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Although my original thread was intended as a bit of a laugh, I slowly became attached to it due to anons good word and habit, then came back from holidays and the board was wiped.
Was not too annoyed but it had become part of an autistic routine so tonight, as it has been 1 year, I intend to repost and drink whilst adding my thoughts of the work and process now and at the time.

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the first image was the from the first time I really sat down and gave it a serious experiment. testing how sculpting worked and how to pilot the system as a whole. it is a carefree attempt at the Zombie from the cutscene in RE1 after the dining room.
The second and this image is of that Jocko fellah as he was a meme at the time and his face was funny from a cartoonist perspective.

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I have always been into drawing all my life, but had very little exposure to 3D art systems, although I was always into vidya and art and animation, the step from paper to digital stuff and game creation just never entered my mind, and I had never cared for PC as a gaming platform just due to the times I grew up in.
Computers were for my rich uncles to crunch numbers on for the corporation and consoles were for fun.

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Colouring this model and the frustration of the system crashing because I had no idea about polycounts effect on stuff like rendering etc, and the viewport render settings, really made me feel like maybe the effort wasn't worth the results. But peoples reactions to it based on the small time I had been using the tools spurred me on.
this whole head model took a few hours a day messing about ended up looking more like a generic space marine.
Ridiculous poly count from raw sculp too, I had no clue.

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I decided to take a break, but during the research I did to learn how to add colour to a mesh, I had discovered a few box mod tuts from some swede with an odd face and decided to have a go, as his way of colouring faces caught my attention.

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A lot of the stuff I use as inspiration is from childhood due to spending a lot of time drawing things, so the shapes and lines are etched into my mind and I find it easier to recreate in 3d. That then influences different things like creating buildings due to the tool skills and processes learned.

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started to feel like I knew what I was doing and after a break from sculpting I decided to have a go. I got a low/mid range pad and stylus and started to learn using that.

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I had watched some vids on youtube and started to slowly understand how things are and needed to be in regard to polycounts. still was just enjoying carving into the blob and stretching it about. Texture/uv maps etc was still an unknown and it was about here when I started researching more.

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I remember adding colour to this and thinking i was Shit Hot.

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Felt happy with this as a noob but was getting bored working on the same model for so long, and due to being still new to the keybinds etc, I felt like I needed to take a step back and get better at some fundamentals.
still not done the fingers but now it would take 5 mins, back then it would have been hours.

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At this time I had started heavily watching tuts and was following a few various people. Grant Abbit and his UK teacher from the early 90's vibe gelled with me and I followed along on many vids.

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doing this 3d had become like a mental yoga. i was like a 60 year old man who discovered sodoku at its peak and was daily getting stuck into tuts and experimenting, going down rabbit holes and discovering all the different things you can learn to do with this sort of software.

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I became autistic scale obsessed with re creating the kinds of homes I grew up in and spent many hours trying to re create my grans old house, and the surrounding areas.

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I still had no idea about quads, Ngons etc, the need for a solid mesh, but i learned a bit about uv editing and downloading free textures during this period.

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I started to discover arrays and instancing here also.

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I stayed up all night without realising in some sperg fuge state doing this house and decided I need a rest to let my brain relax. I had also been dabbling with some other projects and was burning out.

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some works from this time. i realised there were a lot of things like lighting and texturing that needed serious learning.

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i took a week or more away from this stuff and then one day was hit with the idea to have another go.
Decided to try making this ship from a uk sitcom i liked as a kid.

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started using all the things i had discovered and put them all into making this. the topo is a fucking joke as i just welded it all together but i was really happy how it ended up.

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at this point i had still not learned how to improve render speeds, mesh optimisation etc and was avoiding it and just taking screen shots, but i started to learn how to get things rolling in that regard, mainly out of annoyance at the time it takes.

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it was about here when i decided i really liked doing this stuff and wanted to refine it and become really good at it all. i intended to animate this ship, engine heat and flying away but never went back as of yet.

