Outside Simplified.

One of the best parts about rapid project output is exploring new styles. Realism is my comfort zone and I can feel my creative box expanding when I create this simplified graphic aesthetic.

As usual with Minimalism Sessions, modeling is a breeze and depends on primitive shapes mostly. The cloud shapes are custom and therefore a little more difficult.

Notably we won’t be utilizing Blender’s lighting features at all. Meaning no light objects, no casted shadows and no reflections. Instead we will create the illusion of lighting manually with shader nodes. This is for two reasons.

1. I believe the graphical style is strengthened by this approach because it’s more artistically crafted rather than calculated.
   
   
2. When lighting isn’t calculated for us, we're forced to learn about core principles at a rudimentary level. This will greatly benefit our lighting skills going forward.

This is another looping animation, endlessly spinning between a night and day version of the scene. So it’s a similar principle as the looping texture patterns, but primarily implemented with object movement instead.

This session was inspired by these designs where gradients play a big role - shocker, I know. Shapes are simplified to the extreme, silhouettes are strong, lines are crisp. If you’d like to continue down this rabbit hole, I recommend searching pinterest for “graphic landscape art”.

Having trouble keeping up?

Blender has a steep learning curve and it's a lot to keep track of, especially if you're new. Here's some tips for getting the most out of these lessons:

Slow down the playback

Our video player has the ability to slow down play back speed to 0.75x or 0.5x. This can be very useful for catching every detail of the workflow.

Watch each video twice

I highly recommend this approach to get the maximum informational value out of each lesson. Watch once for a broad grasp of the workflow, concepts, and techniques. You don't even need Blender open for this. Great for a commute or while you're prepping dinner. Also speed up the playback to save time!

Then watch through a second time with Blender open to follow along. Having an idea what's going to happen next will enable you to track the information much better.

Depending on how comfortable you are with Blender, you could even watch the entire chapter once before the second viewing.

Optional Pre-requisite Courses

Though this course is designed with Beginners in mind, it still assumes you're at least familiar with Blender's UI and basic concepts about 3D creation.

If this is your very first time opening Blender, it might be best if you watch some of these courses first:

1. Blender Basics
2. Learn Blender & Beyond
   
3. Fundamentals of Materials and Shading
4. Animation Bootcamp

Want to learn more like this?

If you like what you saw here, consider watching this course next: