Filmmaking with Blender: Create Your Own Animated Short Film

1. Introduction: Hi. My name is Pascal Ferrere and I'm the creator of Short & Petit. When you watch a film from Disney or Pixar, do you ask yourself, how did they do this and how can I do it? Well, you won't be able to create a full feature film with the quality of Pixar on your own, but you can create your own animated short film. This is what I've done for the past eight months. I worked really hard and created Tikka, a short animated film made with Blender and telling the story of a young squirrel becoming friends with a leaf. You can check it out on YouTube if you'd like. In this course, I'm going to show you how I did it, with real examples using the files that I have created for my film. We are going to see the entire process step-by-step. Finding an idea, writing the story, defining an artistic direction, developing the character design and the environment, writing the scripts, creating the storyboard, planning the project, working then modeling, texturing, rigging, staging, animation, lighting cameras, and finally, rendering, compositing, and sound design. I know it sounds like a lot, but follow me on this journey and I'll show you all my film making tips and tricks so you can create your own animated short film. Let's get started. 2. Class Project: Before we get started with the course, I need to tell you a few things. First of all, this course is open to everyone. It doesn't really matter if you're a beginner, intermediate level, or if you are a complete expert with Blender. I'm pretty sure you're going to learn something along the way, so don't worry too much about your level. However, and I come to the second point with this, I am not going to teach you Blender specifically. I am expecting you to have at least a basic understanding of what Blender is, the interface, and all the different functionalities of the software, otherwise, that's going to be a bit difficult for you to understand what is happening as soon as we jump into the 3D functionalities. The third point is about the course itself. This course is really here to give you a global understanding on how you can actually create your own animated short film and how you can tackle such a big project even if you work on your own. Then, at the end of this course, I would like you to do a little exercise. I would like you to come up with an idea for a script, to write it down, and to make one concept art for a film or the idea of a film that you would like to do. Now that we have this out of the way, let's get started. 3. Equipment: Making an animated short film is not really easy. It's doable, but definitely not simple. If you want to be able to complete the project, you need to have some basic equipments. Let's see what you need in terms of hardware and software. The first thing you need is, of course, a computer, but there is one very important thing that you need part of your computer, and this is the graphics card, also called the GPU. Why is it important? Because the faster your GPU is, and the faster you're going to be able to render the work, the faster you can render it, the faster you can preview the work that you have done and eventually make changes. Having a decent GPU is really recommended. During this course you're also going to see me using a graphic tablet. I am using a Wacom Cintiq 13 HD. It's not at the top of the line in terms of tablets, but this is such a good tool and I can only recommend it if you are serious about getting into animation and 3D. A good camera and a tripod is also very useful. I would definitely recommend you to get one. If you don't have one already, you don't need to break the bank you can also just use your smart phone if you have one. But basically during the animation phase, you're going to have to record yourself in order to have video references. Having a camera and a tripod is always going to be a good thing. When it comes to voice acting, if you plan on doing it yourself, you will need to have a microphone. Now, again, you don't need to break the bank, but having a good microphone anyway, is always a good investments. In my case I am using a Rode NT1-A. This is what I used for the voice acting in my film, and I can highly recommend it. Very good microphone. Finally, for the hardware, you need to have some good headphones. Now, this is especially important when we arrive at the end of the project with the music and the sound effects, all the sound design thing. You want to be able to hear that with the best possible quality. Having good headphones is always a good thing. Personally, I am using some AKG Reference K702 very good headphones, I can recommend it. When it comes to software, the first thing you need is a text editing software. Now in my case, I'm just using Google Docs because it comes for free if you have a Google account and it's actually a very good software. When it comes to project management. It's the same thing.I wanted to keep things as simple as possible so instead of going for a very complex and fancy software specialized in project management, I just went for Google's spreadsheets. To be honest, it does the job and it's very simple to use. When it comes to 3D, I am using Blender. I am specifically using Blender 2.93 at a time I'm recording this video and if you don't have it, go on blender.org and download the latest version. Now when it comes to storyboards, there is one software which is fantastic and completely free, and it's called Storyboarder. Now, Storyboarder is made by Wonder Units, and if you want to use it, you really need to have a graphic tablet. This is also why I told you in the hardware section that you should actually try to get a graphic tablet if you don't already have one. When it comes to texturing, there is one software which is the reference in the industry, and this is a Substance Painter. In this course, this is what I'm going to use for the texturing of my characters. It's not a free software, you have to pay for it, but trust me, if you are serious about getting into 3D and animation, you should definitely get Substance Painter. Now there is always a moment where you're going to need to do some slight changes on your photos and photo editing software is something that you should always have. Many people use Photoshop, but in my case I am using Affinity Photo. It's pretty much the same, except that it's way cheaper than Photoshop. During this course, you'll probably going to see me using another software called Affinity Designer. Affinity Designer is not specifically made for photo editing, it's made for sketching and creating arts. If you already have Photoshop, you definitely don't need to have a software like Affinity Designer, but if you want to have something that is specifically made for sketching and for creating arts, then you can use Affinity Designer. I highly recommend it. When it comes to video editing, you can use many different software, but in my case, I am using Davinci Resolve Studio. Now the studio version is not free, but you can just go on the website of Blackmagic Design and get the free version of the Davinci Resolve. It's a fantastic video editing tool and I can only recommend it. 4. Ideas & Limitations: It always starts with an idea and your first job is to find inspiration. I know this is easier said than done, but you cannot create anything without inspiration. So look around you, look at people, look at nature, go take a walk, read a book, watch a movie, go to the museum. Inspiration is everywhere. You just need a bit of luck and patience. Once you have found inspiration and have an idea, make sure it's unique and simple. Remember, you are going to work alone on this project. You can't afford to go crazy with your idea. It needs to be something simple and because it's simple, it does not mean it's boring. Forget about the zombies, robots, dragons, aliens, and things like this. It's way too complex and these topics are not unique at all, we've seen that 1,000 times already. When it comes to limitations, you want to create a maximum of two characters. You're probably going to ask, why only two characters? The answer is simple: the amount of work. Creating a character is very difficult. You first need to work on the design, then move on to the modeling, with the sculpting and retopology, then you need to texture it, create the rigging, and finally animate it. This is a huge amount of work for just one person. You do need characters, but you also need environments. It's up to you to decide how many environments you need in order to tell your story, but I would also recommend a maximum of two. A good trick is to use variations of the same environment. In Tika, I have created two environments. The clearing with the big tree in the middle; you can see it at the very beginning of the film during the establishing shot, and the second environment is the inside of the tree where most of the action is taking place. But in the middle of the film, when the leaf falls down, Tika climbs down the tree and ends up back in the first environment on the ground in the middle of the clearing, which is just a variation of the first environment. Avoid complex animals and creatures. Earlier I told you not to create dragons, and there is a good reason for this. If you think about it, a dragon has four legs: one long neck, one long tail, and two wings. This is a total of eight limbs that you will have to animate without any real-life references. It takes some serious skills to create and animate such a creature. If you're a beginner, forget about complex animals and creatures and go for something very simple. Try to keep your characters silent. If you decide to create humans, you may be tempted to create dialogues and make them talk. The first issue is the lip synchronization between the voice actor and the 3D model. It's not that easy. Also, if your character talks, then you will have to pick a language for your film. But keep in mind that not everyone speaks the same language. Before you start the production, you should define the resolution and aspect ratio for your film. There are a lot of possibilities here and it's totally up to you. Four by three, 16 by nine, cinemascope, maybe 1080p is enough for you or maybe you want to go with the 4K. Whatever you decide, just be aware that the higher resolution you work with and the bigger the impact is going to be on your files and on the render time. Finally, don't be too ambitious. Try to keep your film under five minutes. It may sound like it's nothing but five minutes of animation for just one person, it's a lot of work. I would recommend you to animate maybe 2-3 minutes, but if it's not enough to tell your story, then go for five, but not beyond. It's time for a little exercise. I would like you to find an idea. Take as much time as you want and try to look for inspiration. Remember the limitations. Find something unique and very simple, two characters maximum, avoid complex creatures, and avoid dialogues. Once you feel like you have something good, write it down in your notebook. 5. Story: Before we jump into Google Docs and start writing, it's important to talk a little bit about the structure of the story. Modern stories are usually divided into three acts. During act 1, the audience needs to discover who are the main characters? Where is the action happening? When is the action taking place? During act 2, the journey of the main character starts, and we need to find out what is happening. What is the character trying to achieve? What is the main goal and what are the obstacles along the way? Finally, act 3 is the conclusion. The journey of your character needs to come to an end. In most cases, the character faces the last and the biggest obstacle of the story during this act. Of course, you can come up with your own structure, but dividing your story into three acts is something that works pretty well usually. You also need to work on what is called the character arc. We can explain the character arc quite easily with a simple graph. During the entire story, your character needs to go through a journey and move forward. However, your story is not going to be very interesting if nothing happens. Your character needs to face obstacles. These obstacles can be small or big. The character can either overcome the obstacles or fail. But it's important to feel a sense of progression throughout the journey. Finally, as a last tip, remember that a good story needs to create a connection on an emotional level. It can be joy, fear, surprise, anger, sadness. It doesn't really matter. But we need to feel something, we need to feel for your character. Now, let's take a look at the story of Tika and how I wrote it. Your story needs to have a theme. In my case for Tika, it's about friendship. It's about the loss of someone, seasons and the passing of time. You also need to define a moral for your story. In my case, it's about time and the fact that you can't control time, it brings good moments and bad moments. But you should never lose faith. Good things always come back in life. Once you have defined these theme and the moral of your story, you can start to move on to the writing. Think about what we talked at the very beginning. Start with act 1, act 2, and then finish with act 3. During act 1, you need to define who, where, when, and explain what is going to happen. I'm not going to read the entire story for you, but just so you know, the story of Tika is pretty simple. It's about a squirrel who becomes friends with the leaf. They are going to spend the seasons together, spring, summer, and then fall. The problem is that when fall arrives, something critical is going to happen. Because for nature, fall is usually the end. At the end of fall, the leaf is going to die, and then the squirrel is going to be alone, is going to spend the whole winter alone. By the end of the story, in the winter, in act 3, spring is going to come back, and with spring, the leaf is also going to come back. In act 1, we define the characters, and here we have our young squirrel. We also define where is the action taking place? At the top of a large tree in the middle of a clearing. When is the action taking place? During the day in spring. We keep on moving and we face our first obstacle. This is when the squirrel is trying to catch the nut, but he can't make it because he is too small. We then have the introduction of our second character, the leaf. Finally, we end up with the resolution of the first obstacle. The leaf is going to give the nut to the squirrel, and this is how their friendship begins. That creates our act 1. If we move on to act 2, this is where we explain the journey, the things that actually happen during the story. Here, it's all about seasons passing. We started in spring, then we move on to summer, and eventually we arrive at fall. For each season, the leaf is going to change color and change size. With these elements, we understand that something critical is going to happen. Eventually it happens, the leaf dies. This is the really critical moment of our story. If you remember what we talked about about character arcs, at that very moment in the story, the character is at the very bottom of the arc, is at a very critical point where everything just fails for him. Then we keep on moving and we understand that this is a huge failure of our character and we end the act 2 with his failure. If we move on to act 3, this is when winter arrives. There is nothing the squirrel can do, and he has to sleep through the entire winter. Finally, spring comes back and this is where we understand that good things are going to come back eventually. The leaf also comes back because spring is back. It's time for a little exercise. I would like you to reuse the document I created and write down your own story, find a theme, and also think about the moral of your story. When you have this, you can start writing it down, start with act 1 and explain who, where, and when is the action taking place. Then move on to act 2 and explain the entire journey and the obstacles to overcome. Finally, bring your journey to an end in act 3, everything needs to be resolved here. That's the final obstacle to overcome, and the end of the journey for your character. Good luck. 6. Artistic Direction: Every film is following an artistic direction and it's important to define it from the beginning. Your creativity and imagination is the limits, and you are free to pick the artistic direction you want. Just know that in most cases, we can divide the artistic direction in two categories. The first one is photorealism, and the meaning is in the name itself. You want your film to look exactly like real life and the viewers should even forget that they are looking at something computer-generated. A good example is the Lion King from 2019. Just keep in mind that photorealism is very expensive in terms of image rendering. The second one is stylized. In this case, all the rules of physics are broken and it looks nothing like the real world. It's the opposite of photorealism and viewers are fully aware or