Interview: Andrew Price of BlenderGuru.com

Key Takeaways

[Music] hello Gary Simon here of designc course.com today is February 8th with our 39th video of the Year this is nuts I feel like a crack addict pumping these out but anyhow today we have uh Andrew price from blunder guru.com and I'm going to switch things up a little bit by uh doing an interview slash kind of Exchange of ideas now Andrew price he's uh primarily focused on 3D while I'm mostly focused on 2D type of stuff but uh we're both in the creative field and I think this would be a good exchange just to help out our listeners who are aspiring to enter into the creative field so we're going to talk a little bit about our experiences uh the good things we did and maybe the mistakes that we made uh so let's go ahead and do that hello Gary Simon here of designc course.com today I'm speaking with Andrew price of blender guru.com and just a quick uh introduction from myself uh I'm of designc course.com I'm a freelance identity designer which you know it's logo designs stationary uh front end GUI graphic user interface uh for websites apps Etc and I'm also in aad network touch plus.com course instructor for the last year and I also own design.com and that's why I'm focusing on kind of rebuilding relaunching and that's why I'm doing this crazy video tutorial every day of the year uh and so that's why Andrew is here we're just going to talk a little bit about our experiences as you know getting started in a creative field so go ahead and introduce yourself Andrew uh yeah hi everyone uh my name is Andrew price I'm from Australia and uh I first got started um I got into art pretty early on drawing and whatnot and then uh at one point I was heavily into video games and then I wanted to get in uh and start making something in 3D um in particular uh cars I was really interested in like Need for Speed games so I wanted to make a 3D car and so I didn't have any money of course so I went online I tried to find some free software that would you know allow you to do some 3D stuff and then uh at some point I came across uh a picture that someone had made using a program called blender and it was like this fancy red car kind of thing and then I found out that blender was open source completely free you know so um so I got started with it and it was uh at the time you know very small community there was almost no tutorials out there but it was basically through a process of experimentation and uh just trial and error and then uh several years later I finally actually accomplished my dream of making my first sports car in 3D which was cool um and then uh after I finished school I did a series of terrible jobs such as construction work uh I worked at like a grocery store McDonald's I did all of the stereotypical you know no degree kind of jobs um and then at some point I wanted to become a freelance I figur like that's the best way that's what everybody does they they do freelance work so I figured to get known as a freelancer you have to do something that people will like on the internet um so I decided why not make you tutorials because you know people are interested in tutorials and then they'll see you and then they might hire you to do some work so I started doing some tutorials and I was doing that for about a year and a half or so and then I went to uh my very first blender conference which was in Amsterdam and uh I went there and a lot of people knew me from online and they said they really love the tutorials and I realized that there was a growing market for people that were interested in paid educational stuff so I I did one freelance job which was not good it did not go very well at all um but I I realized after that that um I could basically continue doing what I love doing which is making artwork and just having fun with it and then make tutorials on it and so and then get paid for it basically so all my tutorials are basically free but I have three paid products and that's where I make all my income now and um yeah that's my intro nice nice so uh you know I remember watching one of your um videos as I alluded to before we started recording um you know about kind of you can't just focus on creating awesome artwork and then expect to be found or expect to be paid or have a job or become successful at freelancing uh and so I think that's one of the things that I had a I had a problem with personally when I began I you know you could have the best product out there best design out there best website you know whatever it is but if you don't know how to Market yourself correctly uh and you're not proactive in finding those ways then you will obviously have no success and so I think one of the things when it comes to you know people who are aspiring to enter a 3D field uh or any of the creative Fields whether it be you know becoming an identity designer you know handling the visual identity of businesses through logo design or whether it be websites or app design or whatever uh a lot of people they kind of get all focused in on the artwork and building their skill of course as they should uh but if you have you you know the anticipation um of doing freelance work you have to almost 5050 spend your time on your skill of course but also learning how to Market yourself and putting yourself out there and so that's why I I didn't watch you had like three-part video series I'll go ahead and Link that too as well um uh you were doing a live speech on a stage I think do you recall oh yes yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah and so that was at the Blended conference right okay right right and what you were saying I didn't get to watch all of them but I know what you're alluding to is you know you really got to put your your art out there uh in order to really maximize uh you know your potential of of being found so I think you know for people who are starting out that's the biggest issue uh especially if they're trying to do freelance stuff yeah and so uh if you have any thoughts on that uh yeah I do I totally agree um there I mean it's of course it's absolutely important that artwork should be something that you you should be able to spend most of your time on you know and mastering that but there's a lot of people I found where I can see their artwork and I know that they're hirable they have the skills they clearly know what they're doing they're past the point where they should be I mean you know where they are are hirable you know but they're not getting any work and they're struggling you know they're the starving mentality and you know they're just trying to get by and they're this and that maybe doing a few odd jobs here and there and uh and and I think that there's a lot of artists