A Brief History of Me and Blender

      In 1979, a small company named Pixar decided to try and make movies with the latest computer technology.  The company began to create their own software to create images, and grew in popularity.  One of their earliest works, (but not the first, as many people think) was the trademark short of Luxo Jr, a short about two lamps and a ball.  The sound of the bouncing lamp is a universal sound that every child will know:  Bonk, bonk bonk, bonk bonk bonk squeak squeak boooinnng boooiiing booooooiiiiing plop.  Since Pixar, computer generated images have been growing and growing in popularity, until the latest movie, Frozen, earned more then 300 million dollars.  

     As a kid, I loved watching the movies as much as the next child.  Obviously, I never even considered that it was possible to make stuff like that, much less be a part of things like it. I assumed it was magic, some kind of sorcery that allowed the Pixar artist to pull the images out of their pants.  Presto!  (another short by Pixar) Then, when I was about 10, I found this kinda neat program called Blender.  

      I tried it out, and about two days later gave up.  My 10 year old brain could not even begin to figure out the difficult algorithms and processes.  I also couldn't understand the tutorials, which were made by a guy with an accent so heavy I couldn't understand what he was saying.  I moved on to other more appropriate topics, such as airplanes.

    Then, as a 15 year old, I saw some neat stuff being done with CG.  So, I went to find the free stuff, and lo and behold Blender smiled at me again.  So, I sat down and began learning.  Luckily, I had begun just barely after the introduction of the new Cycles rendering engine, which is a nifty new rendering engine that makes life much, much easier for Blender artists.  I found that I actually understood tutorials, could make stuff, and began to have fun.  Here I am, about 7 months later, beginning a blog so I can begin to get better and make cooler stuff.  

    The picture above is one of my earliest attempts.  This is an extremely simple render made off of a tutorial by Tutor4u (who is a very, very good way to go for new blender artists)  As you can see, its not very realistic and a fairly boring image.  But still, I was very happy with where I was at.  Then I made my first original render, 100% my own thinking.  

   Obviously, its still not extremely exciting.  Just a wiggly little shape on a reflective plane.  But I was so proud of how good it was and how realistic (not) the reflection looked.  Then I discovered Blender Guru.

   Blender Guru is an incredible site run by a guy named Andrew Price.  The tutorials are wonderful, and I learned very quickly.  I started to make more interesting renders.  Credit for everything in the image except for the gun on the table goes to Andrew Price

   At this point, I was completely obsessed with Blender.  I adored everything in it, and everything it could do.  I began to create my own images.  Noticeably, they are lacking in complexity and realism: 

    I made my first character render: 

   And I just keep modeling and rendering.  So, what is the point of this blog?  Its a place for me to scratch my ideas, bemoan the minimum of time I have to work on Blender, and post my work.  Its a place for me to advertise my ability, and hopefully get hired.  Most of all, its just plain fun to get views. So, hopefully I can get better and actually start making interesting stuff!  Thanks for reading.