you know … most of us here are not programmers … or at least do not wish to contribute to Blender in that way … we do contribute though … by using it … making it more popular … and prooving stuff can be done with it … however … in doing this I feel we’re making much more use of Blender than we’re giving back … thus I feel very grateful to the people that made Blender … and I’d like to somehow thank them … but at the same time … I’d like to promote & forward it … to know I had something to do with it’s growth and it’s increasing features.
My point is: even without programming we, as artists, can contribute to a bigger & better Blender … by doing the stuff we love. Yes, we’re already doing that … however our effort is spread out into hundreds of little directions … if we’d focus this effort together I think we could make a noticeable difference. I’d propose that a sticky topic, or even better, a discussion category is formed for the exact reason of forwarding Blender through our work. I mean, ok, we all have our own projects … but with not too much effort we could turn parts of those into renderings & animations that would act as press for Blender … it’s as if the Blender team suddenly hired a huge bunch of artists to handle PR & Marketing for Blender … we could be that team in a way. If every one of us benefiting from the existance of Blender makes just one rendering/animation that’s in the style of a commercial/advertisement/blender promotion … then suddenly Blender will have a huge marketing division … (just think about what happens if we each make one … say every 3 months) … and this HAS GOT TO HELP Blender somehow. And all this means is that we once in a while we fork one of our projects into a Blender add … and some of these will turn out quite great … others will have cool ideas … and so on … hopefully we might be able to flood the web with Blender advertising renderings
what do you think? Wouldn’t we through our artwork be able to forward Blender quite a bit by just a bit of common goal & design ?
And even if we wouldn't be doing it for the worm fuzzy fealing of thanking all the people who work hard to give us this Great tool ... let's say we did it for ONLY our own interests ... even then it would be worth it:
more advertisements mean more popularity, more popularity means more users, more users & popularity means both the bigger chance of a couple of rogue programmers deciding to join the blender team && a lot of encouragements & motivation for the existing blender developers ... and what this all sums up in for us is: more features, sooner, better, faster.
what do you think?
hi hi … I was just going to say I read ???‘s article … and it was yours … anyway … back to what I was saying … I read some of the
"Blender’s Future & Are The Wind’s A Changin’?"
and at some point in the lecture there was a point about why don’t Studios use it … at which point I was going to comment that maybe out of the users of these forums … if someone were to take leadership & the others respect this person and follow directions … a spontaneous semi-company/studio could be formed … and suddenly … there is a FIRST studio to use it … and thus it’s not impossible or ground breaking anymore … all this project would need would be a common goal (like say: make a 30 Min long high quality animation/ cartoon episode / feature presentation … hmmm … actually this one sounds really good … this was just going to stay inside ( ) … but no … this is too good … actually this (beside a forum like ‘finished projects’ for the special purpace of promoting blender "advertisements for blender’) … this sounds like a quite appealing option imo: a temporary (or permanent??) forming of a ‘Studio’ out of people on these forums with the goal of making a really impressive product/features showcase 30 minute video … in which time there’d be feature presentations … coupled with a lot of combined animations & demonstration of all the different things that can be done with Blender. I’ve seen stuff like this for XSi … sure … there it was really impressive because they had all these big company names in the bottom right under the effects/animations … but still … even with just common Doe Joe in the bottom right as the originator of the gfx … I think some realy impressive stuff could be made.
greets
That was difficult to read because it was all clumped into gigantic paragraphs, and the punctuation was weird, but it seems like all you’re saying is that we should put in the credits of shorts that we made them with Blender. And I think we all do that anyway.
Nuance9, I’m curious why you think it should only be animations with voices. There are tons of really awesome Blender shorts without voices.
My idea was kind of like an out take thing at the end, where the character spoke the little promo saying thingy. Like you said, most everybody already puts the text based credit at the end anyhow.
I think the point is Anarky was trying to come up with an idea for general users to promote Blender in new ways.