that are like that and I think um I I don't know where it is along the way but maybe it's partly blamed at schools or something I don't know but no one ever seems to talk about the actual marketing aspect and actually getting a job at something like that and um and really like nowadays with the internet uh I mean it it's so much easier than of course it was years and years ago where you had to you know like basically hand put something in the hand of somebody who worked at a company and hoped that they would you know look at it but nowadays it's all up to you and like uh like the how much effort you put into your online marketing which is going to enable people to hire you so that's doing things like having uh a website which is continually updated it's got your contact information it's got your photograph of yourself your real name I mean just those things those basic few things there is something that like 80% of people don't have believe it or not um and then it's putting it on all the websites that anybody could possibly go to so um like some people think like oh you know the big place everybody you know the CG artwork is on maybe CG society and so they just put all their artwork on CG Society but in doing that they're forgetting that um people that are looking to hire somebody for 3D artwork they could be just like a small business owner and you know they maybe want some typographical logo or something like that and they think uh where do all the artists hang out I have no idea uh I think deviant art has artwork and so they go to Deviant Art and then they just click on stuff on there now if you're not on Deviant Art you're not going to get the job somebody else is and they could be completely underqualified and way worse than you but they're going to get the job because they were in the right place at the right time so nowadays it's not so much as like standing in the doorway waiting for somebody to come past and handing them your your demo real or anything like that it's about being online in the places that you should be and basically I mean there's an element of luck in it but you increase your luck exponentially when you put yourself out there into numerous places right yeah so you know uh people probably you know who are most of most of my subscribers you know they're here from you know non-3d you know and so CG Society that's a 3D kind of like a a gallery Community basically but but but but you know you have other sites you know that you can definitely put your stuff on if you're not with 3D you know like the dribbble.com and the behance.net um and you know one thing that really bit me in the ass uh when it comes to you know maximizing you know your exposure in terms of trying to really just build up um and and put all your work out there as much as possible trying to build up like an social awareness or social proof I guess you could call it in terms of having you know a Facebook page that's active with a lot of followers I what the hell was that something just came up on my computer all right so uh we had a technical issue I basically it stopped recording because I insufficient face so unprofessional but anyhow to pick up from where I left where I left off basically um so what bit me in the butt was you know not having that full social proof and really actively trying to to build up my engagement in terms of you you know having an active Twitter Facebook and everything else I could do uh and the reason was is because uh the how I really kind of got real established and really just started making a career and making money out of what I do is was kind of from an accident uh so back like six seven years ago there's a real popular site called dig.com are you aware of it used real big yeah because of you know what some changes they made everybody went to Reddit but anyhow uh I thought one day it would just be interesting to write a tutorial on how to make an awesome logo and it was a really bad tutorial and I I wanted to do it solely for the purpose to see if I could get on the front page of dig.com because if you did back when it was real popular that meant you're getting like over 10 20 30,000 visitors within 24 hours I just thought that would be cool I wasn't monetizing anything you know whatever so I I wrote this crappy tutorial within like I a few hours and I put it on there and I had my friends like you know dig it and it got to the front page and I thought that was cool I had like 10 12,000 so I forgot about it you know it wasn't a big deal I was going to be getting married soon I was going to have to move out and stuff and I just randomly decided about six months later to check my website stats for the uh website that hosted that tutorial and there was like 900 visitors a day coming to it and I was like what the heck I never did anything with this but then I recalled you know looking into the stats a little bit and it was uh from that tutorial ranking in Google for keywords that related to how to design a logo how to make a logo blah blah blah and so I thought to myself how am I going to monetize this maybe I can monetize this St you know so I made this these five crappy logo tutorial videos I sold for $6.95 I don't even know why I chose such a low price but so I started get like an order a day no big deal right uh so then I thought you know maybe these people also realize you know they're business owners and they're starting out maybe they can make their own uh they'll want to want me to design a logo to order a logo for me so I put up I built my own system for managing clients and stuff and I advert for like imly $75 per logo you know and then once I put that up and I launched and advertised on that tutorial page you know I started getting about one to two orders a day so that gave me you know really good freedom to to basically I I knew I didn't have to get a job I never had like a regular job you know unlike you and so I dreaded it like it's just so scary to me uh so that's how I started off and of course I increased the logo prices and about five years later or six years later I handled like 2,000 clients it's nuts but anyhow you done 2,000 clients it's it's well probably around there 2,000 logos I I kind of feel like the McDonald's of logos but I I mean how much you charge now $75 is so low oh yeah it is low you know what I well what what now I'm almost kind of out of it because what happened afterwards is and this is why it's so important going back to the original point to really make sure your eggs aren't in all one basket uh what happened was after five six six years Google some made some changes to their algorithm in terms of how they choose to rank websites and so it's it's kind of complex you know and there's so many different