CREATE A STYLIZED FILM CHARACTER IN BLENDER

Follow Julien Kaspar’s character creation workflow guide and discover how to render engaging models for film production

DON’T FORGET TO ADD COLOUR!

During the entire process it's important to use colours to get a good impression of what your character will look like. This goes from early drawings, the initial sculpt, all the way to the later shading. Start early to define a pleasing colour palette for your character. The colours can also have a great impact on the sculpting process since they can give important context to your forms and the appeal of the character. Use Vertex Colors to paint your model with flexibility instead of trying to paint textures. Even simple material colours can do the trick.

In this tutorial I will go over the various steps for creating stylized characters for film productions. This workflow is inspired by the experience gained from previous Open Movie projects at Blender, such as Spring. We will start with the initial concept and 2D drawing and go through all 3D creation steps until the final posing of the model and creating great renders to present your creation. This is also more focused on character creation for film productions instead of game projects. The result could be used for either media, but there are some important distinctions in the workflow.

This is a more compact version of the full course on the Blender Cloud called the ‘Stylized Character Workflow’, including more tips on UV unwrapping, texturing and shading, final posing and presenting your character in a render.