Anarky - can you use the RETURN key on your keyboard and try to explain your idea a little more clearly?
sorry 'bout the punctuation … I was very excited … and that’s what hapens when I have a lot on my mind … that’s the natural flow of idea flow … doesn’t get along well with linguistics for me
----- The ultra short version of what I was saying: let’s have a forum channel in which we would try to every once in a while do something like an advertisement for blender. Yes, we are all proud of using Blender and we say it … however, this would be more effective IMO because then all renderings we sent there would be with the explicit goal of clearly promoting Blender … like the Marketing division Blender never had. Blender is free and thus can’t afford to invest money in adds & promos … we, it’s comunity could do that with almost no effort if we just wanted to.
-------- Other graphics software has money from the mother company and they make adds & promos & come up with ideas to promote their software. However their users don’t feel it’s their duty to actually do anything like that anymore (except proudly say they’re using 3ds/maya/xsi/??? ) … however Blender could have cool marketing material for anybody interested to use via our work and it could be compensated.
------- Besides thanking the people who worked on Blender and making their continuous work more rewarding we’d be investing in Blender in the future: more cool stuff meant especially to draw new users would draw new users … the community would grow … thus more programmers too … and better motivated one … thus a better Blender.
------- I’m saying we should make this material with the explicit permissions that once we made it and we put it in that discussion topic it is free to fly out for any purpace to promote Blender, without the person wishing to use it having to ask us, the artists for explicit permission.
------ By making it so clear & so easy to use we will thus provide a material that can be used by ANYBODY at any time, VERY FAST, for anything ranging from: gallery on blender.org, for other Blender user sites, if somebody wanted to packaged & sell boxes of Blender, for possible future companies who wish to start out on Blender to have a basis of support & advertisement … I just thought that if we at elysiun would do this … well … this could very well spread out to other sites & forums … and suddenly become a spread out habit of Blender users explicitly promoting Blender.
------ greets. Hope I was more clear now … as for the text length … sorry 'bout it … but what can I do if I had a lot to say on the subject & care about it?
-------- PS: I don’t know how to type spacing (tabs) at the start of a paragraph in here … that’s with the lines & the bad alignement … they looked ok in my writing … but the spaces at the start of pharagraphs dissapeared when submiting.
Hint: instead of trying to use tabs, just hit Enter a second time… that way your paragraphs are at least made their own distinctive blocks. It’s much easier on the eyes that way…
I think what you are talking about is a great idea.
I am not very active in the forums, and have only posted a few times, but a few nights ago I did a presentation about Blender to the Emerald Coast Developer’s User group.
It was a small group, but the response was universally positive. Several people downloaded the software that night, and I have been helping a few people through it.
I think that these types of presentations are an excellent way to get people involved in Blender. They have the advantage of being able to show off the software’s capabilities and at the same time make that first experience with the user interface a little less shocking.
My nine year old son ran the demo for me. This was great because everyone was impressed that a young kid knew the interface so well.
Anyway I put together my own powerpoint presentation for the event. We have talked to a few people about giving the presentation in other forums, such as local artist groups, the community college, local High or Middle schools. (It would have to modified slightly, because mine was geared toward software developers)
It would be great if Blender had a couple of things.
A standard slide presentation that people could use to promote Blender locally. I had to use graphics and art work off the Blender Web sites. I did this without permission (though I fully attributed all work) and I am hesitant to post the presentation on the user group web site until I have obtained permission to do so.
I would be willing to pay for shipping costs if the Blender community wanted to donate a copy or two of the Blender Gamekit or the Blender 2.0 user guide for door prizes. (I purchased both of these myself, so at least I had some copies to show at the presentation.)
Keep thinking that way that you are thinking, but know that there are things you can do to promote Blender locally. It only took me a few hours to put the power point presentation together, and it was a great experience.
I think what you are talking about is a great idea.
I am not very active in the forums, and have only posted a few times, but a few nights ago I did a presentation about Blender to the Emerald Coast Developer’s User group.
It was a small group, but the response was universally positive. Several people downloaded the software that night, and I have been helping a few people through it.
