New Course: Grease Pencil Field Guide

Learn to combine hand-drawn 2D animation with Blender’s 3D tools to create illustrated scenes.

Grease Pencil lets you bring hand-drawn animation into Blender’s 3D world. But knowing where to start - and how to make those two worlds work together - is another matter.

That’s why we made Grease Pencil Field Guide, a new intermediate course taught by Elijah Sheffield. You’ll learn to draw, animate, and style 2D characters using real animation principles, then combine them with Blender tools for rigging, modifiers, and compositing.

With over 6 hours and 4 hands-on projects, you’ll move from your first Grease Pencil self-portrait to an animated frog jump, a fully rigged heron, and a 20-second mocumentary-style final short.

How do I Get The Course?

Great news! If you are a member of All-Access or Team Training, Grease Pencil Field Guide has already been added to your training library. Go to town!

If you are new to All-Access, now is a great time to join.

Who is this course for?

Grease Pencil Field Guide is for intermediate Blender users who want to add hand-drawn animation to their 3D toolkit - or bring more dimension, texture, and personality to the animation work they already make.

You should already be comfortable navigating Blender’s interface and basic workflows. If you’re new to Blender, start with Blender for 3D Artists first.

What will I learn?

You’ll build the fundamentals, then put them to work:

• Get oriented in Grease Pencil’s tools, modes, materials, and layers

• Apply animation principles including spacing, arcs, anticipation, follow-through, and squash and stretch

• Use keyframes, onion skinning, line art, and color to create a polished frame-by-frame frog jump

• Combine 2D Grease Pencil strokes with 3D geometry, toon shaders, and Brushstrokes tools

• Rig a heron with an armature and weight painting, then refine it with modifiers, effects, and compositing

• Plan and create a 20-second mocumentary-style animated short

What do I need?

You’ll need Blender, which is available for Windows, Mac, and Linux. A drawing tablet with pen input is strongly recommended for Grease Pencil work.

The course includes pre-recorded lessons, PDFs, assignments, and working files. Complete the coursework and get all assignments approved by a Teaching Assistant to become eligible for a Course Credential.