I just started playing and think I'm going to be giving this game a shot.
In the MMO i currently play, pirates of the burning sea, there's a player-run economy somewhat similar to Eve...there I'm my society/guild's shipwright as I enjoy the econ sides of games.
Does anyone have any advice as to what type of char/learning I should do to make a successful ship builder? Any advice or direction to guides would be greatly appresiated.

Thanks!

Industrial / Miner

and as anyone will tell you.
--Learning Skills First-- saves sooo much time

As a new player, I'd highly recommend you mine or run missions first to get a certain amount of capital (say 1-2bil) before trying your hand at manufacturing. In general the market is so saturated with people producing cheap low end stuff that you will be making next to no profit (actually in some cases producing at a loss because of people mining their own minerals and producing cheaper than cost). Having a bit of capital allows you to enter markets that are less crowded, namely battleship production and so on. If you do your research, you'll find that there's still plenty of margin to be made even if you purchase a BPC and use an NPC station to manufacture.

cant i just buy isk with fg?

this is true, but you wont have skill to profit

Undertaking a production character is a serious undertaking, your looking at atleast a year of training to be able to really make a mark on the market somewhere.

A fair amount of disipline and organization is also required to run a serious business in this game.
Your competing with organizations that can manufacture on a scale you could not imagine and are highly organized and have characters with 50 million xp

Not trying to discourage you from doing this if it is your thing then this is the most rewarding game out there. Just want you to know what your getting into.

Sorry to be off topic, but im drunk. To the op: I see youre a big fan of surfing, judging by your profile. I myself am a big fan of bodyboarding, seeing as how I lived in hawaii for over a year and live across from one of the busiest beaches in town. By any chance are you videos from waimea bay? just guessing from the jet skis towing the surfers

1st one is chopes (teahaupua or whatever i dont know how to spell it) 2nd one is a fake its a computer generated vid

Dont be put off by what people are saying you do have to start somewhere remember

just manufacture whatever you want and look at the skills required for the bpos you are using. Also try joining a manufacturing corperation with free labslots to build up the PE or ME of your BPOS and as your collection gets bigger the more you have to choose from when you move around in the game

Id go for mining aswell unless you want to buy all of your ore and if so why not get a freighter to move it all around