Hey, there…
I’d pay for a couple of videos, but only for advanced ones…
Think there’s a lot of tutorials, information and forums for stuff like Interface, simple bones, materials, etc…
If somebody offers videos like Gnomon school or digital tutors… I’d think 'bout it…
Rshadow, you do realize of course, that one of the major sources of income for the Blender Foundation is the selling of the Blender book. So technically you will be competing against the Blender Foundation, and if there is no Blender Foundation there is no Blender.
I have to strenuously disagree. The Blender Foundation benefits from wider use of Blender. Wider training, wider industry application. Nobody should be worried about “competing” with the Blender Foundation in terms of creating training materials. Ton has been very clear that he feels the same way. If you can make a profit training people to use Blender, that is a huge boost to the Blender Foundation, and more power to you. This is exactly the kind of thing that Ton wants to see.
BUT before you do anything you must get Ton´s blessing, out of respect.
This is of course a good idea, but more because working with the Blender Foundation works towards the net benefit of all parties, as it would with any company. If you do Maya training materials, you’re in the best position if you can get them endorsed by Autodesk, etc. Working in conjunction with the Blender Foundation can help to promote the materials and it may be to both parties’ interest to have the Blender Foundation sell or link to the product in their store. However, there is no rule, nor should there be, that Ton needs to okay people to create training material. (Although I can guarantee you without even asking him, that he would be absolutely encouraging of this project and would wish you the best in making it lucrative.)
And if I were Ton you would get my respect if you donate 10% of your net profit to the Blender Foundation.
That way you will ensure Blender´s continual improvement.
Good thing you’re not Ton. Trying to milk people for 10% here and there or else threatening to withhold your respect is not going to encourage wider use and adoption of Blender in the industry, and would not be good for Blender in the long run. People already have enough reasons to be reluctant to embrace Blender. Many people are confused about the rights and responsibilities involved in using open source software, and people not used to it can be suspicious. It’s important to emphasize that Blender is a viable professional tool and can be the basis of commercial efforts with no strings attached. There is no moral obligation to get anybody’s permission or to pay anybody for free software. Imagine if Linus Torvalds tried to persuade all professional users of Linux to give him a cut. He’d do nothing but make himself look like an idiot.
That’s not to say that donations aren’t a great idea. I encourage everybody to donate to the BF and to support it financially in whatever way they can. But it’s a separate issue.
As for the training video, I’m all for it, and I think it would be a great addition to the learning resources available for Blender. However, as a business proposition, I think that the market will not yet support a several hundred dollar training package. I would start lower, creating a worthwhile package for around $50 dollars. One of the things about Blender, as others have mentioned is that there is a lot of material out there freely available and Blender users tend to be highly motivated and autonomous enough to find it. So the main thing you’d be charging for is the ease of having a lot of good material in one place, without a lot of searching and collecting. This would be worthwhile, but the people who are highly enough motivated to pay in the hundreds of dollars but not highly enough motivated to learn on their own from the web are a pretty small group right now.
As Alltaken suggested, however, schools and universities would be great targets for this kind of package. I would see what kinds of links you can establish with art and graphics departments at traditional universities. Trade schools and vocational/technical colleges would be inclined to go for the current industry standard apps, but colleges would I think be inclined to be more receptive to Blender.
The market for these kinds of materials will change as Blender becomes gradually more adopted by professional studios (as it has begun to do, and I think will continue to do). Right now it’s not a primary industry tool, but it’s on the rise. So when I say that I wouldn’t recommend trying to sell a 300 dollar training package, I mean right now.
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Maybe instead of a $250 package with 100 hours of training material, you could break it into a series of 5 packages at $50 a pop, with 20 hours each, advancing in skill levels. If you were to contact Ton about this, I’m sure that the BF would be happy to work with you to promote it. You could offer discounts for purchasing the whole set at once, but also allow an option for people to pick it up piecemeal.
A basic dvd is already made…
http://www.brillsoft.com/html/goblender.html
Only £10.00 !!
(Ok, last time i will post this, exept to ask is it worth me contacting Ton? it is deliberately basic.)
is it worth me contacting Ton? it is deliberately basic.
I can’t see how it would hurt. You might also contact Harkyman (http://blenderartists.org/forum/member.php?u=61) who’s putting together the new Blender Basics book. I can imagine that your video tutorials might make for a nice accompaniment to the book, which is also geared towards beginners.
Would I pay for $2.50 per hour of Blender Video Training… Sure! But would I pay for 100 hours… ermmm hell no. Thats a lot of …ermm training?