Create Rigged Grease Pencil Animations in Blender

Experience the potential of rigged Grease Pencil characters in Blender 2D animation

Often 2D animation and 3D animation exist as their own unique art forms, aesthetics, tools and apps. But Blender 2.8's Grease Pencil merges them into the same application and even allows their tools to blend together into an extremely effective hybrid system.

In this short course, follow Wayne Dixon through this simple project that combines a hand-drawn 2D character with a 3D rig for easy animation.

Learn how to Draw, Rig and Animate a 2D Blender Character

• How to draw a 2D Grease Pencil character: From rough sketch to refined lined art, learn about Grease Pencil's drawing tools like layers, fills, stroke sculpting and materials, including how to add simple shadow and highlight layers.
• Adding a simple armature: Take advantage of Blender rigging to create a simple armature object featuring 2 bones that serve to move a character's arm. Also learn how to assign elements of your drawing to those bones.
• Animate your character waving: Add a touch of life to your character rigging with a looping hand wave. The final result is a beautiful crisp, smooth 2D animation with enormous potential in other applications and projects.

This technique was used to create a fun Holiday ad in 2018!