These days, what training guides (books, videos, PDFs) for general 3D modeling learning do you recommend to new people just starting out in this field/hobby now that school is on break and 3D programs will show up in some artists stockings?

www.youtube.com/user/ShawnDriscollCG

Attached Link: Andrew Klein

I'm not sure if these are too advanced Shawn, but this guy knows what he's doing.

http://www.guerrillacg.org/

I think this is perhaps one of the best ones for somebody new to the subject. The presentation videos have some very good visuals when it comes to explaining things. It may not have much in the way of tutorials on how to model or animate something, but it does inform very well as to why some things are done a certain way during those processes. Once you understand those things, other aspects of modeling and/or animating tend to make much more sense.

---

Barbequed Pixels?

Your friendly neighborhood Wings3D nut.
Also feel free to browse my freebies at ShareCG.
There might be something worth downloading.

Any new ones Shawn?

For absolute beginners, there's also a good bunch of video tutorials on the homepage of Silo 3D editor, nevercenter.com, showing both box modeling and edge modeling workflows.