they are looking at something computer-generated. The Lego Movie from 2014 is a good example. Of course, it's possible to mix both worlds and create a stylized character evolving in the photorealistic environments. For example, The Good Dinosaur by Pixar is using this hybrid style. Now, it's also the time for you to decide the overall look of the film. Do you want to go with something very colorful and vibrant, or maybe very dark and even, maybe, black and white? If you prefer a stylized artistic direction, maybe you want to go with something very graphical, like a painting or a sketching effect. You just need to know that changing the artistic direction in the middle of the project is a very bad idea? It's going to create tons of new issues so the earlier you decide, the better. When I started working on Tikka, I knew that I wanted to have something stylized. I was not interested in photorealism because I work on my own and this is way too complex for just one person. So the stylized art direction was definitely what I wanted but in terms of look, I was considering many options, and one option that I really love is this Japanese look. Unfortunately, I realized very quickly that this is way too much work for just one person so I dropped it pretty quickly and I kept on looking for something. Eventually, I found this. This is actually done with Unreal Engine, but this is not very important, what's important here is about the artistic direction. I really loved the simplicity of these environments. You can see that there is very few shapes, the shapes are very limited but everything is about the composition and the colors. It's very simple and yet it works really well, and it gives a very emotional feeling to the environment. It's almost poetic in a way and I really loved that. I knew I wanted to go in that direction, yet I wanted to give some painterly look to my film. One artist that I really love is Heikala. She is a watercolor painter and the work that she does is stunning. At first, I was really interested in doing something very similar in 3D, but very quickly, I realized this is also way too complex. Making some watercolor effects in 3D, it's not that easy. At some points, I kept on making tests and using the lighting and boy shader, I finally managed to do something like this and I fell in love immediately with it. Here, you can really see that we have this painterly effect where we can see the brush, and yet it is complete 3D. There is nothing 2D here. Once I have found this, I was extremely happy with that artistic direction and I knew I could start working on the project. 7. Character Design: Before you start sketching, try to think about the details of your character. What's his name? How old is he? Where is he from? What's his personality? Is he the protagonists or the antagonist? Answering all these questions should guide you in the creation of your character. You also need to use references. Go online and look for artwork made by a professional character artists. Artstation is one of the best websites for references, and I personally use it a lot. The goal here is not to copy, but to find guidance and inspiration. As soon as you feel like you have something, it's time to sketch. Use what works best for you. I tend to start on my sketchbook and later on, when I'm happy with the design, I move to the computer, but everyone works differently. In Tikka, there is two main characters. There is the squirrel called the Tikka, and there is the leaf called Bloo. Here, I started working on the character design of Tikka. I always start on my sketch book, but very quickly I moved onto the computer, and here I started defining the shapes of the character and especially the proportions. Once I was happy with the design, I then moved on to the facial expressions. It's actually very important to define a few key facial expressions for your character. I then did the exact same for the leaf, Bloo. For this character, I knew that she would have to evolve during the film, turning from an adult leaf back to a baby leaf, and I also knew that Bloo would have to evolve during the seasons and she would have to change colors. So I also worked on this. Once I was happy with the design, I also moved on to the different facial expressions, just like I did earlier with Tikka. You can see here that the design changed quite a lot from my early sketches and the final film. Also, I'm not a professional illustrator so of course the quality of my drawing is not necessarily the best. 8. Environment Design: The design of the environment works the exact same way as the character design. Try to think about the details first. Where is the action taking place? What's the date and the time? What emotion do you want to convey with the environment? Remember that the environment should support the story. All the elements you place in your environment should be coherent with the story, and they should be there for a good reason. For example, in [inaudible] the main environment is the clearing and the main element in the clearing is the big tree. My goal was to create something very friendly, relaxing, and calm. However, if I add something like a war tank in the middle of the clearing, then it changes the story completely. As a viewer, I may ask myself, is the film going to be violent? Is the story about some conflicts? Is there a war going on? In this example, my environment is not supporting the story at all, but it's creating confusion instead. It took me a while to figure out how to create a good environment, something eye-catchy that is interesting for the film. I'm going to show you all the different tests that I have done before I actually found the environment that I was happy with. Here, in this very early version, you get to see that it's horrible. There is nothing to look at. It's just a bunch of trees randomly placed, and it just doesn't look good. But I kept on moving, making new versions of that scene. You can see I'm also trying to add some atmosphere to the environment. But still, at that point, I was really not happy with the results, and I figured the main element of my environment needs to be the tree because everything is going to happen here in terms of story. I kept working, kept on making new versions, working on this title, working on the atmosphere, and of course, keeping this big tree. But at some point, I was so lost and so unhappy with the results that I completely changed the style. It is still stylized, but completely different. Again, I was really not happy with it, so I put everything to the trash and I kept working with a new style. Here is the point where I lost my mind a little bit because this is not really stylized anymore, or at least it's not stylized enough. I'm going too close to realism, so I kept working on this for a while, but at some point, I came back to my senses and realized that this is not what I want. It's actually too gloomy, it's not the atmosphere that I want to give to the film, it's too dark, and I changed it again. I worked on a new style, erasing that forest and just working on a clearing with a big tree in the middle. Eventually, I found something that I was quite happy with. Even though this is not the final version of the film, I was already much happier with these result, and that was the process for me on how I worked on my environment. 