I had tried Blender a few years ago and found it rather counter-intuitive - and the interface was awful. A few weeks ago I saw some fur renders done in blender and heard that it had a new render engine called 'Cycles'. And that you could do realtime render previews with your GPU.

Well, my interest was piqued and lo and behold Blender's UI has improved dramatically. So I have decided to teach myself how to use it, and in the process model an anthropomorphic character. I have no real 3D experience outside of messing around in Second Life. I will be teaching myself the whole way, from modelling, texturing, rigging, rendering to compositing.

I plan to post my progress as I go.