A new tool and method for creating 2D animation has turned up in an unlikely place — Blender. Daniel Lara’s has been working with Blender’s Grease Pencil tool, creating some 2D animations. While that sounds nice, it is the tech behind Grease Pencil that really makes it exciting.
Typically, a grease pencil tool in a 3D application would be used for on-screen notes, arcing out animations, planning for in-betweens and things like that. Additions to the stroke editing features along with the sculpt tools, however, made Blender’s Grease Pencil a real alternative for 2D animators. The idea became to get a production ready 2D animation tool that can mix 2D drawings with 3D objects and compositions.
If you haven’t seen how it works, you can check out some of the animations created with it, along with some behind the scenes stuff. It is truly impressive.
Daniel Lara has created a mini-tutorial series showing how you can get started with Blender’s amazing Grease Pencil tool for creating 2D Animations (all listed with that link).