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I stopped using the tools and binge watched tuts, i had burned out again and took a few away. think some new vidya came out and i got distracted but i just tinkered with old projects and tried to fix problems i was now aware of.

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I had installed unreal engine about now in the timeline and spent near a month learning how to use it. Was inspired by a tut to load up blender again and had a confidence that i could make something satisfying.
I felt that i wanted to learn retopo and animation and started dabbling in that.
Sculpt and chill in the evening, retopo in the morning with a cuppa.

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i also discovered shape brushes and crashed my pc many times trying to paint on scales and stuff.
i realised there was a darkness difference between what i see on my screen and what i post, some posts being far too dark.
as of yet i still have not 100% figured that out, as sometimes it seems to not happen.

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first time i tried animating an object, using math in the z axis

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Simple as Baz

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retopo test

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At this period i was feeling a lot more capable with this stuff.
problem is creative block, as there were many things i wanted to try but had no inspiration.
Then some Anon posted a link to https://www.youtube.com/@ianmcglasham and i was captivated again.

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I was very grateful for the link to Ian's vids. it helped me upgrade a lot and gave me that fire to learn.

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i started to get a grasp of animation here

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posting Ian stuff

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it was about now that i started to think i could get on with creating models to animate.

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I dabbled with using photos to create 3d buildings by importing as a plane and then extruding etc, and watched tuts on animation.

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Next I gave myself the goal of creating a character to rig and animate.

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sculpted a human form, retopo to lower res then used cloth simulations to create the costume.

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spent many times rigging and re rigging so to get the ability down.

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Moved into a couple of positions then duped keyframes and staggered them for this clunky first try.

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getting to know cloth sims and forcefields was next

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I started to see the benefit in using pre made assets for quick scenes. in the flag webm i made the ground, brass, log, branches, rope and and flag. i also became fixated on recreating stained glass and learning how to cast caustics.

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i really enjoyed creating this glass pane

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was still trying to understand how to use light well.
this scene i made the room and the window then used free assets to fill the space.
the goal was to see what the coloured light did.

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I also made the picture on the wall in the old room. was going to add more life but moved onto new stuff. wanted to know how to do effects and camera movement. started on a halloween scene as a way to learn how to do "dark" lighting

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was still following animation tuts

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this was the first rig i tested animating

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more tut workalongs

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so i am on my last beer and my last image to post.
had a great time using this software and look forwards to improving over the next year. just need to be inspired.

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this spoop scene was mainly to test darkness, flame and fog animation.
i created the pumpkins and the fence and used instancing for the grass and trees dloaded from blender kit.

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christ that gif came out shite, one more try then i am done for the time being.

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so i have not finished this scene as i had too many ideas, testing fog flow and lighting. learning how to light darkness is a great challenge.
this webm has slight different speed in fog and flame
and just want to say cheers to the anons who had posted approval in the old thread. and to the guy who had just started i hope you post your work somewhere and keep at it.
Cheers.

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good stuff Anon, looks like you've got a good all-round handle on blender
how'd you suddenly learn to texture >>1000456 out of curiosity? looks pretty well textured for a relative beginner
also curious which courses you took, besides the Grant stuff
I'm working my way through all of these from left to right atm. already learned a fair bit from the very first course, and that's after roughly ~2 years of blender usage (and a handful of breaks)
courses are really effective, especially after so much time of just looking stuff up sporadically and self-teaching. tends to create a lot of gaps in knowledge, I think

>>1000434
Well, I don´t really want to discourage you on your journey, but even as a beginner a lot of this conten looks unfinished and very boring. what I love about blender which I have been using for 2 years is that it can do so many different things, but I think it´s important to focus on actually getting good and individiual areas instead of testing a garbage rig or a shitty scene and actually try to finish something with some purpose. Keep it up this is all hot garbage but you have learned quite a lot already, just keep pushing and do better.

>>1000791
Texturing it was a mix of blenderkit downloads and colouring faces individually. There are loads of good autists flogging their courses along with a free tut like this automaton here. https://m.youtube.com/@RyanKingArt.
If i wondered how to do something i just searched it up.