I'm Andrew Price and I created Blender Guru with the goal of helping artists create better artwork with Blender.
I'm 28 years old and live in Brisbane, Australia.
I started using Blender in 2004 as a hobby, but now I use it everyday to create tutorials on explosions, space ships and other cool stuff.
My Story
One night in 2004 I was playing Need For Speed II, and admiring the beauty of the 3d cars. I thought how cool it would be if I could create my own car in 3d. So I went online and searched for "free 3d software". I went to a few sites before stumbling upon Blender.org, and saw this render:
I was immediately sold. I remember making a commitment right then and there that I was going to learn how to use this software "Blender" until I could make my own car.
The image that got me started in blender.
How I learned Blender
My first week with Blender could best be described as embarrassing.
I had absolutely no idea what I was doing. In fact, if you check my post history on blenderartists.org you can see what a true burden I was to the community:
*groan* another thread by andrewprice
My learning style was the very definition of "playing it by ear". I floated from tutorial to tutorial, finishing some and abandoning others.
One of the few tutorials at the time: How to make a gingerbread man
It was a really rough road. But 4 years later, I finally achieved my goal... creating my own car in Blender:
Yaaay!! ... now what?
Why Blender Guru?
When I finished high school I had no serious job prospects. In worked as a labourer on construction sites, but I was fired twice for not being "switched on". This was usually because I was day dreaming about making something cool in Blender :P I knew that I wanted to do 3D fulltime, but nobody was going to hire me with my sucky portfolio. So I created BlenderGuru.com - a site that would make tutorials, with the goal of using it to attract freelance work. But after a year of making tutorials, I still had none. I was lost and very seriously considered giving it up. But when I attended the 2009 Blender conference, I was shocked to discover that people actually knew of me and loved my tutorials. Most striking of all, some where asking if I'd write a book! I was shocked. People actually liked my work and my tutorials? And they wanted to pay me to write something about Blender?! Then it clicked. I could run Blender Guru fulltime by selling training products. A year later I released The Wow Factor (an eBook on using the Compositor), and made enough money in it's opening month of sales to quit my daytime job and do Blender Guru fulltime. I'm now in the privileged position of turn down job prospects so that I can continue making tutorials for Blender Guru.
My Life
I'm now married to a beautiful Korean girl, Chloe.
We've been together for 5 years and are happily living in Australia :)
When not using Blender, you can find me hiking:
Exploring the Australian Outback
