This all comes from personal experience and advice from other people. Hopefully at the end of this, you'll get the motivation you need to start making signature, avatars, the whole bit.
[I]Designer programs, (photoshop, After Effects, etc.)[/I] Photoshop No matter what the version, this photo designer is advanced. Usually experienced graphic designers use this program, but novices tend to learn from it aswell. You can get a 30 day trail from Adobe, but after that, it costs money. If you want a good quality software, get PS. Gimp A FREE graphic program. This is a wise choice for people who can't afford Photoshop. Although it is cluttered, and contains a lot of tools, it's very affective and worth downloading.
Illustrator It does cost a pretty penny, but I believe it's worth it. An image based designer that's pretty affective. After Effects Similar to Photoshop, but it is used for animation and movies. It's user-friendly with a variety of Animation Presets, and a whole lot of other great stuff, a top of the line program.
3D Studio Max Another animation designer. I firmly suggest only professionals even try this advanced program. It's quite amazing the sort of stuff you can make.
Blender A lot like 3D Studio Max, (in some ways) but free-ware. It's quite good, and with a few tutorials, should be easy to use for beginners.
[I]Tutorials[I] Video Copilot An amazing After Effects/3D Max video tutorial site. High quality tutorials ranging from sleek text, to rain drops. If you're looking for easy to follow tuts, VCP is the way to go.
Creative Cow An affiliate to Video Copilot, this offers tutorials from a long list of professional graphic designers.
Pixel2Life A great archive of beginner-advanced tutorials.
SigTutorials A big archive of signature tutorials.
Youtube Freaky right? Even though youtube doesn't specialize in graphic tutorials, it has at least 1000 videos that are (ironically) graphic tutorials. A quick search, "Photoshop Tutorial" will get you lots of results.
Google One of the best resources for tutorials. Just like Youtube, you can get great videos that help beginners for all graphic programs. Just search!
[I]Showcasing your work[/I] Rerendered Strictly reserved for After Effects projects, believe it or not you can actually profit from this website. Just read the terms of agreement, Q and A, etc.
Graphic Forum (aswell as here silly! :P) It's a good idea to get feedback from other graphic designers, register an account and post your work.
DeviantArt It caters to graphic artists, be sure to check it out!
[I]Miscellaneous Tips[/I] -Accept criticism. Chances are, when you start off, people will hate your graphics. Which is okay, since you're a beginner. Take peoples' advice and soon you'll improve. -Tell your family your hobby. If they're keen on helping, it should be easier for you to create graphics. -While on the Internet, or watching a movie, pay special attention to the graphics that are shown. This will open your eye, and could inspire you to create something.
Hmm nice little guide you created here. I have to admit you are right that 3DS Max is for more experienced users, as I have found it to be quite annoying myself when I attempted to try and learn it with no prior 3D graphics experience.(I was trying to join the animation team within my Robotics team and I lasted less then a month before I left for programming) Anyways the only I would criticize on though is that you forgot to mention that illustrator is more geared towards vector graphics, where as Photoshop is more towards the raster art side of the spectrum, but otherwise this is a fairly nice guide in my opinion. I might actually look at some of those links you supplied for tutorials(except Google and You tube since I have already used both. Ice Flow Studios actually has some really nice tutorials on You tube for Photoshop though)
yeah all BB code must be written in lower case letters on this site for some reason. So if you made them lowercase then that would have fixed the issue with those. I decided though that now since I have a fast enough computer to run it on to try blender. Don't know how I will do yet in it though, so I guess we shall wait and see...
Because I didn't hear about it, I used it for the animation team, and I have never looked at the autodesk site, or talked about any of its other products, since I didn't know very much about it and had access to the 3DS Max Bible. The only other Autodesk program I have used is AutoCAD, which I actually am a bit better with, but I used these because of a class, and an after school program, but I never looked at any other Autodesk programs...I don't know how better to explain it.
Lol forgive him Dank Maya (I have the Personal Learning Edition) is another 3D graphics program also made by Autodesk. I can't tell you which one (Maya or 3DS Max) is better since I haven't used 3DS Max. But, I think they are both equal with equal reputations...of course, I might be mistakened...
well whenever you make a list that seems uncompleted or that needs to be redone, call it version 1.0(I kind of based that off of a quote I heard awhile back)
well whenever you make a list that seems uncompleted or that needs to be redone, call it version 1.0(I kind of based that off of a quote I heard awhile back)
That's a good idea... but still, I wouldn't want to make another thread just because I messed up some stuff.
If you have the money, go for photoshop. Seriously. It is nice, and you can do more with it. And it does usually not crash. That bad. Just keep from the smudge tool, or remember to save before you smudge.
If you do not have the money, go for GIMP. It is okay, has some of the same abilities as PS, and can handle tablets as well, though not as well as PS. And there is an animation feature as well, which is rather nice to have, though it is a little tricky to make look good.
or
Paint.net. For vectors. Because it got a good working linetool.