variabl people try to game it or whatever um and what happened was I don't know if it because my the the page was old a little bit it had aged uh or just competitors started going up but anyhow I started going down in ranks and when you go down I mean just going from the first spot to the second spot is like a jump of like 40% of traffic practically 30 40 and so what happened was you know um and that's not the only thing I mean I maximized everything I could with that page uh and also another page that ranked for a how to design a website uh because then I I I registered designc course.com I charged $ 49.95 month $49.95 a month a monthly subscription and uh you know I was really making good money for several years but then once they I started going down like I realized oh man you shouldn't have you shouldn't have got complacent basically and that's what I did uh so my income kind of went quite you know down quite a bit and I kind of neglected the other ways in which you know you really what you need to do to establish yourself um whether you're going to be a fre freelancer or whether you're going to be doing a service of some sort uh but but yeah so wow I another thing I wanted to ask you about and and we probably agree but we'll see um I want to ask you what your thoughts on traditional education is in terms of going to art schools or colleges as a means towards entering in to a creative field whether it be 3D uh or anything web based uh versus kind of you know offering what you do or what we do now I have my opinions and thoughts on this and I can answer that first or you can just give your you know like if somebody came up to you who knew nothing they wanted to do what you do or do what I do or or just enter the field you know became proficient at it what would you tell them in terms of the college route or uh you know maybe just utilizing everything you can everything you can via the web to learn oh man uh the problem is is that I've never I never went to college I never went to um and I I've never done um you know aside from high school of course which I hated right um of [Laughter] course uh whoever says they like high school I've never had anyone say that you know I have two daughters and they're they're staying home so I mean it's tough that way but I have very strong views on education and public education but I but yeah I mean basically you know to to answer that question you know I think it's awesome because it's it's the internet and the availability of the internet and the fact that you know so many things are free you know most of your videos are free mine are free I people are and even you know your courses or your whatever you know you consider them you know when you contrast that to the extremely expensive nature of uh colleges I know it's kind of a Nob brainer because you know I I had friends you know they had a bunch you know who went off to college like a computer science degree after four years and they have like a mid five figure you know School Bill and you know when it when it came to skill sets I found that a lot of them are kind of inferior to you know what I was doing because you know a lot of the the the I guess you could say the material that they're taught and and the instructors or or the professors they're kind of like outdated so I think what we're going to see what what we're going to see is you know kind of see sites like Udi you're probably familiar with that right I mean UD M udemy.com they're like a huge online resource for learning right and sites like that and sites like you know more specialized like ours that are specific to you know an application or a specific field they're going to basically I think they're going to knock out the colleges or or Force the colleges at least to I hope so really come down in price which is awesome for us and it's awesome for everybody else yeah so uh uh one final note you know where what should your focus be on in terms of uh because you know you have so many people and they fail at it unfortunately I know this from uh when designc course.com was previously launched you know they enter into it most people they just fail uh you know whether it be um issues with uh I I think a lot of the issues it doesn't come from a lack of talent usually uh it it kind of comes from I think a lack of staying consistent in and having that right cor correct amount of work ethic I guess you could say because I think you did a podcast recently or maybe not a podcast but a video about um staying motivated or or how or increasing by what do you call uh productivity yes that's right yeah podc kind of kind of veered off that question but I just get a little bit in terms of helping people who might be aspiring uh into entering a creative field um yeah I um it's an idea I've I started out with and I think it's uh it it'll help anyone I say a lot but basically what you do is you tell yourself I'm going to come up with one finished piece of artwork every week so once a week whatever day you pick it say it's Sunday or Friday whatever you are going to post whatever it is you've been working on that whole week and you're going to post it on your blog forums everywhere and you're going to do that and you're going to do that every single week now that's going to work really well because one it's going to teach you about deadlines and finishing things and not just working on something endlessly until you run out of motivation and just kill it if you're going to work really hard right up into that point and then you're going to post it and that's the end of it and then you have to get started on the next one and so so you're going to improve your skills drastically that way um it's also going to give you um uh some consistent following by doing this regularly enough um especially if you have a website and you have like you know a following on forums and things like that is that you will um people will uh grow to expect certain things from you and that you'll have you know new work coming in constantly you'll get a name for yourself when people are looking for you know searching the forums for somebody to come and you know do a job them or something your name keeps popping up all the time I mean increases your chances that way um but solely for the fact of just improving yourself um and just working on like one piece of artwork per week and just do that for a long time it's not like something like some people will do it um that's the other thing is like you have to do something uh like a lot of people expect quick results over a short time like that's the problem with a lot of websites as well it's like people will start a blog or a website and they'll be at it for you know 3 months and they'll be like I'm not