“Am I too old to learn Blender?” is a question I see pop up on forums sometimes.
Funny enough, it’s never asked by old people.
It’s always someone who’s 25-30 years old. Which, as a 46-year old, is always amusing to me. But I understand.
And to answer the question, no - even though I don’t know your age - I’m pretty certain that you’re not too old to learn Blender.
I did a survey a while back, and there were over 40 responses from 71+ year olds. Over 220 responses were from people aged 56-70.
One of them writes, “Blender keeps my brain working, very important with my age (73)”.
I wouldn’t be surprised if some users responding to my survey were 80+. My own father is going to be 83 soon, and he’s still making art. (He’s not interested in learning Blender, never having used a computer in his life…)
The main difference I see in the responses between different ages, is that young people are more concerned with areas of 3D where they think they can make money.
Older people tend to do it more for fun. Their 3D efforts tend to be more in he hobby space, like 3D printing.
So, worrying about being too old, seems to be a young person thing. Maybe that’s true in general, but it certainly seems to pop up a lot as a worry/question in the Blender tutorial space.
Personally, I didn’t start taking Blender and 3D seriously until 2017, when I was 38 years old. We all learn at different speeds. Some kids out there are 14 years old and making amazing photoreal animations.
When I was 14 (in 1993), we didn't even have YouTube for another 10 years (that started in 2004). Or, you know, Blender (as Blender 1.0 was launched in 1995). So I think I have a pretty solid excuse for not being good at Blender in 1993 (I was learning 3Ds Max, and some other software I can’t remember the name of - something like 4D or 5D something - and no, it wasn’t Cinema4D… some obscure thing from a CD-Rom that came with a magazine - remember those?).
Anyways... I hope that if you’re a young person, you don’t feel this pressure to make choices based on whether you can make money from it. Not because that’s not important, but because it’s quite difficult to predict. Especially these days, with the increasing commodification of art, and race to the bottom in terms of prices for freelance work.
It’s a bit of a cliche, but they say that you should do what you want, until you start getting paid for it. It does really tend to work out that way, if you’re really passionate about something. Because that passion allows you to have more energy for something.
If you do something because you feel you kind of have to do it, it’s like swimming against a stream. Very tiring! Whereas if you’re doing what you like, it tends to give you energy instead.
And to be succesful at something, you usually do need to work hard. But working hard is easy (or easier), if you love what you do.
Maybe the 80-year old Blender artist doing 3D printing for fun, is accidentally doing the thing that’s most future-proof. After all, it’s quite challenging for AI to do 3D printing.
But the really future-proof and AI-proof thing to do, is to make art that you enjoy making. No new technology or change in the industry can take that away from you.
AI can't feel the enjoyment of creating art, but you can - no matter your age.
