To me, it’s a silly complaint. This is nothing like an infomercial or marketing scam in any way to me, because unlike those, this product actually has some heft to it. You’re getting high quality tutorials from a known source, along with a ton of other stuff depending on the package you choose. I think it’s just the fact that we’re all desensitized to this type of advertising that we all just assume a second-rate product, but that’s more the fault of those who have exploited the method in the past, not of Andrew. If people are too fickle to look past the marketing strategy to see the product at hand for what it is, then that sounds like a personal problem. You have to look at the marketing ONE TIME when you buy the product, it’s silly to harp on it like it’s being thrust down your throat every time you want to use the tutorials.
I just can’t stand the guy’s smiley face and his slow delivery. I don’t think I’ve been able to sit all the way through a single one of his videos.
That said, looking at this venture, I’m mightily impressed. If you’re in the market for this kind of thing, you’re getting a lot for under 200. And the marketing, well, it’s fine, I don’t think it’s overdone. It’s a sales pitch, what do you expect?
Good luck to Andrew, he deserves to succeed with this. But I do hope there isn’t a hacker out there who manages to figure out how to smack him in the gob through the computer screen. (Sorry, couldn’t resist!) 
You can download all of the videos, and I can’t imagine there are any DRM protocols in place. Would it be easy to pirate? Yes. But come on people, this isn’t some faceless corporation, this is a single guy, and this is his livelihood. I really hope no one is low enough to repackage and distribute this like that.
I can’t decide on this one…it is a lot of money for someone as I. Essentially nothing more than a hobbyist who occasionally gets asked to do some archvis. I avn’t actually seen the (so-called) “InfoMercial” as my internet is currently going at 56KBS. But from what I have seen of the actual products of the tutorials (Saw a few pictures on the site) everything seems really nice. But $200… oh BTW it will be more for anyone who doesn’t live in Aus, because of currency conversion. (Aussie dollar is higher than the American right now, so probably a better time than a year ago for release…)
BUT!
My opinion on the way that he is selling this is that this is NOT(!!!) Just a set of 9 videos, it is suppossed to be a course, a 9 weeks course with in depth explanations, along with those massive (MASSIVE) texture packs, the already created models, the reference photos, the effects stuff, the finished .blend files. Everything is there, not just the videos.
Again, must stress, I am not buying the membership, because I am poor, and food is important 
Two quick things -
- Although not stated, it is priced in USD not AUD, only because he told me directly.
- As far the marketing being a cultural thing, I can’t see that style of marketing working on many Aussies but I guess it works somewhere.
Not to picky or anything, but when I went looking for textures to see if I could make rocks of my own, I found textures on CG textures that were identical to the ones used on his free model pack he gave away. Probably some are new, but you could find the same quality of textures as the one he gives you on the nature academy with free textures.
Also, does anyone know why Andrew uses the number seven so much is the estimated value prices?
When you guess, estimate or make up numbers certain digits have a higher than normal frequency of appearance. Benford’ law tells you the expected frequency that you should see and when a digit appears way more than normal the things are been fudged. its used in automated fraud detection.
forgot to add isn’t it illegal to distribute unmodified textures from cgtextures
LOL!! Yes I can see where Andrew gets his inspiration!
I’m sure Andrew makes a lot of sales from his tutorials, but I bet those sales are due to his reputation for high-quality tutorials and NOT due in any way to his marketing methods. Unfortunately, he may be under the misconception that his marketing methods are actually working. Take out the silly cheesy hype, and I bet he would get just as many sales.
Just a thought,scroll down to just above midway on this page and you’ll find what andrew says about the marketing technique…$39,000 in five days. Not sure if that’s because of the marketing or not, but whatever it is, it’s respectable.
WOW! I checked that out, $39,000 in 5 days. That is some great stuff he has going there. That is higher than quite a few people’s yearly wages in Australia! Can’t say he is doin’ too shabby on a weekly bonus like that one
Kindof inspires a little bit of hope in me for the future. Do something I love and get loaded with cash at the same time doesn’t seem like a bad deal to me… Of course, making shit-loads can make almost ANY job enjoyable
Not sure what to think… Hell yeah, good on him! But in another way, there’s something I find “unethical” about it. I hate corporate greed. Money ain’t everything. (Ok, so flame me LOL)…
Whenever you see people boasting about earnings/installed user base always divide by 2. A real earnings of ~20,000$ means that Andrew got less than 100 subscriptions (some of them must have been the 300$ version)… and, something priceless (as the advertisment goes): a tainted reputation.
P.S. Yes, the 7 appears too frequently, but I am not suprised. Whenever you see the “it is worth x$ but I will give it to you for y$” the x amount is just made on the spot, not the result of any rational analysis.
P.P.S.: Andrew is acting (just) within cgtextures license.
I wouldn’t believe a damn thing that guy says on his skeezy site (not Andrew - the “business strategist”). It’s in his best interest to make it seem like people make money - no one will pay him if they aren’t beaten over the head with “success” stories. I’m sure what the guy says is at least partly true - sure, use databases. No shit. What a mindblowing concept. No business has ever used that. Oh, wait, what about the whole data mining industry…
If Andrew is repackaging CGTextures work, shame on him. Low end man. I don’t know if it’s true at all.