9. Script: At this stage, we found an idea. We wrote the basics of the story. We have defined an artistic direction and we have it designed for our characters and the environment. It's time to get a little bit more technical and write the scripts. Be aware that the first try is not going to be the one. This exercise is far from being easy and you will have to create a few versions before you get something you're happy with. There are multiple ways to write a script, but the way I like to do it is by thinking in terms of camera perspective. Anyone reading your script should be able to understand where the action is taking place, where the characters are located in space, and where is the camera? For this task, you need to get familiar with film-making vocabulary, the different types of camera shots, camera angles, and movements. Is it a long shots, medium shot, close up, low angle, high angle, over the shoulder, dolly, pan, tilt? Your decision for the shot angle and movement needs to be based on the storytelling and it needs to support the story. In Tikka, for example, in Scene 4, shot A, I'm using a medium shot with a dolly zoom effect, also called the pull-push. The leaf just fell down the tree and the shot is about the reaction of the squirrel. Let's take a look at it. Can you see it? Do you see how the background is shifting? It's a pretty subtle effect and I'm using it to reinforce the feeling of fear and surprise that the character is experiencing at this moment of the story. Now, take a moment to download the script of Tikka and take a look at it. Look how I divided my story. It's made of multiple scenes, and each scene is made of multiple shots. For each shots, I'm defining the action from a camera perspective using film-making vocabulary. Let's take a look at the script of Tikka together. I'm not going to read everything, but let's just take a look at Scene 1. Tikka is made of eight scenes, 45 shots for a duration of five minutes and a half. Now, keep in mind that this duration is just an estimate at this point. Is very important to keep an estimate of the total duration of the film because if you suddenly realize that your film and your scripts is 10 or 20 minutes long, then you know you have a problem and you probably need to revise the story. Now, it start with Scene 1, shot A, and here we have an establishing shot. We have a dolly through the clearing with a light wind. A butterfly gets in the field of view, flies forward and then up in the branches of the tree. The camera then tilts up into the branches. Then we move on to shot B. We have a full shot with a low angle. It's again a dolly through the branches. Tikka climbs off the branch as the camera stops, is hungry, his belly is growling. He starts sniffing the air, then goes down, start sniffing the branch and stands up looking to the right. Now, here we have an element of curiosity. Tikka is looking for something. We then move on to shot C, which is a full shot with a low angle. Here, this is the big reveal. An acorn is hanging on the branch at the top of the tree. We then move on to shot D, which is a medium shot. Here, Tikka notices the acorn. His surprise turns into joy. He stays still for a few seconds, then leaves the frame running toward the acorn. Here we come to the end of Scene 1. I hope you understand what the script is being used for here. We just try to divide our story into scenes and into shots. Now that you know how to do it, it's time for you to write your own scripts. 10. Storyboard: Now that we have our scripts, we can move on to the storyboard. It doesn't matter if you're not a professional illustrator, the goal here is not to create arts, but to tell the story in a visual way. The most important thing is to work on the emotions, the movements, and the action of the story. By making the storyboard, you'll probably realize some things worked pretty well in the scripts, but they don't work anymore visually. The game here is to move back and forth between the scripts and the storyboard. In order to get the story just right, you will have to draw and erase and write and erase and start again many times. It's a time-consuming process, but the storyboard is going to be our guide once we start making the film in the 3D software, so you want to get it right. Let me show you how I would work on the storyboard. Here I'm using storyboarder and I'm going to try to recreate scene 1 of the film just so you have an example on how I approach this task. First of all, the script is right next to me on my secondary screen and you can see it of course, but I am following the scripts specifically in order to make the storyboard. Here, the first thing that I want to do is create the establishing shots with the clearing. Now, storyboard comes up with a shot generator which is a fantastic tool, and if you have a human characters, you can even create those fake rigs and place them wherever you want to make them have any action that you want. It is fantastic truly. But in my case, I don't need this. I just want to have this perspective plane here. I'm simply going to click here, come back to storyboarder and here it is. I want to start with the clearing and I want to have a butterfly flying around and a big tree. I'm also going to use the grids just to have some help visually. Let's start with the butterfly, it's supposed to be flying around in the middle of the scene, like so and I'm going to have my big tree somewhere here. Now, again, this is not art. That's not the point of a storyboard, so don't go crazy and don't try to create something that looks visually absolutely amazing, it's really not the point. No one is going to look at your storyboard other than yourself and the people who work with you. You really don't want to impress anyone here. You just want to work on the movements and the story. Now we have our big tree and we have our butterfly flying around. We just want to indicate that is going to fly in that direction. This is shots 1A. I'm happy with that. Let's move on to shot 1B. We have Tikka inside the branches and this is the moment where we discover Tikka. Let's draw the branches. We are inside the tree here. That's the trunk and that's the main branch or something like this. Here in the middle, we're going to have Tikka. This is supposed to be a dolly shot where the camera is moving closer and closer. Again, I'm not trying to create art here. The goal is really to just have something where we understand what is going on. Of course, he has this completely disproportionate tail. Something that I guess, that's good enough. Now, let's move on to shot C, and here in this shot, we want to have the acorn somewhere right in the middle here, and the acorn is somewhere in the branches up in the tree. Again, it doesn't matter, we just want to understand visually that this is the acorn in the branches. Now for the final key shots, which is the number D, we want to have a medium shot where Tikka is looking directly at the acorn and is happy. Again, I want to keep that to the middle. Actually, I made a mistake. This is supposed to be a medium shots. Something like this is way better. Now we have our different shots for scene 1. We have the establishing shots with the butterfly flying in. We have a shot B where Tikka is on the branch and the camera is moving with the dolly towards him. We have shot C where we have the acorn in the middle of the tree. We have shot D where Tikka notices that the acorn is there and he's about to move on to try to catch the acorn. Now, of course, this is not enough. We need to have in-betweens between each shot here. In order to create these movements, we basically want to create the film with the storyboard. Here this is definitely not enough in order to visually understand what is going on. You need to create in-betweens. For example, here, I would need something like two or three more shots in-between shot A and shot B in order to create these movements and in order to make sure people understand visually the butterfly is flying towards the tree and then moving in inside the tree up to this specific shot. That's how you can work on the storyboard using storyboarder. 11. Project Management: Creating your own film means that you are going to end up with thousands of files and gigabytes or even maybe terabytes of data. The folder that contains my film Tikka is made of 23,000 files for a total of 400 gigabytes, and that includes everything. The image references, my sketches, the production files, and the rendering. It's quite obvious that we need to stay organized. There are a few simple tricks that can help you to keep your work in order and make progress without losing your mind. First, you need to define the pipeline. It means that the process of creation for the film needs to be organized in steps. The good thing is that each lesson of this course is the explanation of each step. For example, it doesn't make any sense to work on the rigging if you're not done with the character design and the modeling of your character. Use product management tools or create a document in order to keep track of your work. For Tikka, I have created a huge document using Google Spreadsheets in which I was keeping track of my progress, what needs to be done, what is finished, or needs to be updated. Create one folder for your project and keep all your files organized inside this main folder. Create subfolders inside this main folder for each task of the project. This is how I organized my project, Tikka. Anim is for all the animation files. Assets contains the various files like HDRIs or background images. Compositing is for all the compositing files. Editing is for all the final movie files. Lib means library, and it contains all the production files like characters, props, and