Whether it’s for animation or illustration, creating appealing looking characters is one of the hardest, but also most satisfying, things you can do.
In this course I share my process for transforming a 2D character design into a final 3D character illustration using Blender.
In this course, we’ll be starting out with one of my designs and using it to create a 3D character illustration of a hawksbill sea turtle hatchling heading out to sea.
I’ve divided this course into two key sections.
The first part of the course focusses on the character sculpting process within Blender:
Working from the provided design, we’ll start by building a base mesh which will form the foundation of our sculpt.
From there, we’ll gradually start adding detail and refining our character with a constant eye on creating an appealing end result.
In the second part of the course, we’ll be focussing on presentation:
We’ll build a simple environment, before moving on to shade our character with Blender’s procedural shaders.
If you’re new to procedural shading, the networks of nodes can initially look daunting, but we’ll start out simply before gradually building towards more complex shaders, incorporating techniques such as subsurface scattering to give our character a believable look and feel.
With the shading complete, we’ll turn our attention to lighting, where I’ll demonstrate not only how to light your character in an appealing way, but also how to use lighting to add an element of storytelling to the illustration.
Finally, we’ll bring the whole image together within Blender’s compositor, where we’ll colour balance the image and add some final effects to create a polished end result.
By the end of the course, you’ll have a far greater understanding of what it takes to make an appealing 3D character illustration, and the skills to bring some of your own designs to life.
This course is designed for those who already have some experience with Blender and are ready to take their work to the next level.
If you are new to sculpting in Blender, I'd highly recommend starting out with my Character Sculpting Essentials course, which will teach you everything you need to get started.
I've provided my sea turtle design for you to use but, if you'd like to model a character based upon your own design, consider starting out with my Character Design Essentials course.
The Blender software application can be downloaded for free from: blender.org
Hi, I'm John!
Before building Into Animation I worked as an animator and animation director in children's television for over 15 years.
I love animation and my goal is to give you the best start possible in this exciting and rewarding craft.