Amazing Blender Training for Artists.
If you're motivated and persistent enough you can be successful in digital art without the massive college debt.
On August 25th, 2021 we moved CG Cookie to an annual subscription only site.
I wanted to step out of the monthly-race. How could we every repeat the euphoric feeling of a new monthly subscriber on month two? Meaning when you sign up for CG Cookie on day one you get access to our entire library, so when month two rolls around members would begin thinking, "What are you guys doing for me this month?"
In reality the value of CG Cookie is the 100's of Blender tutorials, downloads and experience. But it's also the access to our instructors, and team of instructor assistants who are here to help you along the way. It's one of the differences between choosing us vs Youtube.
So removing our monthly subscription made sense: communicating we're looking for a year commitment from our members, less focus on quantity but on quality, and better communicated the value of the platform. We were still producing around 4-6 new courses a year.
Initially it seemed to be working really well. Our customer base was atrophying, but our net revenue was increasing and we never felt more in our skin. It was a warm and fuzzy six months.
This past spring the floor fell out and our annual subscriptions declined significantly. We still don't know really why: Energy crisis, related sanctions from the war, we migrated platforms, and toss in a negative SEO attack. 🤷♂️
But we held on to the model. Waiting until August 25th, 2022 to hopefully see renewals of annuals begin to trickle in. This never really happened.
During September we noticed only a few annuals would renew, some would be blocked by sanctions, expired card details or simply not ready to commit to another year. Additionally new annuals were also still on a decline.
In November, 2022 we decided to bring the monthly subscription back. It's been our best decision of the year for us and our customers.
Since then we've been growing (read: recovering) at about a 3% rate, but we've got months to go before we get back to our early 2021 numbers.
The lesson learned is while the annual subscription may work for some, it doesn't work for us, our community and our mission.
We want more people to learn and become successful with Blender. By closing our "gates" with an annual subscription, our brand awareness fell and we became less accessible by the people we're trying to help.
Yes, we'd still prefer somebody to signup annually, but instead of that being the FIRST decision, it can be approached after 2-3 months of being with us.
#onward
This project has been around for just over 14 years, and it still very much feels like an indie project. Maybe it's the nature of running an online project, but while generally there is some consistency in direction and the vision of what we're building at CG Cookie, the day-to-day, or month-to-month can feel very messy.
It's embarrassing to see our last post here is approaching nearly two years old. A lot has changed since our last post
CG Cookie moved to an annual subscription model, with the intention to make a different kind of cookie - https://cgcookie.com/posts/making-a-different-type-of-cookie
In March of 2022, we successfully migrated our site to the Mavenseed platform we've been building for the past few years. Overall this move has been a successful one, though we did get hit with a penalty from Google, drastically reducing our organic traffic and SERP ratings.
We're digging out, but it's been a learning experience!
The CG Cookie ovens are roaring, with three Blender courses set to be completed and released by the end of this year. https://cgcookie.com/p/coming-soon-to-cg-cookie
Thanks for hanging with us over the years, especially now as we get back to our indie roots, making amazing Blender content while having a bit of fun.
Wes
Thanks to the Epic Mega Grant we've begun to assemble our team to tackle creating an animated short with Blender and Unreal.
Leaning on CG Cookie's established Eat Sheep universe, we're going to join our two loveable heroes Melvin and Cale on an epic journey.
See who's on the team so far! More as I have it
https://eatsheep.com/posts/the-team-is-starting-to-take-shape
A pretty cool milestone when you're interviewed by IndieHackers.
I was a tad nervous to share the story, though it's been one hell of a ride with this project. The relationships I know have with new friends from around the world is my favorite.
🍪 Happy Blending!
For years, Citizens of the Cookie have been asking us for training that brings the Unreal Engine and Blender together. Something that I've always wanted to deliver, but simply have not been able to pursue... until now.
I'm excited to share that CG Cookie is an Epic Mega Grant recipient! We’re ready to make some Unreal-tasting Cookies! 🍪
In the past 12 years, CG Cookie has become known for our high-quality Blender training and of course kick-arse community that makes it all possible.
CG Cookie is funded by members who purchase a subscription; that's what pays for our instructors, our support crew, and our servers.
