A little introduction:- Blender is considered a very good and popular 3d package for creating 3d animation but is it got for 2d animation as well? Unlike other specialized 2d animation software Blender has a different approach to creating 2d animation projects. We will see what Blender can offer for people who want to create 2d movies or those who want to use its drawing and animation tools in general.
Blender in 2d animation projects
After few years of working on the grease pencil tool, the Blender team dedicated to showcasing the power of 2d animation in Blender 2.8 through a short animated short film called Hero. The blender institute has released in 2018. This steampunk 2d animated short was created entirely in Blender. It was created using an interesting mixture 2d and 3d techniques as well as animating the character using the traditional stroke-based workflow. The team was able to project backgrounds into spherical environments and to arrange foreground elements on layers in 3d space. Also, the popular Japanese animation studio Kara announced that it will be moving to open-source 3d software Blender for 2d animation purposes. Kara is a motion picture planning and production company and it worked on EVANGELION:3.0+1.0 and the film is already released on 8 March 2021. They switch to Blender because it is open-source and it is free. They were also intrigued by the 2.8 release, which provided a 3d creation tool that worked like paper and pencil. In addition to the short film Hero, several animation artists are using the grease pencil tool. In addition to other Blender tools to work on good-looking and smooth animations.
The process of 2D animation
Like 3D animation in Blender, the process goes through three different stages. First pre-production in which we are going to story, script, storyboard, and animatics using the grease pencil as a primary tool for doing so. The second part is the actual production which we create the character, rig them, create all types of animations, line art, coloring, visual effects, and draw the details you need using Grease pencil. And when you are done with that we can render the final result using Blender's render engine called Cycle or we can use Blender's real-time order engine called Eevee. Finally, we are done with the majority of the project we can go to post-production which is basically all about video editing, transition, zooming, color correction, mixing the audio, music and, so on.
So generally speaking these are the steps and processes you need to go through and skipping one of these can affect 2d animation negatively in one way or another.
The learning curve and difficulty
I would say that learning to create 2d animation in Blender is not harder than creating 3d animations but of course, both require having artistic and technical skills in addition to spending a few hours every day trying to hone your skills. For now, since 2d animation using Blender is relatively new there is a shortage when it comes to learning materials. But there are some artists creating youtube videos and courses about 2d stuff in Blender which will eventually a few years from now generate enough educational material for everyone from tutorials, books, blogs, video courses, and so on.
Grease pencil features
The Grease pencil is a revolutionary tool in Blender that is being used for purposes other than making 2d animations. The grease pencil actually started as a digital version of a real-world grease pencil a quick way for an art director to make notations and make changes on a 3d model or scene for the artist to refer to it when doing revisions. Today after a dedicated team of blender developers and artists worked on it for many years it is now a full 2d drawing and animation system. And this unprecedented integration of 2d tools in 3d animation will enable many artists to create next-level concept art, storyboards, and animations for their 2d animation projects. The grease pencil project objects are a native part of the blender integrated with existing object selection, editing, management, and linking tools. Strokes can be organized into layers and shaded with materials and textures. Besides, a draw mode for strokes these objects can also be edited, sculpted, and weight painted similarly to meshes. Modifiers can be used to deform, generate, and color strokes commonly used mesh modifiers such as an array, subdivide, and armature deform have equivalents for strokes. Rendering effects like blur, shadows, or rim lightning are also available and the grease pencil has a special set of viewport real-time visual effects that can be applied to objects.
I hope you find this article informative. If so then, please consider sharing it with your friends and family.
Facebook page:- I am Animator
Youtube:- I am Animator
Instagram:- @moksh.singh.dangi007
Thank you.
