Hello! I am new here… just joined recently and I am looking for something. I am looking for a tool or something that I can use to create realistic 3D (or 2D) characters, mainly dragons and other mythical creatures for artistic beginners like me? Has to be free and suitable for windows 10 too. This is all for personal artistic reasons as I suck at drawing (especially 3D objects) and I am a beginner at this, I would love to get into this sort of thing though
I shall introduce myself now. My name is Taylor, I have Autism and Dyspraxia (not to be confused with Dyslexia) and I can be rather sensitive but I am willing to be friends with anyone, I don’t care where you are from or what you look like, everyone can be friends
Hello Taylor, Blender is probably the best bet for free modelling software. There is also Mudbox/ZBrush for sculpting(which would make a high quality dragon much easier), but those are paid products. However, almost every software suite offers student licenses for those in school.
I am not in school, the reason behind it is that I am writing my own novel and I don’t want to end up paying some pro to do the artwork if it ever becomes big, the cover for it has been sorted but character creating would be nice you can see this is more personal rather than gaming or media or whatever.
My novel has a lot of mythical creatures in it (it is fantasy after all) so this would be great. Paid products as in I have to pay for them?
I’d recommend learning blender as it’s free and has all the tutorials. If you want to animate as well, it’s better to just focus on one application, and blender enables this well.
I would just mention that…if it does become big(which is a good problem to have), you would likely be able to find the money to pay someone to do it for you, so you could concentrate on the writing.
Also, it isn’t for everybody, but you could find a few artists, check out prices, and set up a kickstarter or similar thing. Asking for money generally works best when you already have something to show though so it appears that you are capable of finishing.
But I would challenge needing it for a book cover. You might well be better off using old fashioned paint media.
Its also worth noting that most publishers take responsibility for the cover themselves. So if you get an agent and a publisher you likely won’t get much say on whats on the cover. A books cover is a major marketing tool. Its what people use to judge the book.
I checked out that Blender and there is A BIG problem, I live in the UK, the laws here are funny with some sites and it says I need to click on a relative mirror (or something like that) and there is no UK thing ?
I will check again and I will check out the others too. Yeah I could probably afford it if it does become big but I am wanting to do my own artwork (in case) and also a lot of artists are greedy pigs and want all the credit…
And yes, you don’t judge something from the outside, you don’t judge a book by its cover and I have the cover sorted already… I haven’t finished my novel yet, it is still in the works
It’s basically just asking you to pick the closest server for the best download speeds. If you’re in the UK you would want to pick “DE” (aka Germany) or one of the two “NL” (Netherlands).
If you’re worried about legalities the Blender Foundation is a Dutch public-benefit corporation.
Blender is completely legal in UK
Blender takes while to learn but if youre willing to put in the time it will be fine
Yeah theres a ton of tutorials, Andrew price makes some more intermediate level ones, never watched a beginner level one because that isnt how i learn
Oh man this is more complicated that I thought… I saw some of the tutorials, I did what they said to do and NOTHING happened!! Drawing? Nope… nothing is showing up, it is either me or this thing hates me. And there is so many things to it… so many options, maybe this wasn’t meant for me
And one of the tutorials said about zooming, I can’t do that cuz it requires a wheel (for computers, this is my laptop, it doesn’t have that!!!) and everything else is confusing, I will just keep working on my normal drawing skills which will never improve…
I have been trying to improve my own art skills for years and nothing! I can’t do it, very little improvements in the space of 2-3 years! I tried my best, I tried so hard and nothing! Oh well… back to the old drawing board
Thanks for your help anyway, I am not usually one to give up so easily but with all those problems and things… I don’t think I’m going to go anywhere with it. I will just stick with good old hand drawing and figure out how to improve when you have been trying for ages and nothing has improved. It will probably take me a lot longer to improve my art skills even a little than to actually write my novel
