[Bf-education] The GuerrillaCG Project

[Glen Moyes]

Hello everybody. I've been away from the Blender education and video 
tutorial scene for a while, but I have been busy during that time and we 
are ready to share something cool.

Some time ago I was contacted by Andrew Silke (he's worked on Happy 
Feet, Scooby Doo, and Avatar) to help him out with a project he's 
working on called GuerrillaCG. The purpose of the site is to teach the 
fundamentals of 3D computer graphics and your 3D software package of 
choice. What's special about GuerrillaCG are the concept videos. These 
videos are simple, well produced, and fun animations that teach the 
fundamentals of CG: those topics that don't become obsolete like 3D 
software does. Below each concept video are links to other videos that 
teach how to do everything you just saw in your 3D software of choice: 
Maya, XSI, etc., and of course Blender.

When I taught my Blender workshops the thing that took us over half the 
time was teaching the concepts, not the software. There are also not 
very many good online resources that cover the fundamentals well enough, 
so I had to do it all myself in the classroom. There are a lot of video 
tutorials out there of people trying to explain a concept while fumbling 
around a 3d application, and I used to do the same in class. After a few 
semesters the best I could do to save time in class was to create 
PowerPoint presentations, but to really teach concepts as quickly as 
possible animations where necessary, which I rarely did because it just 
a lot of time to produce. GuerrillaCG is fixing that. Having well 
produced animations that are non-software specific teaching you the 
concepts of 3D modeling and animation with separate video tutorials to 
teach you how to that in the 3D software you own is a very efficient way 
of teaching. The students learn faster and we can produce video 
tutorials quicker. The same concept videos can be used for people 
learning Maya, Blender, XSI, whatever, and then the software-specific 
videos can focus on only the tools.

The site also has sections for other video tutorials, off site 
tutorials, resources, etc.

We are in the alpha stage and just barely moved the site over to a new 
design, so we are not quite ready for an official release. We are still 
figuring out how we'll accommodate all the potential traffic and we are 
working on new videos as well, so don't put this on Blender Nation yet.

http://www.guerrillacg.org/

The reason why I'm posting this is because I think there's a very good 
opportunity for Blender here. Check out the site and tell me that it's 
not going to be a hit. :) This is going to be a wonderful opportunity 
for people to learn and I'm going to do what I can to make sure that 
Blender has a strong presence there. Considering that our goal is to 
bring a rising generation of artists--and Hollywood--to Blender, I think 
this is a great way to do that: a site that teaches not only the 
software but also the theory behind it, and has the same spirit of free 
software and free education that we do.

The two things that GuerrillaCG is doing right now are creating concept 
videos and hosting video tutorials. I'm going to redo my Blender videos 
and then continue making new ones using the GuerrillaCG format so I'm 
teaching what's contained in the concept videos because I really like 
that method of teaching. I'm also working on a video for Topology, so 
hopefully that'll be done soon. We have a style guide so anyone can 
create videos that look exactly like the other ones, an example being 
Greg Petchkovski's video on Subdivision Topology Artifacts, which is 
currently the only video not done by Andrew but it's still amazing. So 
So if any of your are interested you can email me or contact 
contribute at guerrillacg.org.

Please let me know what you think of the site and the concept videos. 
Andrew has done some fantastic work. I think this is a great opportunity 
for people to learn how to create 3D art using Blender because we can 
cover the software in conjunction with some great concept videos.

- Glen Moyes