I am very excited for the launch date of this course. Thank you for being such an awesome mentor. I am following your Flash tutorials now in preparation for the course, and was wondering if you will be covering animating in Photoshop?
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Hi @Keyserito, just as a frame of reference, and full-disclosure on my side, I currently work a full-time job in marketing/sales at $40K salary. After taxes, I typically make $2,500 a month. I have seen some courses out there for around $500 which is a lot for me to pay. I am hoping you can keep it below $400 for me to afford it.
One of the biggest things I’ve been missing in my VFX coursework has been mentorship, which this year I’ve graciously been PM’ing some of the veterans for accountability (@Redderick :p) ) for feedback and accountability on my progress.
My biggest incentive to join this course is to financially motivate myself to improve. I know it sounds dumb, but when dollars are on the line people tend to try much harder (you could argue the same for lives, but let’s not go down that rabbit hole!)
Personally, I’ve seen the progress @pmiller made under your mentorship, so it’s a tried-and-true proof-of–concept I’m relieved to know works. At first I was frustrated by his quick transition into VFX, but once you realize we are all on our own path of growth and discovery, then that accountability to be ‘your best self’ makes much more sense.
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Not going to dive into Photoshop’s animation features in this class, but I will say, I’ve seen some artists do pretty cool stuff with it!
So true! And thanks for your honesty about affordability. I absolutely take everyone’s feedback into account as I’m making these decisions. Look for an announcement on price as we get closer to launch.
The fourth and final Photoshop pre-requisite video!
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我是一名来自中国的vfx艺术家，我想学习到你的这门课程。但是课程的语言上可能对我有问题 我需要字幕准确的翻译？ 还有付款方式可能存在一些问题，是否可以支付宝支付呢？ jason我是你粉丝，我非常喜欢的vfx。
Great question! As for translation, i’m already planning on English subtitles. If there’s enough interest, i might include Chinese subtitles as well. And thanks for mentioning Alipay. I’m currently planning on using Stripe, so i’ll investigate integrating Alipay as well.
Hello! Jason. I am a Chinese VFX Student. As a beginner, your upcoming course is really timely help for me and many other Chinese VFX artists. Because I don’t have a good ability on English, maybe I can understand go top 50% of your “Photoshop for VFX artists” course, that is not good for my learning effect. So I also feel that Chinese subtitle is very importent for me.
In my opinion, China is becoming the world’s largest game marketplace(2019 GLOBAL GAMES MARKET, by NEWZOO. ), and China also has a lot of game companyies now, but there is not enough great VFX course for us.China also have a strict network supervision, it is not easy for us to go to Google, Twitter, Youtube and so on. So I really hope you can pay more attention on our country.
At the same time, even China’s protection of intellectual property rights is improving，your course also hase a risk of theft, because I have ever seen some great foreign charging courses were free provided by some webside or charging illegal by person. And I also seen some great foreign courses were well sold with the help of some great Chinese CG webside.I have ever bought a video course on yiihuu.com, the course is well protecting by the webside(跟暴雪元老学数字绘景-《MP绘景魔术》三部曲【英音中字】视频教程_翼狐网), the webside help the teacher create Chinese subtitle and
market expansion, people can hardly find that course of piracy, but I don’t know how do they allocate money , and I also don’t know whether there are other Chinese websides can provide similar help. In short I think this approach is a better way to solve the problem.
The previous text is my personal opinion, I hope to get your reply early!
Hi Jason, I’m waiting for your replay, Thanks! 
Yes! I’ve been looking into this. Turns out, doing business in China has some challenges. I certainly would love to figure out a way to get this class to you all, but I don’t have a concrete plan to do so just yet. For a start, I’ll be reaching out to Yiihuu for sure (thanks for the idea!). Stay tuned, and i’ll hopefully figure something out!
Wow, Thanks for your reply!
I hope to join the class from cokey666 (Unity3D游戏特效综合培训课程 _李可 cokey课程-Magesbox), but it too sad they only allow china people to join~
hope jason course will be out soon
Yes Cokey’s UnityVFX class is also cool! But maybe it is not easy to learn for very beginner. Where are you from?
From Malaysia , i’m chinese also hahaha
i not so beginner, been working tv serial as FX artist for 3year.
now change to game development, abit hard time to catch up what i should do as game effect artist.
i really really want to join the cokey course, but it really suck they dont accept foreign to join the class, u must be a china citizen and have a bank account at china, then they will accept.
Man! I really hope to see his course content available outside of China some day. Would be amazing!
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Hey jason ~ i try to ask customer service, but unfortunately they said you need bank account at china, so they can verify something something, that mean only available for chinese.
but maybe you should contact cokey via wechat, i think you have bigger advantage to take about this ,haha
maybe cokey will figure out how to make it outside of china.
btw jason, your online course when will available? hahahah 
I’m hard at work, I promise! I haven’t had updates for a while, because a lot is in progress, and not quite ready to show. More to come soon!
Also, thanks for the recommendation about getting in contact with @Cokey_Li. I’m definitely rooting for him to make it big outside of China!
Another update! I just sent out an email to all those on the e-mail subscribers list. If you didn’t get it, check your spam folder, and be sure to unflag it as spam if you want the launch announcement email later on.
First, you’ll notice I changed the title of the thread from “Killer VFX Course” to “VFX Apprentice,” which will be the name of the online VFX school. Honestly, “Killer” never really felt quite right, and a few people mentioned it was rather off-putting. Plus, VFXapprentice .com was available (I’ve just parked it for now, nothing there just yet!)
Okay, so lots to discuss. First: some progress on Unit #2: in-engine particle animation!
Special thanks to @Jason_Chisolm and @Baskins for doing such a great job on the first effect. It’s been an absolute pleasure working with you. And of course, I’d be lost without @Dave_Shovlin doing such a fine job on the concept art, additional shader features, and a couple of the upcoming particle systems.
We’ve also got 3 more particle systems in the works, one for each of the concept paintings I posted previously. All of these will share a single, well-documented, well-optimized Uber shader that will have intuitive legibility for the beginner, as well as strong utility for the seasoned pro who might want to modify it with their own features. Here’s a quick preview of where the shader is at so far:
I’ve asked @Keith to lend his expertise and critique the shader before we release it, to ensure we keep everything at the highest standards possible. Of course, once we go live, I’ll love to hear form all of you on how we can make all the content even better (yes, I plan to continue updating the course after launch… more to come on that later!).
And finally, branding! For the logo & splash art, I wanted an identity that’s approachable to the newbie, while speaking to the epicness of our craft. One purpose of VFX Apprentice is to diffuse the fear around learning VFX, and bring in a new generation of artists that otherwise may not have found their home here. All this while offering new insight and techniques to the seasoned pros. The logo icon was a collaboration between myself and @Denorelli. And to hit the right spectrum of appeal in the splash art, I contracted Jeremy Anninos, a super talented splash artist on League of Legends, to bring the site’s approachable mascots (Sparker and Aquanna, of “Alight” fame) into fully illustrated fidelity. This image will be used as the landing page splash, and also in various marketing materials:
Phew! That’s all for this update. Okay, now back to work! lol.
Let me know what y’all think!
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Progress!
Since you are this point now, I have a question; What method(s) do you intend to use to teach?
(Your post gives an idea, but best not make an assumption.)
All-in-all looks good so far @Keyserito .
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