New Course: Character Design for Production

Hey Blenderheads,

After three months of solid work, I’m happy to announce I’m finally releasing my new tutorial series on character design for Blender.

Currently the first 7 chapters out of 12 are available. The next five chapters will be uploaded over the next few weeks at no extra cost. These first 7 chapters cover modelling, sculpting, retopology and texturing. At the end of chapter 7 you will have a finished Suzanne model, textured and ready for rigging in chapter 8.

Creating characters in 3D can be a scary undertaking. There’s a lot to learn, such as when should I sculpt a character and when should I hand model it? Is it cheating to use a pre-made rig? What format should I export a final animation in? And that’s without even thinking about the character itself!

If you get any of these steps wrong, it could mean starting your project all over again, leading to a lot of wasted time and a huge drop in creativity. If you’re working in a team, things get even more complicated.

Most tutorials only cover one part of the animation pipeline. They teach you how to sculpt a character, but not how to rig it. Or they teach you how to animate a walk cycle, but not how to fix the rig on your own characters.

This tutorial series will help you understand all of the steps in character creation. With over 30 hours of video we’ll cover everything you need to make professional cartoon characters in Blender. From modeling a character, all the way through your first animation.

In it we’ll cover:

  • Modelling
  • Sculpting
  • Retopoogy
  • UV unwrapping
  • Texturing painting
  • Materials
  • Rigging
  • Skin weight painting
  • Animation and
  • Rendering out a final video - where I’ll share my best output settings that I’ve been using for years that give the best combination of quality and file size

By the end of this tutorials series, you’ll have your own version of the Suzanne character, professionally rigged and ready for further animation.

Now it needs to be said, this is NOT a beginners course. With over 30 hours to get through there’s little time for hand-holding. So we won’t be spending a great deal of time covering Blender’s interface or keyboard shortcuts. You’re going to need to have the basics down before tackling this tutorial series. But if you’ve created a few donuts, swords or treasure chests and you’re looking for your next challenge, this series is for you.

In this download you’ll get:

  • 30+ hours of video tutorials guiding you through the character creation process
  • The original Suzanne sketches to model from
  • A final, finished version of the Suzanne rig, ready to animate
  • All the textures and Photoshop files
  • The completed Blender files for all chapters, so you can pick up at any point during the tutorial
  • My personal email address where you can ask any follow up questions

Full details in the video below:

Quick update, chapter 7, covering texturing and materials has just landed.
YouTube version is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1RVvD0BlQnU&list=PL7OrVqZRumXC_X2VFyMowBAfK1Z4bbZAr&index=9&t=0s

Blender Market sales page is here: https://blendermarket.com/products/character-design-for-production
Gumroad sales page here: https://gumroad.com/products/kYajJ/

Another quick updated, Chapter 8 covering rigging went up recently. The free version is here:

That’s it. It’s all done!

The final chapters went live today - Chapter 11 covering animation and Chapter 12 on lighting and rendering.

The full course is available on:
Blender Market: https://blendermarket.com/products/character-design-for-production?fbclid=IwAR2PO1bPmu1LijaOwdK1btHzuEvpMUnG1hKkjAKHTqfvaYm7e0uGsz8vErM

Or Gumroad:
https://gumroad.com/l/kYajJ

The free version is available on YouTube. Chapter 11 is currently up and Chapter 12 will go out tomorrow:

I’ll be running the 20% off sale for another 24 hours, so if you want a tasty discount jump on it soon.