Character Animation with Blender for Beginners (Udemy.com)
The complete beginners guide to animating 3D characters
Created by: Danan Thilakanathan
Last updated October 2016
What you will learn
- understand the process of 3D character animation
- create more believable and realistic character animation
- animate characters for film and game projects
How it compares
Against the other 100 rated Udemy courses in Blender on CourseDuck:
- Rating3.9 out of 5higher than 2% of them
- Reviews319#60 of 101 by number of reviews
- Length6.2 hoursshorter than 66% of them
- Last updatedOctober 2016earlier than 95% of them
Course Description
Have you ever wanted to bring your own characters to life? Perhaps, you've seen a few animated films and thought, "Man, I wish I could do that"?
You probably don't have a whole lot of cash (as well as time) to invest in learning 3D character animation from an accredited university. Or perhaps you do, but want to get a head-start without forking a lot of cash to start off with.
Even if you've done some character animation before, you may have struggled to understand why your character doesn't look...well...alive.
What's in this course?
In this course, we aim to help you introduce you to the world of character animation as well as imbue life into your character animations. We also aim to ensure that you don't go broke doing so.
You will be learning completely from scratch, the whole process of 3D character animation. Specifically,
- You will learn the skills and techniques of animating realistic and believable characters.
- In addition to learning all the theory-related stuff, you will also get hands-on experience in animating your own scenes. You can follow along as we will animate walks, runs, waving of arms, etc.
- We will also look at more advanced character animation skills to further help enhance the believability and realism of your characters. You will specifically learn how to animate eye movements to help make your character look alive, facial expressions, lip-syncing, etc.
With 40 lectures and 6+ hours of content, there are so many different things you can learn. The topic of 3D character animation is so vast and complex and the learning curve can be so high, especially when starting out. I've gathered everything that I've learned over the years and have organized it in a way that will help you understand most effectively.
Who is this course for?
This will be perfect for absolute beginners as I will walk you step-by-step starting from how to navigate your way around your 3D software towards animating convincing character action. There are no nasty jargon used in this course. Everything is explained in an easy-to-understand manner.
You don't need to know anything about animation. You don't even need to have a 3D software installed as we will cover this. It will help if you have some passion for character animation. At the very least, some passion for CGI-related works.
This course isn't limited to just beginners. Intermediate and Expert level users may also gain valuable knowledge from this course.
What is expected outcome after the course?
By the end of this course, you can expect to have a decent understanding of building convincing and realistic 3D character animation. You will also gain experience and confidence doing your own 3D character animation.
From there, you would be more prepared to start your own projects (imagine being able to create your very own animated short film) or you could start looking at jobs that need character animators. If you choose to do a more formal course on 3D animation, you will most likely get a head start!
Instructor Details
- 3.9 Rating
319 Reviews
Danan Thilakanathan
Hi, my name is Danan. I am a Software Engineer by day and a Filmmaker/Animator/Educator by night.
I started out making an animated short film for fun using Blender a few years ago. It was during this time did I realize I had a huge passion for 3D filmmaking. I have spent the past 5 years making animated short films and have learnt a great deal about the entire process of filmmaking and animation.
This is something that I do as a hobby. Animation and filmmaking is something I'm quite passionate about and I spent a few years trying to learn and master this skill. Through heaps of trial and error and researching on my own, I feel I have come a long way. I would now like to impart this knowledge towards others who feel a similar way.
I know very well, animated filmmaking is hard. Very hard in fact. One of my main goals, is to make the learning process easier for other people. Feel free to check out any of my courses and I hope I have helped you in your quest to achieve your dream! :)
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Reviews
By Amirlan Prashev on 12/25/2023
The course is very bad in my opinion, the instuctor doesnt expain a lot of the stuff that he is doing. And most of these videos can just be found free on youtube. In my opinion if you want a good course about animation, then check out gamed dev tv animation courses.
By Dorian Harrison on 8/19/2020
I went to youtube and watched your short film. I love your animations and want to learn from you! I have great expectations because im a director working with other animators for my first animated film. This course will give me and idea on what is possible and impossible for my animators. Also, Id love to animate with them as well.
By Zeno on 7/23/2020
I don't know how long or many years you need to expert on all the animating procedure here. The teaching, topic and the practical is good but still I'm having difficulty to understand all the process and it seem so complicated. It''s my bad because I'm not good enough to adapt all the technique easily. Next i think, i should find the course that suitable with knowledge level. Anyway thank you for sharing your expertise on this online course. Wish me luck.
By Mike Dodds on 6/25/2020
The course is far too far out of date with respect to Blender, now 2.83. The flex rig was tested on Blender 2.74. There is lot of repetition in the first animations, no explanantion of how to set up the scene. Parts 1 and 2 are good. Also skipped parts. For example at one point we are in the dopesheet, and then suddenly in the NLA, with an action. No explanation of creating an action or pushing it to the NLA.
By LIN-WEE-KUAN Eve on 6/16/2019
Very interesting course, complete and structured. Help to fully understand the whole process of animation. However I have some small remarks and suggestions: - It would be missing some resources or links to click especially for the FlexRig of cg cookie and reference images concerning the phonemes. - The simple walk is easily achievable, very detailed. On the other hand, I did not manage to carry out the simple race correctly, explanations too fast and lack of information concerning the tasks to accomplish, in this respect it would have been desirable and useful to activate the screencast key in order to see the clicks of the mouse and the shortcuts sometimes used. - The English text placed at the bottom of the timeline is often very embarrassing for the comprehension, too big and badly placed for an animation class where the timeline is indispensable and transcribing not always reliable for certain words. Nevertheless for a subject as large and complex, the essential is seen, explained and allows to understand the operation and all the steps of the animation. It really makes you want to practice and have fun creating your own character. Thank you very much.
By Dimas Rizqi on 3/20/2019
I just completed this course in a day. It's useful, well presented and fun throughout! shows how fun is it to watch animation but how difficult and probably time consuming it is to do the same. but this is rather little difficult to follow because sometimes the screen key doesn't turn on. I'm not that hard because I'm a little familiar with the animation blender before this course. btw, This course is only specifically for the way how to animate a character etc So there is NO way of how to modeling-rigging. only for 1. Those who don't have modelling-rigging, we can download on websites that provide a modelling character with rigging. 2. Those who have made rigging themselves but don't know how to animation like movies (like me, lol) If you want to know how to modelling-rigging, this teacher has that courses. Nice. Keep going!
By Mike Crane on 11/2/2018
The course was ok. The information was very comprehensive but unfortunately I lost interest about half-way thru. Challenges for the student to actually do something throughout the course would have made it more engaging. The video resolution was small which made it hard to read the information on the screen. Due to the character that he chose to animate, there was way too much information on the various editors for the reader to digest.
By Adrienn Dory on 8/16/2017
LipSync is not really what it should be. The course itself is useful but the instructor didn't mention too much practices i think. And the pressed keys aren't shown. It's kinda too short. I expected a bit more.
By Jayzon DC. Palma on 5/17/2017
Some of the course chapters were so advance for me and it didn't explain by the instructor how it was made? that's why I try to research how things were done just to follow the course. Half of the entire lecture was pure talking but the good part I learned so many things.
By Adrian Aquila on 11/1/2016
All points made expeditiously and all are important. I have watched 100s of tutorials and yours are the most authoritative which to me is a reflection of your six years of experience and your uncanny ability to spot the differences between seeing what people see, feel, think, and do and what other animators notice.
Quality Score
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Overall Score : 78 / 100









