Making an Animated Short Film with Blender

Develop a story idea from a wall sign, explore consequences of touching wet paint, and plan a restrained short film with one character, one location, and careful camera framing.

Model the main building in Blender, refining geometry with bevels, extrudes, and remove doubles. Set up sun lighting and render, with notes on texturing and roof details.

Build a low-poly street of about six buildings in blender, apply materials and textures, model windows and doors with extrusion, bevel, and arrays, and adjust alignment for a cohesive facade.

Extend the street in Blender by extruding and rotating sections, and adjust pivots to refine the building layout. Then generate textures and start blocking based on reference footage.

Model a letterbox in Blender by extruding faces, adding edge loops, and applying a smooth modifier, while aligning the 3D cursor and refining angles for a clean, cinematic look.

Continue blocking part 4 in Blender, refining the pug's neutral poses across hundreds of frames with subtle motions and precise keyframe timing.

Polish the character animation in Blender by refining walk cycles, facial rig control, eye blinks, hand poses, and background setup.

In this second pass, the animator refines a torso and head tilt with timing keyframes, prioritizing upper-body motion and subtle facial focus over blinking.

In this second pass, the animator refines blocking, moves cameras and rigs, and tweaks frames. They add facial detail with blinks and head movements while testing camera angles and letterbox.

Refine the second pass by adjusting eye gaze, head and body poses, and timing to better address the audience, with careful look up movements and a final render check.

Refine the character animation in Blender during the second pass by adjusting eye movement, head rotation, finger and hand poses, and subtle facial expressions to improve believability.

Block and refine facial expressions in Blender in face pass part 2 by keyframing eyebrows, eyes, and mouth, and set up render and metadata options.

Fix extreme facial expressions across frames in face pass part4, adjust mouth openness and eyebrows, and refine control rigs and camera setup to create smoother character animation.

Learn to create alternate walk cycle in Blender by animating a character along a curve with a follow path constraint, tweak timing and keyframes, and refine head turns and blinking.

Continue refining the animation in Blender to finish the short film by correcting harsh timing and mouth movements, adjusting the piano physics and keyframes, adding sound, and seeking feedback.

Rework the background by rearranging and mirroring street assets, aligning buildings, and applying precise rotations and scales in Blender, then render for feedback.

Refine animation timing in Blender by adjusting gaze and hand height, speeding the piano moment, and using the dope sheet and graph editor to refine keyframes.

Create roof tiles in Blender and retexture the roof to improve the shingles, using array modifiers, random selection, and proportional editing to adjust placement and scale.

Apply camera settings to control focal length and depth of field in Blender, using f-stops and keyframes to keep the subject in sharp focus while backgrounds blur.

Enhance the final composition and timing through test renders, optimize path tracing with two passes, apply color grading, and orchestrate scene elements via keyframes for selective rendering.