This is the million-dollar question. There are thousands of free character modeling tutorials on YouTube (e.g., "Model a character in 10 minutes").
Here is the truth about free tutorials: They often skip the "boring" parts. They use shortcuts. They show you a final render that looks great but collapses the moment you try to pose the arms because the topology is a mess.
What you pay for with CG Cookie:
A subscription to CG Cookie (roughly $29–39 USD/month) gives you access to all courses (Sculpting, Rigging, Texturing). If you finish this character course in two months, that is ~$80 for a portfolio-ready asset. Compare that to a single university course costing $2,000. CG Cookie - Introduction to Character Modeling in Blender
Rigging scared her most. Bones, weights, inverse kinematics—it sounded like medieval torture.
But CG Cookie’s introduction kept it gentle: a simple armature, automatic weights, a test pose.
She selected Grum’s arm bone, rotated it, and his hand lifted. This is the million-dollar question
Then she added a shape key—a smile.
She dragged the slider. Grum’s mouth curved upward. His eyes squinted slightly because she had learned to add a corrective shape key for the cheeks.
He smiled.
Maya sat back in her chair. The room was dark except for her monitor. Somewhere outside, a car honked. But inside that gray digital void, a little green goblin was grinning at her.
To give you a concrete feel for the course, here is what your first hour looks like:
By the end of the first hour, you have a rough mannequin. It is ugly. It is boxy. But it is yours. A subscription to CG Cookie (roughly $29–39 USD/month)