I have bought the three Cartoonsmart basic blender tutorials. They are not expensive but once you have worked through them and did everything along as you go you will be able to use Blender fairly well. Further tutorials of a more advanced ratio will be more easy to grasp and can then be mastered easy.

I did the tutorials with a book besides me and I have written down some notes and Blender all of a sudden started to make some sense. It is not so difficult. Once you have mastered these three tutorials everything makes some sense. It is really easier than Gmax, which is a scaled down version of GMax.

You can take the easier way out to try to figure everything out without buying these tutorials and you may still get there, but it will take so much longer and so much more difficult. With these tutorials you just go along and pause when you need to and you can rewind some and do everything over and over until you get it.

These tutorials are worth every cent of the money I paid and I am sure with the Version 2.50 of Blender coming next year, it is going to kick some other commercial programs under the butt. And the program is still free.

Look at this link to see how Blender compare to other programs:
http://www.tdt3d.be/articles_viewer.php?art_id=99

Regards
Johan