environments. Marketing contains all the files necessary for the promotion of the film on social media. Pre contains the early sketches and the character design and the references for example. Rendering is for all the files that are fully rendered. Storyboard finally contains the storyboard itself. Define and follow a naming convention for your files. For example, in Tikka, all my animation files are following the same naming convention. Each file starts with a scene number, followed by the letter of the shots, and it's ending with a version number of the file, and I'm exclusively using underscores. It's best practice to never keep working on the same file and use versioning instead. From time to time and especially when you feel like you have reached a key moment in your work, it's always a good idea to create a new version of your file and keep working on this new version. In Blender you can use save as, then click on the plus icon, and that's going to save a new file, then you can keep working on it. Blender will automatically take care of the naming of the file, so you don't have to worry about this. The worst thing that can happen to you is to lose all your work, so create backups and try to make this process automatic so you don't even have to think about it. For Tikka, I use a software called FreeFileSync. It simply copies my entire work folder from my primary hard drive and makes a full copy of it to a secondary hard drive. I'm also using Google backup to automatically copy all my files directly to the Clouds. When I started working on Tikka, I knew I had to track my progress. Very early I created this documents using Google Spreadsheets. The document is very simple and is divided into two sections. On the left side, you have the scenes. I have eight different scenes in Tikka. Then you have the shots and for each shot, I am defining what is the start frame and what is the end frame. That way I know exactly how many frames I have per shot, and I know exactly how many seconds is the duration of each shot. On the right side, I am tracking the progress of the film. It starts with the blocking. Then once the blocking is done, I move on to the animation pass 1, animation pass 2, animation pass 3. Once the animation is done, I can move on to the rendering, compositing, and finally, color correction. The way it works is very simple. I just changed the status of each task every day. The task can either be on ToDo, which means I need to do it. It can be in progress, which means that I am currently working on it. It can be removed, which means that this is no longer needed for the film. Or it can be unfinished, which means that I worked on it earlier, but I had to stop and move on to a new task. But I still need to finish this. It's extremely simple and using that kind of document is really necessary. Every single day, you want to know where are you? Are you at 10 percent of the film? Are you at 50 percent? How much do you still have to do, and how long did it take you? It is very important because you really want to feel a sense of progress. You want to feel like you are actually working and you are getting there. It's really also helps in terms of motivation. Of course, the goal is to have everything green and when you have that, it means that the movie is done. 12. Modeling: Modeling is not exclusively for characters, you can also model props and environments. The very first step of modeling is called blocking. During this step, you only want to use very basic shapes like cylinders, spheres, cubes, and rectangles in order to build the overall structure of what it is you're trying to create. A good tip is to preview your blocked-out model as a silhouette. If the silhouette looks good, then you're in the right direction and you can merge all the elements together and start sculpting. Many character artists use ZBrush for sculpting. It's pretty much the industry standards, but it's not a free software. I personally use Blender. Sculpting is not that simple but it's actually pretty fun and also kind of relaxing. Start big with the overall shape, and as you make progress, then move on to the details. Be careful not to do it the opposite way around. Your character, once fully sculpted, contains hundreds of thousands or even millions of polygons. It's impossible for a computer to animate that. This is why you need to move on to the next step which is called retopology. It simply means that you are going to turn your high-resolution sculpture into a simplified version with a low amount of polygons, and this way the computer can easily animate it and render it. Creating good topology is very important as it's going to have a real impact on the final render. A character with bad topology will most likely have bad deformations, resulting in mutation for the animation. So don't hesitate to look at examples and use topology guides. Personally, with Blender, I use a plugin called RetopoFlow, and it's not free, but I can highly recommend it. Retopology can be quite tricky and this plugin makes it so much easier. The first thing I did when I started working on the character of Tikka was the blocking. Here you can see an example of the blocking idea just using rectangles, spheres, and very basic shapes. Just to get an understanding of the proportions of the character, I was really trying to match as closely as possible the illustration that I created earlier right here. I kept on working with the blocking and then very quickly moved on to the sculpting with a more detailed version of the character. Again, trying to match my original drawing, my illustration. The problem here is that the character, even though it looks quite close to the illustration, does not work in terms of 3D. Animating that character would be a real pain because of the way it's been built. You can see that the legs are completely attached to the body in a very weird way. That would create some real problems in terms of deformation. Even though it looks good as an illustration in 3D, it does not work at all. I decided to look for more references and to just drop that design. I denoted that version of a real squirrel and tried to understand a bit more how they work. The thing with squirrels is that they can actually move with their full legs when they run and walk, but they can also just stand up on their two back legs. I really needed to do something like this for my character. The anatomy of that squirrel really helped me to create the next version of Tikka. This is how it looks. As you can see, the anatomy is now completely different and the body of the squirrel looks more like the body of a human than an actual squirrel. So here, the deformation would actually work for the arms and for the legs. I kept on working and eventually ended up with that final version of Tikka. Now the proportions are way better. We can still see that this is the squirrel from the original illustration, but now it can definitely work, and I can perfectly animate this without having any problems in terms of deformation. The last step of the process was to actually create the retopology for the character. Once I was done sculpting, I had to clean up my sculpture and I had to create a low-resolution version of my character so I can properly animate it. Here you can see the final version with the final topology, and as you can see here with the statistics at the very bottom of the page, I only have a total of 3,000 vertices for that character, which is not that much and the computer can very easily animate this. 13. Texturing: We can divide texturing in two categories. There is image texturing, which consists in creating and applying textures directly to a 3D model, and there is procedural texturing where the computer generates the textures directly using parameters that you have defined. It's up to you to decide what texturing technique you want to use for your projects, and you can actually use both depending on the situation. When you work with image textures, the first step is the UV mapping where you unwrap your 3D model and turn it into a flat 2D image. Once you've done that, you can jump into your favorite texturing software, and in my case I'm using Substance Painter. At this stage, it's important to remember your choices in terms of artistic direction. For example, the texturing of a rock is going to be completely different if it's stylized or if it's photo realistic. Also, keep in mind that you may need different sets of resolutions for your textures. If an object like a rock is going to be right next to the camera during