I was excited to see that patata school was offering a cinema 4d character rigging class, so I rushed to sign up. At check out I didn't see the box to add the discount code. I guess that's my fault, but I expected to be reimbursed. When I contacted the company I was politely, but nevertheless told to take a hike. It was a 30% percent discount, which is a small amount of money, but I felt I should get it back in some form. If you drop ten bucks and see someone pick it up, you expect that they'll give it back. If you go to a store and realize that you overpaid, you go to costumer service and get your money back. A company should be prepared to handle those kind of situations, and patata school isn't. My interaction with patata school customer service felt passive-aggressive and patronizing.
If the "course" and "school" were great, I probably would have just moved on, but they aren't. (I use quotes because it's really just a series of video tutorials with some easy quizzes). There are two people doing the tutorial. One is teaching and the other is in the background not really adding anything. You just hear someone mumbling and giggling every couple of minutes. I think for clarity, one host is enough.
I'm not sure that the technique is the best way to create such a simple character, which doesn't turn out great even in the video (the hands are jacked. New Plastic on YouTube has a good hand tutorial). I think patata school's technique is based on Jess Herrera's workflow that you can find for free. Also, anything you can find by EJ Hassenfratz will serve you better. If you want to pay, there are more thorough tutorials out there. Pluralsight has an older but excellent library that includes C4d Character modeling and rigging. Also, I believe EJ covers simple character modeling and rigging in school of motion's C4d ascending.
Also, I was in the middle of a video when it just stopped working. There was no access for a while. I know it wasn't just me, because someone posted about it in the "community". The other offerings of patata school are slim, but if you want to check it out I would suggest signing up for the month and canceling before the next month's payment is due. I would not sign up for a year. You can easily get what you need from patata school within a month, and truthfully I can't imagine they'll be in business in a year. So you would have access to the videos with no customer service.... Kind of like now.
I wish them all the best, Cheers.