Our main focus is on producing inspiring edutainment to keep our members engaged and learning - and we don't have much capacity to do anything else. And while we love teaching, we are also artists at the core who have that itch to create.
The Epic Mega Grant will enable us to secure additional resources and revisit an old passion project.
It's going to be a monster undertaking: creating something amazing while documenting the process along the way.
Don't worry, we won't be sheepish about the challenges, there will be plenty to eat consume. The result should be a pretty incredible bridge between the Blender and Unreal communities.
Huge thanks to Epic Mega Grant's team & you for supporting this rolling cookie over the years. #onward!
Over the years we've played with a variety of content release schedules: once a day, once a week, when we feel like, to the now once a month we release a meaningful course.
It's easy to get sucked into the I must release stuff constantly stream. While this may feel good to start, you're likely to burn out much quicker + devalue the content you're releasing.
Cg Cookie currently is on a once-a-month drop a course that has some meat to it. This is still in addition to the blog posts, live streams, and YT shows, but it helps focus the month.
This month, being Halloween we released a pretty rad course on how to create a spooky spider. 🕸
Enjoy
https://cgcookie.com/course/creating-an-animated-spooky-spider-in-blender-2-9
Earlier this month the CG Cookie project turned 12 years old. I attempted to find a decent way-back machine representation of the site, but this is the best I could come up with.
https://share.getcloudapp.com/Jru6JW6j
It's even featuring a 3D Studio Max tutorial done by me! Yikes...
Huge humble thanks to ALL who has contributed to the project over the years, and for the members supporting the project. It's incredible I even get to share this update. Pretty rad!
🍪
Youtube is CG Cookie's largest "competitor" when it comes to online Bender education, while also being our biggest referral of traffic to the CG Cookie platform.
The one thing I've learned over these 12 years of being involved with CG Cookie is we must keep evolving, must keep changing to exist within the online business/consumer world. Gone are the days of "This is how we always did it".
The vision of the CGC youtube channel is less about step-by-step tutorials, http://cgcookie.com remains the best place for that 😎, but more about edutainment.
Imagine watching the latest Let's build it in Blender episode on the couch before calling it a night, or watching live as Chris is challenged to build an epic sci-fi scene in just one hour. Anything could happen.
Let's Build it in Blender: A bi-weekly pre-recorded episodic series where we follow Chunck Trafagander as he shares his workflow on building a community voted object.
Sci-Fi Blitz: A bi-weekly live Blender show where Chris Bailey has just an hour to open Blender, and build on the theme the community voted on.
As with anything, it's a long journey. This is just the first step. :)
https://www.youtube.com/c/CGCookieBlender/featured
Enjoy!
Wes
We're still here... Pretty cool!
When I first started the CG Cookie project, the oppression of failure statistics washed over me.
Nearly 80% of businesses survive the first year, the numbers swing to a mere 50% survive year five. According for Forbes.com only one in three businesses will see 10 years.
We've certainly seen our share of successes and failures over this past decade here at http://cgcookie.com. A string of experiences testing our resolve, and whit have lead us to a decade of experiences growing an online business in an every changing environment. Somethings we got right, somethings terribly wrong.
Today CG Cookie is made possible by our now 10+ entrepreneurial minded crew, operating as a 100% remote team across various time-zones and borders, being challenged and having a bit of fun along the way.
As we enter year 11, I suspect our next decade will be just as interesting if not as challenging as the first 10.
It's what gets me out of bed in the morning, taking on new challenges, working on meaningful work, helping people, and building something that didn't exist prior to the thought.
Here's to another 10 years for the Cookie!
2 years of collaborating without meeting face to face
Jonathan Williamson and I were as remote as it gets. Nearly two years would pass before we’d even meet in person when we met in Illinois to look for our first studio space
Why get a studio?
It was 2010: YouTube was 4 years old, streaming video hadn’t yet gone mainstream, digital artists were learning how to build their own audiences online. It was an exciting time and it seemed like the natural order of things; create a startup, gain traction and get a physical space to be taken seriously as a business.
https://cgcookie.com/articles/saying-goodbye-to-the-cg-cookie-studio
If you're motivated and persistent enough you can be successful in digital art without the massive college debt.