a close-up shot, then you need to have a high resolution version of this texture. However, if this same rock is going to be very far away in the background, then a high resolution texture is unnecessary and is going to slow down your render. As a final tip, I'd like you to take a look at these screenshots from the movie, The Incredibles by Pixar. Look at the road. Can you see the pattern and how the texture is being reused to create the highway? Here, look at the water and the buildings in the background. Can you see how simple it is? In this one, look at the ground and the rock behind the main character. I think we can all agree that the quality of the textures in this movie are not the best. Of course, the film was released in 2004, that also explains the technical limitations. But what I'm trying to tell you here is that good textures don't make a good movie. The Incredibles is actually a very good film. But it's good because of the story and the characters, so don't stress out too much about the textures of your film. Most people won't notice, and if they do, they will probably forgive you if your story is amazing. Substance Painter is a great texturing software because it works with layers. You can either use the material library that they have and apply this directly to your character, or you can paint on the character directly using a set of brushes. Here for Tika, it's a combination of both. I have used materials to create the base of the character, but I also painted on it with special brushes in order to create some special effects. Let me show you. It starts with the body and a flat color. I've added some additional layers just to make the color a little bit more interesting visually. Then I moved on to the fur in order to create this fake fur effect. I couldn't create realistic fur with particles, I had to find a way to make the character look like he has fur even though in reality it doesn't. Here with this simple brush painting on the character, I was able to create this fake fur effect, and it works pretty well from distance. Then I have an additional layer of fur with the color creating a bit more variation and making the character look a bit more interesting. Then I have additional details and finally, I have the ambient occlusion. This is how the character of Tika is created in Substance Painter. I created another version, which is the wet version of Tika, and this version is used exclusively in the one shot during fall when Tika and Blue blue under the rain. I wanted the character to look wet, but I didn't want to create this effect directly in the 3D software. This is the power of Substance Painter. As you can see here, the rain effect looks really good and this is simply a texture generated directly by Substance Painter. As soon as I was done with the texturing in Substance Painter, I moved back to Blender. The first step, of course, is to export the textures and then, you can reconnect all these textures in order to create the final texture for the character. Here, I am using something a bit special called the Lightning Boy Shader. If you want to know a bit more about this, you can go on gum road and find out more information about this specific shader. It is extremely useful especially if you want to create stylized animation. Here in Blender, my texture which is called Body defaults, is connected with all the different textures that I have created earlier in Substance Painter, and that gives me this final look. 14. Rigging: In order to move on to the animation phase, your character needs to be rigged, and by the way, rigging is not only for characters. You can rig everything, cars, planes, robots, literally anything, but in order to keep the explanation simple, we are going to talk about characters. Just like with the puppet, the goal is to add a skeleton to the character so you can articulate each part of the character and animate it. In Blender, the elements of the skeleton are actually called bones. Rigging is quite technical. If you want your character to do very fancy movements like bending, squashing, and stretching, the rigging can become very complex, but it's extremely important to have your character properly rigged. If not, animating your character is going to be a real struggle. You can build your own rig from scratch, but personally, I like to use plugins in order to facilitate this task. For Blender, there are many plug-ins available, but I personally use Auto-Rig Pro and CloudRig, which is a free extension of a Rigify developed by Blender. In Tikka, all my characters are rigged using Rigify and CloudRig addon. If you go to Edit and Preferences, you can see that I have my Rigify addon activated and on top of it, I have installed this special feature called CloudRig. If you like to know more about CloudRig, how to get it, how to install it, and how to use it, you can go on to GitLab page here and download it, install it, and this wiki is going to explain to you how to use it. The rig of Tikka is not necessarily very simple because just like a human, I have the face, I have the different limbs, I have the body, but I also have the tail and I have the whiskers. This rig is quite complex, but hopefully Rigify makes it quite easy to animate. Once you are done setting up the rig and activating it, you end up with a panel that you can customize. Here in my case, I have at the very top of this panel the quality for my character, which I can bring down to zero, or I can bring down to two, which is the highest quality. This is very useful especially when you work on the animation, and if you start experiencing some slow down, then you can use this to bring the quality down, and hopefully that's going to speed up a little bit your animation. Underneath, I have the different layers and this is by far the most useful feature. Here, I can simply activate or deactivate all the layers that I need or don't need for the animation. In this example here, I can simply activate my IK control bones, and now I can just work with all bones that I need. I don't have all the other controls on my way. As you can see, I can move the leg, I can move the arm. This is just way easier to animate this way. Finally, you have the settings, panel and additional settings that you can use. This is very specialized. For example, I can simply switch from IK to FK. Now, you can see that my arm is no longer working because the FK control is activated rather than IK. Now, if I move my FK control, it works. This is it for the rig of Tikka. 15. Staging: Now is the time to build your environments by placing all the props. Remember what we talked about earlier in the lesson about environment design. You can't just place random props in random places. Everything needs to be there for a reason and it needs to support the story. Of course, you want it to look beautiful, but the most important thing is to be coherent with the story and not distract from the main action. Also, if your character is going to interact with a specific element, then think about the placement of this prop in the environment. In Blender, you can use the link functionality in order to place your elements in the scene while keeping a connection between the two files. This means that if you make a modification to the original file, the changes are going to propagate automatically to the file it has been linked to. Let me show you how I worked on the staging for the very first shot of the film which is the establishing shot at the very beginning when we see the butterfly coming in, flying around, and then getting into the big tree. I simply start by placing the ground, which is a very simple plain with grass and a few flowers, but also a few rocks. As you can see here, this is how it looks. Then I moved on, adding more complexity and adding the different plants. If I activate the layer, now you can see how it looks. I have a few bushes and a big tree where all the action is going to happen. The tree is really the most important element of this shot. The location of this tree is very important because this is where we want to guide the attention of the viewers. That shot, just like the others, is divided in two layers. I have the foreground, but I also have the background. I simply place everything that I need in the background. I want it to be coherent with my environment, but not distracting. I also have the clouds, and the sky. This is how I've created the staging for that specific shot. 16. Animation: If there is one tip that I can give you is to read the Animators Survival Kit by Richard