybe even turn into a ghost town by the end. Not the case. I am so impressed with the commitment level and quality of results. Amazing job everyone!
Consistency: Out of 37 total members that submitted homework, 12 submitted all 4 weeks. I want to commend those members:
ullreym )
swikni )
lhumungus 
jakeblended )jack07 )stonewing )
shiennar )
csehz )Community Leaders: There were several members this month who invested significant time in this community thread encouraging others, answering questions, and offering advice/tips. Without a doubt I believe it's members like these that have made these classes so successful. I wanted to highlight some of the most involved but currently I don't have a way to filter the thread by top posters and 44 pages is a lot to go through one by one lol. But you know who you are! And thank you.
Volunteer Instructor's Assistants: As with my January's class, Zolt Cseh was voluntarily active this month by facilitating a consolidated report card spreadsheet. I'm a spreadsheet novice and his help is very appreciated. He also periodically reported statistics regarding class participation which I find extremely useful for gauging the pulse of the class. Thank you, Zolt!
Additionally 2 other members heeded my call to be Volunteer Assistants: Cody Winchester ( ccodywinch ) and Matt Curtis ( 
jbird09 ). Though the participation in the class didn't reach overwhelming proportion, I sincerely appreciate you both volunteering your time and attention if the need arose.
Highest Grade: Matthew Ullrey takes home a record 180 XP this month. See how you did via Zolt's Report Card. I calculated the total value for everyone by adding individual grades based on this scale: F = 0, D = 10, C = 20, B = 30, A = 40, + = 5. I'm going to manually add those XP values to everyone's current total. 2758 total XP is about to rain down!
Your Feedback is important! I've created a Google Form to harvest some data from you all, including a consensus for which class topic to do next. Please take a moment to fill that out if you wouldn't mind 🙇🏻♂️
I totally missed this - thanks for pointing me back here jack07. And great job with the retopo. Kudos for uploading to Sketchfab with sculpt + base retopo + subsurf'd retopo 👌
I love bad puns... or any puns. A June class would be nice. Thanks for the class and XP!
I hope we get next class on May, but it's fine if it's moved to june. Between this and Overlord season 3 the waiting will kill me!🤩
A hair class or a vehicle/hard surface class?! 😱 I have to do the creature course if hair wins, or prepare a concept for the vehicle one! I want to do a Transformer!!
Yay can't wait for the next class and June would be awesome! Thank you once more for this class Kent. It has been a lot of fun (and educational)!
That is a great summary Kent @theluthier, if you need of course will continue the tracking of the results also in the next classes with pleasure.
I especially like somehow that XP rain at the end of the class :-), regarding that would like to congratulate for the top three students who gained the highest XP in total by the two classes:
1) Matthew Ullrey ( ullreym ) - 360 XP
2) Katerina Novakova ( shiennar ) - 308 XP
3) John Sanderson ( pprocyonlotor ) - 283 XP
And just for the next students a bit of additional motivation with this chart, just join bravely and learn and gain XPs because that is also a fun and good feeling:
mmalhomsi Great idea about the still render. I added one to page 43. This is another area I need more practice in; Cycles Renderer and Rendering.
Thanks to those of you who've responded to the questionnaire so far! 5/9 votes for Hard Surface / Vehicle modeling, 3/9 for Digital Hair, so it looks like vehicles will be the next class! Unless a bunch of you decide to vote otherwise in the next 24 hours or so.
Also the feedback you're leaving is gold. A final closing stream makes a lot of sense 👍
Thanks to those of you who've responded to the questionnaire so far! 5/9 votes for Hard Surface / Vehicle modeling, 3/9 for Digital Hair, so it looks like vehicles will be the next class! Unless a bunch of you decide to vote otherwise in the next 24 hours or so.
Also the feedback you're leaving is gold. A final closing stream makes a lot of sense 👍
BTW I have continued working on Mr. Dunne these past couple weeks. And had a lot of fun painting his shadeless texture. The hair was a lot of fun. Pinstripes less so. I'm no Tim Von Rueden, but I'm getting a bit better at the hand-painting approach:
I'd like to try and extract some baseline spec/metalness maps for uploading to sketchfab with a hint of shading.
If I can be candid, that canid needs to be added before Mr. Dunne is done. A little "Fox in Socks" for you. 😜
In all seriousness, that looks fantastic and I can't wait to see it in Sketchfab.