I think also what makes it most tricky, it’s that is a very artistic driven process, more than a technical one. But it is also very technical, so you have that double whammy. There’s a lot there but I think the focus has to go with really concentrating on learning lighting. You can get great models with great materials, but if that layout, composition, lighting, presentation and all that good artistic stuff is not working, it all falls apart.
So I guess for me, the courses that would be most helpful with that would be the Sessions ones:
https://cgcookie.com/courses/sessions-minimalism
https://cgcookie.com/courses/sessions-macro
Then maybe Core Lighting and the old JL one:
https://cgcookie.com/courses/core-fundamentals-of-lighting-in-blender
https://cgcookie.com/courses/fundamentals-of-digital-lighting-in-blender
Maybe Bake for the technical baking stuff:
https://cgcookie.com/courses/bake-texture-baking-with-blender
And then maybe, because it’s a very long one, seeing Kent going about the hurdles of a full production and dealing with lots of problems like that in the COLLAB:
https://cgcookie.com/courses/collab-03-livestreams