Hi, new guy with a question!
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Hi everyone, just wanting to say hello and introduce myself. I’m Shaun, from north east of England. Basically decided to follow a feeling I’ve had for a long time and really focus on learning to draw/try and get my ideas out onto the page. Long story short is that I’ve been looking for an ‘out’ for the ideas I have in my head. Over the years I have tried different ways such as focusing on 3d modelling and 3d animation but none of them gave me what I needed.
Another reason that I’m trying to take this serious is from a fathers point of view. I have 3 sons, a 9 year old, a 3 year old and a 1 month old. I have always believed that anyone within reason can learn any skill. To me there is no natural born talent. I truly believe that anyone can learn anything that they want to learn. I want to teach my children this, however I have realised that I am hypocricital if I do not follow up in the things I want to learn. So here I am now, willing to learn what it takes to be able to say ‘yes, I have learnt how to do what I wanted to learn’.
So having researched a very, very long list of different websites/classes that I could take to achieve my goals, I ended up here having listening and being inspired by the 3 point perspective podcast.
My question is can I find everything I need from the svslearn courses, or is there other courses that I would need to supplement the courses provided by svslearn?
I apologise for the long post and understand if perhaps it is not clear exact what I am asking for! -
@hoppershaun if you are looking for help on drawing,composition,and perspective I think you will find great instruction. If you are looking for help in brainstorming and honing ideas you will find it too. I have looked at S V S as a great education and a wonderful resource to get me going and give me some foundation. I don’t think I will feel the need to be enrolled forever, but it is information I have not been able to find anywhere else. I am coming to art again after a long period of time too. I have found encouragement and community and great instruction. So I say give it a try. Good luck finding your path. And welcome.
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You can find everything you need here to keep you busy learning for a long while. There is a nice variety of instructors with different styles to learn from on SVS. I'd suggest starting with Jake Parker's How to Draw Everything. Take your time and do the homework.
Welcome to the forums and good luck!
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@hoppershaun If you get through and process all of the videos on svslearn you will, at the VERY least, be in a position to know what to look for in supplemental instruction.
This is a great place to start. I don't think you'll need to go looking for extra material for a whiiiiiile especially if you do all the homework and such
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You will find a very solid foundation if you go through the courses on SVS and take them seriously, put in the time and do the homework. And it sounds like you have the right mindset!. But, art is a lifelong learning process and there is no complete education you will find anywhere. There will always be more things to learn elsewhere. Maybe I’m biased because this is where I began, but to me there is no better place to start than right here. And use the forums. I waited too long to come here.
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I haven't signed up for the SVS courses yet, as I'm still dredging through the courses on Schoolism. But I've been in your position, @hoppershaun, and kudos for finding this site. It's what I was looking for before I knew I was actually looking for it... The 3-Point Perspective Podcast led me here as well.
Many of the online self-guided education course offerings by various companies (like Udemy, Skillshare, or LinkedinLearning) are very broad and general and aren't really curated beyond user ratings--there's some good but lots of bad. Other sites are centered around a particular facet of illustration or art (Schoolism, Gnomon, Ctrl+Paint, and CGMA are about game and concept art; SVSLearn clearly leans toward illustration and children's lit; New Master's Academy, Vilppu Academy, PencilKings, & Watt's Atelier obviously bend toward studio fine art) but there is course content one can lift out of the particular focus of the courses available on each and apply to anything you want.
That being said, it took me a while to actually figure out what it was that I sought. And even longer to assess my own success or failure in any of the particular fields the schools served. I went through exactly what you mentioned ("3D modeling!! I gotta learn ZBrush!! I gotta!! Why? Because everyone is learning it!! I dunno what I'll do with it but I guess I gotta learn it!!" Note--I never learned it.) I made the wrong choice with Schoolism, as I've learned concept/game art just isn't a field for my inclinations, but most of the basics that are taught in some of their classes are still relevant regardless.
But with SVSLearn you have a BUNCH of courses from a wider variety of teachers. For example, Proko--who was taught through a Fine Art lens--has figure construction classes available here. And other teachers with their own courses available on Gumroad (Marco Bucci, for example) also make some of their courses available here. So for the price of a monthly/yearly subscription you actually have a much wider variety of curated and relevant illustration courses available from instructors from a wider swath of the industry than you might have from other services, but not so wide that half the courses are irrelevant. It seems ALL the courses are relevant here, just by looking at their titles. The price can't be beat. Individually, the cost of those courses from each individual creator add up to FAR more than you pay here.
The one thing that Schoolism has that SVSLearn doesn't have (at least, I THINK it doesn't, as I haven't signed up yet) is recorded video response from the instructor to the uploaded homework of the previous students who have taken the course. The classes at Schoolism are taught "live" at specific times of the year for a much higher price than the norm, and the weekly feedback generated from each assignment is saved and put in a bank for self-guided subscription students taking the course to watch on their own. So you get the course itself plus 25 15-30 minute feedback vids of other students homework for each weekly lesson so you can see how it's critiqued.
Taking a course live is, consequently, somewhat expensive ($800-1500) as the instructors themselves have 15-25 students each week for 8-15 weeks, and you pay for their time. Think about it--20 students with 25 minutes of feedback each each week means almost a full 8-hour day of video recorded response, paint overs, and processing every week. Plus making the video itself. And answering all their email questions and such.
Schoolism also has a Facebook group specifically for uploading homework from the courses for the self-guided students. But this forum for SVSLearn seems far far more effectively applicable in a much broader sense for students and non-students alike for a wider variety of illustration disciplines. Schoolism seems very much "all-concept-art-all-the-time". To me, anyway.
Just an FYI. If I had my druthers, I'd have signed up for SVSLearn over Schoolism. But I didn't know enough about myself back then. And just because their course instructors are successful in that industry doesn't make them good teachers... hehe... I've taught higher education for 20 years. A LOT of the critique vids made my skin crawl and infuriated me... hehe... But I paid for a year and have to make the best of it.
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Welcome Shaun. North East represent! I'm from North Yorkshire near Teesside. I'm also pretty new, signed up last week.
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I chose for SVS because there was a lot of foundation stuff to learn here... i am doing this for a half year now and still have a lot to discover. I even find out that it is very helpfull for me to rewatch some lessons to remind me those fundamentales. SVS was till now very helpfull and will be in the future. Oh... and the community here is also great. I want to be more present here.. so gone work on that...
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Thanks for the replies guys, having read them I feel a lot more confident that the courses on SVS will be the way to go for me right now. I have already completed the How to draw everything course, plus the drawing fundamentals one. I was very impressed by the assignments and worksheets that they come with, it really seems to make me want to actually do them.
@Coreyartus I was torn between here and Schoolism. You have definitely reassured me that I made the correct choice. I may revisit Schoolism in the future though.
@skillydan Another north easterner! Thought I would be the only one!
