I remember reading your other thread a couple days ago. I didn’t have an account but I do now. I think its really difficult to be both a modeler and animator within your time frame. Its important to understand basic modeling so you can fix errors and such. But assuming you are brand new to art theres no way you’re going to develop a keen sense of design and aesthetics + have a deep understanding of modeling AND be a marketable animator, all within 3 years. The market for both of those positions is extremely saturated, and employers really can cherry pick.
Not saying that to discourage you, but rather to help you focus on what you actually should do. Lynda tutorials are great, they cover a broad range of topics to help get you started. As others have said start with a small project. If you are focusing on modeling then just make a nice looking model. Learn the steps to get a flat T pose drawing onto maya, and model from there, with proper animation topology. The only catch is you probably wont be able to rig it, that is a career onto itself. There are alot of available free rigs, as well as pretty inexpensive quality rigs. I would check out Josh Sobel’s rigs.
I think the important take away here though, is that 3 years is not a whole lot of time if you are self taught and want to immediately jump into the industry. Half of your time in maya will be spent saying “why doesn’t this work” which you will have to google, or post in a forum and hope that someone answers it, by which point perhaps you’ve already figured out your mistake. The benefit of a school is a that there is an established curriculum, with people who will guide and teach you the proper way to do things and you can ask most of the questions you’ll need to accelerate your progress. If you are self taught, you have very few immediate resources you can ask and learn from, which means the challenge is multiplied in difficulty. Once you’ve gotten a basic understanding of those fundamentals for modeling and animation I would perhaps try to get more difficult material to work on. CGcircuit Gnomon Workshop and Digital tutors all have really great courses on more specific content, that lynda wont have.
tldr; Value your time, learn the immediate basics, but focus down 1 path and become really good at it (whether its animation or modeling) Eventually you can be really good at both.