Look, reading through this thread, I’ve noticed that not a single person (correct me if I’m wrong) has purchased “The Nature Academy”, and 1 person has purchased “The Wow Factor”. Where are all these purchasers? Don’t get me wrong, I think he does nice tutorials - but so does Blender Cookie. So do a lot of people. But anyone who boasts about how much money they make is skeezy. No offense Andrew, and I know you were likely offered a deal to write that testimonial, but come on. Sleazy, low rent sales tactics like that business consult offers make most people want to throw up in their mouths.
I’ll add this to the Seven thing. I’ve heard people like to hear 7 in prices. Look at a lot of stores - things are often $49.97. Not sure why this is. But what I am sure of is that it’s a sales tactic.
An excerpt from an article found by Googling “pricing strategy seven”
Ted has convinced countless number of marketers to, when pricing their products and services end their prices with a ‘7.’ For example, instead of pricing your product at $19.95, price it at $19.97. Or better yet, he advises dropping the change altogether and pricing your product at $17.00 or $27.00 or $97.00. His research supposedly proves that the number seven dramatically increases sales.
Even more remarkable is how many marketers accepted this fallacy as gospel, without doing any real testing of their own.
I have no idea what scientific formula Ted used to arrive at his conclusions, but with all due respect to Ted Nicholas, his theory’s a bunch of bull
I bought the Wow Factor, I definitely WON’T buy the Nature series. Andrew can market and do business however he wants, but I won’t ever buy anything from him again.
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The email spam from him is unreal, I’ve unsubscribed from everything of his and hopefully I will stay off the lists. I was starting to think he was going to start offering me Viagra or a magic weight loss pill.
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I remember finally getting the Wow Factor and being very un-impressed with the final product considering all the hype. Especially his promised updates, fairly lacking. It was like he lost interest in the Wow Factor after he made all the loot in the first week.
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Others may disagree, but I find him very pompous and self-righteous in the way he carries himself and throws in little comments about how great he is. Self-confidence is great, but his is too much for me and just really off-putting.
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BlenderCookie Rules, varied content and a great vocal/screencast delivery. I’ve never heard a touch of self-righteousness from Johnathan Williams.
Good for Andrew for making himself a business using Blender. But his marketing tactics are polarizing IMO and make him seem like a used car salesman, I’ll spend my hard earned money on people that put a bit more professional foot forward in their interaction with their target market.
For the same price as Andrews “course” I can buy a blendercookie citizen subscription for about 2 years and 3 months. That’s one helluva better deal if you ask me.
There is DRM and you have to agree to not posting his content for others or you can’t buy it.
I bought it and it’s great. It doesn’t seem like there is anybody here who knows what you get with the course. Just a bunch of bitching.
There is a little red box in the upper right corner, if you don’t like it turn it off.
Everybody knows you never go full cheese.
Given that he is an Aussie, I’m suprised he went in this direction too. This is the sort of thing we’d spend months making fun of. The big noting/over confident approach is the fastest way to get people to give you grief around here.
Sidenote: it reminds of the 3dMagix/Illusion Mage pages (sites selling blender under a different name) that used similar cheesy approaches.
I bought the WOW Factor, very useful, but I must say, if you watched all BlenderGuru’s free tutorials, you learn the same stuff when he does his compositing, plus more (fog and falloff) as you do in the WOW Factor.
I probably won’t get the Nature Academy, I’ll see if I can create the same content in the nine weeks without the course. Rocks and Mountains and Ivy is easy, trees and shrubs need arbaro (shouldn’t be too difficult) Grass he has a free tutorial out there, the only thing that he has changed is the lighting and compositing, the lake would simply be reflective plane with the silhouette of reeds, oceans uses ocean sim, flowers aren’t too difficult, and for textures I have cg textures. Forests, well forests should be a challenge I’ll enjoy.
By the way, didn’t Andrew give away the mountain tutorial for free? One whole “module” for free. Therefore, most people would have done the mountain scene, meaning that if they buy the course, they’ll be paying for only eight weeks.
A word of warning about Arbaro: it is the implementation of an academic paper by Weber and Penn, the link to which is on Arbaro Sourceforge page. Do not expect to be able to use the program without having read, understood (and printed for reference) the paper as program itself is nearly without documentation; luckily Arbaro carefully follows the paper for algorithms and nomenclature.
Do not expect to open it and create a complex tree in minutes: plant creation is a complex job with whatever tool you use because plants ARE complex.
I advise everybody interested in this subject to have a look at http://algorithmicbotany.org/papers/#abop: it contains lots of references to the works of the founder of the field, Aristid Lindenmayer and of his pupils.
A great for everything related to terrain modeling/rendering is http://vterrain.org/ which has an extensive section related to plants.
Last, you can get 130 free XFrog plants here http://xfrog.com/2011/01/130-free-xfrogplants-now-available/. If you own XFrog, you can use the .xfr files to create new variations, if not, you have three instances for each species to play with.
Do not discount Vue related resources: often, together with Vue proprietary VOBs files are bundled also the corresponding OBJs files. VEGs files are for Vue Solid Growth plants: unless you have Vue to generate them and export them as OBJs they have no interest for Blender people. Last, Terragen resources are nearly useless because in most cases contain only TGO files which are proprietary to Terragen 2 (though in some cases you can also buy the corresponding OBJs).
Landscape rendering is my passion: if you have any further question please pester me (the course is always open and, even though its value is 777.77$ I give it away 0$ :evilgrin:).
And, don’t forget the Ant Landscape add on, which is spectacular:
Tree trunks are easy. You can use the pipe joints add on to form the basic intersections of the trunk and branches. The leaves are a pain in the…
The preceding information was a 7 cent value, but you get it for FREE!!! BUY NOW!!!