Williams. This book is the Bible of animation. It is full of tips and tricks on how to create good animation, and even if it's not talking directly about digital animation, it's fundamental to understand the origin of animation and how animators back in the days used to create the illusion of movements by making drawings every single frame. Once you start the animation of your project, the first thing you want to do is the blocking. Don't pay attention to the details and just work on the key moments of your character moving from point A to point B. What's important here is the timing. If the key moments are well-placed and your character is at the right place at the right time, then everything else in between should work. Once the blocking is done, you can move on to the details, and I highly recommend you to work in passes, which means working on one aspect of the character at a time. Start with the body itself, then work on the heads, the arms, and the legs, then move on to the fingers, toes and hair. Finally finish with the smaller details like the facial expression with the eyes, nose, and ears. As I mentioned earlier in the lesson about hardware equipment, it's also a good idea to use a camera and a tripod to create video references. Creating good animation is incredibly hard, and making an animation just out of your imagination is almost impossible. You want to use video references and the easiest way to do this is by recording yourself and using this footage as a guide to create the animation. Let's take a look at the animation of Tika with this specific file. Here in this shot, Tika is waking up after the long winter. He is stretching, yawning, and he slowly wakes up to finally realize there is something going on. This shot is not that complex, but you can see here with this animation that it doesn't look that good and it's not visually very interesting. This file was actually the very first version, as you can see here, and I was not using any video reference to guide me. This is the reason why this file does not look that interesting. But let's take a look at the third version of that animation where I am actually using video reference. Yes, I know I look like an idiot, but having video reference is really important, so let's take a look at it. Now you can see the difference. I'm clearly following the video reference and it matches pretty much exactly. Now Tika is slowly waking up. As you can see it matches, and finally he realizes that something is going on. Again, it perfectly matches with the reference. Using a video reference is incredibly important and even though, yes, you will look like an idiot, it does not matter. You really want to have some guidance because creating this animation without a reference, would be almost impossible. Additionally, you don't want to forget about the very first principles of animation, like squash and stretch. Here in this very specific animation, you can see here how the arms are stretching compared to the body, and hence squashing again. Same thing here with the face, where we are moving up and then squashing. Now the effect is quite subtle, but it really helps to make the animation look better. Finally, you want to create an animation pose library. It's basically a simple library where you adds all the most common poses that you are going to use during the animation. I can simply click here and have all the different poses that I have already created and saved. For example, if I want my character to run, I can simply press here and I already have the pose ready for me. Then I can create a keyframe and eventually move to the next one, and to the next one, and to the next one, and eventually by adding the keyframes at the right time, I'm going to have my animation of Tika running. I can do the same thing if I want to create a walk cycle. I've created pose libraries for all the most common poses that I know I would have to do during the film. That works also for the face. If I want to close an eye, for example, I want to have it open just a little bit. I also have created the facial expressions. See if Tika is looking suspicious, if he's surprised, if he's sleepy or sad. Using this pose library is extremely important because it helps you save a lot of time. 17. Lighting: Placing lights in a scene is not a random decision, and it's almost like a science. Lighting is incredibly important, as it reinforces the story and the mood of a scene. Your character is definitely not going to look the same if the light is coming from the top or if it's coming from the bottom. The light can also be very strong, creating hard shadows, or it can be very soft. The color of the light can also affect the filling of a scene. A blue light can create a sense of sadness, but a warm yellow light can create a feeling of hope and joy. You can also use the light to guide the attention of the viewer in a very specific direction. The time and date can also have an impact on the lighting. During winter, the light is absolutely not the same as during summer. If the action is happening outdoor, the light will give a completely different mood to the scene. If the sun is rising, if it's in the middle of the day, or if it's sunset. Let's take a look at this file in terms of lighting. Like I mentioned earlier, the lighting should support the story. It's not just a random element that you use placing one or two lamps somewhere randomly in the file. Your lighting really has to support the story and create some sort of emotion. Here, in that specific scene, Tikka realizes that his friend is dead. He is now alone. This is a very sad and very emotional part of the story, so the lighting should really support this. This is why I've decided to go with a sunset effect. The sunset reminds us that this is the end of the day and is also the end of Blue, the character who actually died in the story. The sunset really supports the story and the emotion of sadness here in that specific shot. 18. Cameras: Digital cameras work exactly the same as real physical cameras, so it's definitely a plus if you're already familiar with cameras in general. The choices you make in terms of camera movements, angles, lenses, and depth of fields are going to have a real impact on the storytelling. You want to choose these parameters very carefully for each shots in your film. It is totally up to you to decide what camera you want to use and to define the settings, but I highly recommend you to install a plugin called Camera Rigs. If you go to Edit and Preferences and look for a camera, you will then have this plugin called Camera Rigs. Simply activate it. Then by pressing "Shift A" and going to the Camera menu, you're going to have more options than just the simple camera. You're going to have Dolly Camera Rig and you're going to have a Crane Camera Rig, with also a 2D Camera Rig. These rigs are extremely powerful. They really give you more control over the camera, and you can also control them more easily with this little panel here called Camera Rig. You can change the Focal Length on the fly, the Clipping, and also enable Depth of Field, which is extremely useful. Now, let's see with a real file how I actually use the cameras. In this scene, Tika is trying to climb down the tree as fast as possible because he realized that his friend blue just fell down. This scene is very emotional, and I wanted to give a sense of speed and rush where Tika is really trying to go down the tree as fast as possible. As you can see, he's sliding down the trunk, then jumping, and finally getting to the ground. The camera movement here is a bit tricky because there is a lot of action going on. Let's take a look at the camera. Here, I have used a camera crane rig and you can see the crane right there. I can very easily control it and change the height, but also the length of the crane. But what's very interesting with this camera rig is the fact that, no matter how I change the height or the length, it's always going to track the face of Tika, which means that my character is always going to be visible no matter what angle I choose. As you can see, the character is being tracked by the camera. 