Cartoony Character Rigging And Animation Production In Blender

Let's make a short animated film featuring a stretchy, stylized and cartoony character! All the way from initial sketch to the polished end result.

I've often searched for knowledge on how to make a stylized character from scratch, especially the face rig, that is stretchy and flexible. One can find a lot of tutorials about realistic human figures and how to make them and their face rigs, but stylized is a whole another case. So I made this course, it's something I would like to get for myself.

The main purpose of this course is to inspire people to make short character animations from scratch. It's not that hard, just dive in and learn how to do that. Learning to do all of this is also a very good foundation for making just about anything else, I would say.

I used Blender 2.93 so using that is the safest bet, but you should be able to follow the course with Blender 2.83+ and Blender 3.0 also.

Instructor:

Manu Järvinen - 3D Artist, Animator and Illustrator

What you'll learn:

• Sketching characters in Krita

• Sculpting a cartoony characters face

• Retopologize the sculpt, so that it's deformable/animatable

• Rig the face with cartoony, stretchy bendy bones

• Model the body of the character

• Rig the body of the character, again with stretchy bendy bones

• Animate the character and do the lipsync

• Model a simple environment

• Create simple materials for all surfaces

• Light the scene with simple lights

• Composite the final renders to look even better

• Multiple tips along the way for all of these topics

Requirements:

Free and open-source Blender 2.93+ and Krita, no third-party plugins required.

Difficulty: Beginner-Intermediate:

In order to follow this tutorial, some prior modeling, shading and animation skills in Blender may be required. But rigging is explained like you were a complete beginner. And, if you don't understand something, just send me a message and I'll make sure that you understand and provide maybe an additional video so that you truly understand. I can also put out those new explaining videos into the course for others to see who are stuck in the same situations.

Bonuses:

• The animation and the rig .blend files (CC-0 license)

• Normal-speed versions of the timelapses that I use every now and then in the main videos

What the artists say?

"An enjoyable stylized character rigging tutorial in the Manu's authentic style that is so chill-out! Loved the rigging and animation tips."

Gleb Alexandrov, 3D Artist at Creative Shrimp

"Rigging is a complex task and I am glad that Manu is breaking that barrier for new Blender artists who might want to get into character animation, but are a bit intimidated by the process. Check this course out and don't be intimidated by rigging, start creating!"

Cameron Thomson - Founder of Essential Elephant
Check out Colorbox

For more information, visit Gearnoodle.com