Hello Blendmen and Blendettes
Now, since 2.5 release years ago, I’m sure quite a a lot of you had the pleasure of testing the various iterations of the Grease Pencil Tools. As of now, it holds a few issues that I don’t like and kinda hinders me from doing actual serious 2D animation work but I always knew it held a lot of potential.
Years ago, upon hearing of the forthcoming of 2.8, I was in complete awe of what was in preparation for the GP tool in Blender. My first sight of the renewal of the tool was upon watching this fan art video of Kairos: https://vimeo.com/channels/greasepencil/164067136
This article on Lesterbank’s really went on to rise my hype even more:
After watching a few tutorials and sneak peek from Pepe School Land on Vimeo: https://vimeo.com/channels/greasepencil
I started to spread the word around every animation community I knew and I was subscribed in…
Unlike the 3D CG world in which the competition is harsh and the market is rigid and inflexible as most low end and high end studios are ‘‘stuck’’ with AutoDesk Products, the 2D market is extremely versatile. 2D pipeline and work are usually very open and flexible to change.
The only contenders in the 2D Market right now are Adobe’s Flash Animate, ToonBoom Harmony and TVPaint. Most of them are used for 2D ‘‘puppet’’ animation (for most tv shows at least) , something every 3D package including Blender can already easily do. However, mixing 2D Puppets animation with hand drawn keyframing is usually a key aspect for most productions; the advent of GP Tool in Blender made this something really accessible now.
But now think about it: you have Puppet Animation (plane with textures on them), Traditional Animation tools (Grease Pencil), Formal coloring tools, Layers, Modifiers, a 3D vector space with absolutely no limitation in forms of layers, Actual Light sources that can illuminate you GP drawing (imagine if we could paint Normals texture data on the layers!!!), 3D meshes and deformable objects as well as tons of Particle effects and rendering options…all in one software…Features none of the other softwares have.
I know this thread might seem pointless but it’s crazy when you think about it; Blender might be one of those serious contenders for actual professional 2D Work!!! At least, in the TV Market.
I’m really eager to see what the team has cooked for us seriously. Will the new GP tools be available with the first release of 2.8 of will we have to wait further iterations to see a stable release?