19. Rendering: Here we are. We are almost done. Technically, if you reach this stage, it means that everything else we talked about earlier is done. You created your characters and environments, the animation is done, and each shot for each scene has good lighting and the cameras are placed with the right settings. Now it's time to render. But before you jump into the final render, you first want to make a test render. Rendering is very expensive and time-consuming. The final render needs to be perfect without any mistakes. In Blender, you can use the Workbench engine to render a test version of your film very quickly. Of course, it's not going to look good, but the goal here is to double-check that everything is perfect. If it's not, then make changes until it is. Once the test version is perfect, double and even triple-check all the render settings, the render engine, the sampling, shadow quality, resolution, amount of frames, everything. If you'd like to have total control and flexibility during the compositing, then render every single frame as OpenEXR files. This file format is great as it keeps the image in the highest quality and keeps additional information about the image in layers, but don't forget to activate the render passes in Blender. Now, as a final test, I recommend you to render the first, the middle, and the last frame of each scene just to make sure everything looks the way you want. If it does, then it's time to render. For the final rendering, there are three possibilities. First, you can use your own computer, but that's going to take a while and you won't be able to use it while it's rendering. Second, if you have a long-term vision and plan to work on more projects like this in the future, then you can build and connect multiple computers together in order to create your own render farm. If that's the case, you can use Flamenco. It's a render farm management platform created by the Blender team. Finally, you can go online, find a company offering rendering services, make sure that all the settings match perfectly with your project, and pay them to render your files. Blender has three different render engines. It has Eevee, which is the new real-time rendering engine, Workbench, which is the engine used for previewing the viewport, so what you see here is actually using Workbench, and it has Cycles, which is the ray tracing engine that gives you the most accurate results. Here, for my film, I am using Eevee. The first step, if you want to start rendering, is to actually double or even triple-check all the settings. Make sure that you have enough samples in order to have good quality and check all the different settings that you need, like the shadow quality and eventually volumemetrics if you have some in your scene. Also, make sure to uncheck what you don't need. Also, make sure to check the dimensions of the final image and that the frame start and frame ends matches perfectly with your shots. Also, check the outputs. Eventually, if you are using OpenEXR files, make sure that you have all the passes that you need. Let's see how it looks with the first version of the render, the test version. As you can see here, this is using the Workbench engine, so the render does not look very good, but it doesn't matter. Here, I am simply checking that everything works properly. This shot was great using the Workbench engine. I did a second render test but using the Eevee engine with the very low settings. As you can see, everything worked pretty well. But I noticed that I had some issues. As you can see here inside the eyes, I have little problems. Also, here with the mouth. This little render test was actually very useful for me to realize that I had to fix some issues. 20. Compositing: Now that all your files are rendered, It's time for the compositing. The goal here is to combine all the different layers together in order to create the final and polished version of the film. Here we also want to add the final special effects and eventually fix all the tiny mistakes that don't require a new rendering. For example, changing the color of an object. Compositing is very powerful, and sometimes it's better to do things with compositing rather than doing it directly in the 3D software. You can use Blender, but many professionals prefer to use After Effects or Nuke. I personally use Fusion, which is part of DaVinci Resolve. Let's take a look at this example for the compositing. In this shot, Tikka is falling asleep. It is nighttime and he is extremely sad because he was not able to find his friends. We have a view on Tikka and the camera is slowly moving out of the tree. This is how it looks like in Blender. If I activate EV, you can actually see how it looks. This scene is supposed to be during the night, but as you can see, it doesn't look at all like nighttime. So all the effects in order to create this nighttime effect was done with compositing. Let's take a look at it. Here we are inside Fusion, which is part of DaVinci Resolve and you can see how it looks like once the compositing is done. This image on the left is the raw image without any compositing, and this image on the right is the final image with all the compositing done. As you can see, I have added the background. I have worked on the shadows, but I've also worked on the lights. It still does not look like nighttime, but we are going to see that later on. Here, I have simply combined everything together in order to recreate my image inside Fusion. I've started with the foreground adding some blur, some some motion blur, also adding some particles, and combining this with my background, merging it all together and I finally get my final image. If we take a look at this shot within the editing section, now you can actually see that the shot looks like it's nighttime because it's really dark with blue light. This is because I have worked on the color correction later on for this specific shot. Now you can see if I deactivate my color correction, we are back to the same composited image, but without the nighttime effects. 21. Sound Design: I truly believe that sound design and music account for 50 percent of the success of a film. Can you imagine Jurassic Park without the iconic sound of the T-Rex and without the epic music. Can you imagine Star Wars without the sound effect of the lightsaber and without Imperial March, those two films would simply not be the same. Sound design is as important as the image itself. I highly recommend you to work on the music as early as possible. As soon as you have the story and the script, you should start thinking about it. Don't forget that the music is here to support the story and to reinforce the emotions. Working on sound effects and music is not a simple task. If you don't feel comfortable with it, like me, don't hesitate to work with a professional sound designer. Trust me, it's worth it. In my case, for the music, I used premiumbit.com. I like this website. It is very good and everything is perfectly clear, especially in terms of licensing, but if you have the possibility to work directly with musicians, that is definitely the best. As we talked about earlier, the music is extremely important as it needs to reinforce the emotion of your film. In this specific shot, [inaudible] just realized that blue fell down the tree. He tries to run down the trunk as fast as possible in order to get to the bottom of the clearing. I'd like you to take a look at this shot without the music first, and you're going to see how blended feels. We do understand that something is happening, but it's not enough to really give us the chills and to make us feel something. Take a look at it. Now, I'd like you to take a look at the final results and see how the music changed everything. 22. Final Thoughts: Here we are, this is the end. I really hope you had a good time watching this course and that you actually learned something about film making. Together, we went through all the steps in order to create a short animated film. We started with an idea, then the writing of the story, of the scripts. We talked about the importance of artistic direction, developing their character design and the environment. Making the storyboard, working on the modeling, texturing, rigging, staging, animation. Then we moved on to the lighting, the cameras, the rendering, and we finished with compositing and sound design. Of course, I'm not going to ask you to create a short animated film, but if that's a dream of yours, now you know all the steps in order to make this dream come true. My goal with this course is to show you that working on such a big project alone is doable. As long as you are prepared and have the motivation, you can do it. Also remember, the important thing is the story. Feel free to let me know in the comments if you need any additional information and you can follow Short & Petit on YouTube, Twitter and Instagram, so you never miss out on my future projects. Thank you very much.