I think that these types of presentations are an excellent way to get people involved in Blender. They have the advantage of being able to show off the software’s capabilities and at the same time make that first experience with the user interface a little less shocking.
My nine year old son ran the demo for me. This was great because everyone was impressed that a young kid knew the interface so well.
Anyway I put together my own powerpoint presentation for the event. We have talked to a few people about giving the presentation in other forums, such as local artist groups, the community college, local High or Middle schools. (It would have to modified slightly, because mine was geared toward software developers)
It would be great if Blender had a couple of things.
A standard slide presentation that people could use to promote Blender locally. I had to use graphics and art work off the Blender Web sites. I did this without permission (though I fully attributed all work) and I am hesitant to post the presentation on the user group web site until I have obtained permission to do so.
I would be willing to pay for shipping costs if the Blender community wanted to donate a copy or two of the Blender Gamekit or the Blender 2.0 user guide for door prizes. (I purchased both of these myself, so at least I had some copies to show at the presentation.)
Keep thinking that way that you are thinking, but know that there are things you can do to promote Blender locally. It only took me a few hours to put the power point presentation together, and it was a great experience.
– exciting that you presented to developers … that’s fresh hope for blender … IMO all we’d need to get this show on the road right now would be a channel/forum where
a) people would know to post & make stuff to promote blender
b) everybody who posted agree that the stuff in there is usable for blender promotion without any other further aproovements
in this channel then hopefully a group would form to make a avi presenting theoretical blender features & them applied in “way cool & awesome” pieces of projects.
– you posted twice
greets,
PS1: this would really be great if Blender would be presented like that … then gradually it could gain even more popularity and might be able to infiltrate into the school system like Linux is doing now on general
PS2: an interesting idea came out on the blender yahoo mailing list … and we discussed about how people tend to under-appreciate something they get for free, and how if people would actually sell blender in many packages each on specific stuff (tutorials, blender engine … ) … this might actually promote Blender as people appreciate more something they pay for. So I wish there was a huge nubmer of Blender resellers
I’m doing exactly this… but just in switzerland. I would join a promotioin-team, no question. I’m also thinking of paying for some posters in cities :). That’s just how I spend my sparetime.
I really think we could support blender + the idea of free sources. The amount of plugins is awesome. I really think ppl should be more serious talking abut a opensource program. I heard ppl saying like: “It’s an opensource programm? hehe… you’re joking”
i’d join such a team too … and I’d especially show off it’s results to anybody
Don’t know if I’d join very seriously or involved … but I’d probably post every once in a while something like a worked over rendering with a “smart” quote … or a give some of my work for that purpace to put in the large library of Blender promotion … i’d just hope it’d be all packed together somewhere … and not spread out with a huge workload to find for the prospecting blender advertisement looker … if I’d have some financiar resources and I knew of ways of getting them together I’d sugest us all putting in a bit and buying a 40 GB hdd that’d be just for blender promotion renderings & galleries … just advertisements for Blender … I’m sure there’d be somebody among us with a virtually unlimited web connection to put that hdd on the web … but this of course is just dreaming away … for now simply if we foudn a place with the explicit purpace of us commiting stuff to pay homage & forward Blender it would be a start.
… all this project would need would be a common goal (like say: make a 30 Min long high quality animation/ cartoon episode / feature presentation … hmmm … actually this one sounds really good … this was just going to stay inside ( ) … but no … this is too good … actually this (beside a forum like ‘finished projects’ for the special purpace of promoting blender "advertisements for blender’) … this sounds like a quite appealing option imo: a temporary (or permanent??) forming of a ‘Studio’ out of people on these forums with the goal of making a really impressive product/features showcase 30 minute video … in which time there’d be feature presentations … coupled with a lot of combined animations & demonstration of all the different things that can be done with Blender. I’ve seen stuff like this for XSi … sure … there it was really impressive because they had all these big company names in the bottom right under the effects/animations … but still … even with just common Doe Joe in the bottom right as the originator of the gfx … I think some realy impressive stuff could be made.