getting much traffic I'm out you know it's like well you have to do that you have to continually consistently post work or content as it's called um and you have to do that for a year maybe two years you have to do it for the long haul before you start seeing results like there was a site I can't even remember what it was oh that's right it was this it was a stupid uh I'm I'm living in career at the moment um so I'm sort of interested in in like K-pop or it used to be um but there's this site called allkpop.com or something like that and it's this huge website it gets massive amounts of traffic and it's become like the Hub of anyone that's interested in Korean pop music or something um there's like this Niche audience everyone that loves it they're just obsessed with it right and anyways so I thought like man this site is huge I don't know what they've done you know to Market themselves or something anyways I went back through their posts and they' started this like seven years ago or something and for the first about 3 years and they were posting like every single day for about three years and they weren't getting any comments like like could you imagine that like doing something for three years and getting like zero feedback oh yeah ridiculous right yeah yeah I mean that's you know I set out this whole one one video a day thing that I started it kind of started because last year I did the same thing except for running I wanted to at the end of you know all of 2013 by the end I wanted to have run 365 miles I don't know why I just wanted to do it and I only ended up running like 40% of the days but you know that's life getting in the way and stuff so I decided to do something a little bit more productive you know business-wise just one thing a day and so that this was my idea um just to record some like one video a day you know that's a that's a piece of content you know and So eventually it could pick gets picked up by Google It Gets shared a lot and stuff and you start building a following uh if you're doing it intelligently uh and that's kind of you know like you would say one thing a week you know it's kind of the same process so really it has to do with consistency staying motivated and just doing it no matter what even if you have a job I think most people probably who work as a designer for uh you know an agency or something it seems like a no-brainer to have the freedom to want to do that in a freelance environment um you know in just because maybe it's just me I've never had a boss but it kind of just makes me dread actually working for so I'm just saying to you if you if you have a job you should certainly uh that way you don't have all your eggs in one basket kind of like I did initially uh when you come home do something or at least once a week do something put out content uh so hopefully that you know if you do get fired you know you you have something to fall back on or even better you're going to be able to to quit your job because you're going to have that you're going to have all the clients because you've worked on putting out stuff there so constantly which is really important for Google and also the social networks as well yeah so uh uh yeah unless you have anything else to add to that my kids are going to be they're probably like screaming downstairs because they're so tired or whatever oh really right yeah yeah um no um I was going to say yeah I I mean I I totally agree with that like putting all your eggs in one basket that's something that's um it's constantly talked about in business and they give so many examples of people that do that um uh like people that have invested all their time into a website or a business online and they get 100% of their traffic is from Google it goes well I wasn't gonna say but yeah oh yeah yeah yeah and and so it goes great like everything seems like it's fine nothing is going to go wrong we're just going to continue like this and everything is fine the trouble is is depending on anyone anyone at all by doing that you're putting the power in somebody else's hands and that means You're vulnerable so as I mean i' I've heard of people that had a site in which they were making like a th000 $2,000 a week Google changed the algorithm now they make z a week oh yeah I have a lot of Web Master friends who are into internet marketing and I know you took a few internet marketing coures these are specifically affiliate marketers they don't make their own products they just sell other people's stuff and there's there's some guys you know when when the algorithm changed who were making six figures a month and Bam like they're down to like you know like a thousand a month or something practically you know just from the residual traffic but but yeah you're right uh you cannot put all your eggs in one basket you just got to just just maximize you know there's probably Services too you know you put out a piece of content that'll probably automatically just kind of put it out there on all the other networks as well so it doesn't you know because I know I know when it comes to recording videos at least I I think there are a couple services that will you upload it once and it just puts it out there so that way you know this whole other business of not making art or whatever is kind of minimized in terms of your investment in your time uh in terms of putting out content yeah that's right yeah so that that can be applied to anything I mean not just Google but I mean YouTube any website if you're depending on anyone for any sort of traffic um or any person like if you've got some guy that like is always like dishing you out jobs it's like hooking you up like with freelance work for example like your best friend and he always giving you jobs it's like you're right I'm going to be like this forever and then suddenly he gets employed by a studio and suddenly you're not getting any work from him and now you're like just stuck in the mud like damn it it got to the point I was so comfortable people would always ask me like um my my father-in-law you he's like how's uh you know how's the business oh it's good what do you think it's you it's always been good and then and then oh man it just oh man talk about rest oh man but anyhow but no I've bounced back since then but uh but but yeah definitely I'd say that's hugely important doesn't matter what field you're in I mean you could be a coder even you know as somebody's doing you know backend database stuff you know this is applicable pretty much to anything yeah but yeah uh all right so I guess I'm gonna head out now and once again I'm Gary Simon of designc course.com and that is Andrew price of blender guru.com check it out all right all right see you guys later thanks [Music] for