Animate with Blender Grease Pencil
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- Опубліковано 10 лют 2025
- For those who would love to get into rigged 2D animation, but don't have the funds to spend on expensive software, this video is a demonstration of what can be done using Blender Grease Pencil, a free and open-source software.
Here is a link to a playlist of Blender Grease Pencil tutorials that I'm putting together. They detail the creation of a character’s head, from sketch to model, to rig and finally covering my animation workflow: • Blender Grease Pencil ...
To create this project, I learnt a lot from watching some excellent tutorials from Level Pixel Level:
• Video
something is very seriously wrong with the world when a channel like this has less than 4k subscribers
outstanding work; keep it up
Hey thanks Sam!
@@SketchySquirrel Well that was 2 months ago now you have 5k:)
@@georgie3528 Wow, someone other than me noticed! I only had 220 in January. Thanks for your comment!!!
@@SketchySquirrel HILDA
Now it's 13,000 XD
This is amazing!!! you are so talented, I hope to see your process and your growth as an animator in the future.
Thank you so much! You are very kind.
Youve got a bright future infront of you! Well done
Thanks Fabio!
I would love it if you could do a tutorial on how to do a pose library for the hands and mouth or at least recommend an existing tutorial
Hi there, thanks for the comment. I have recently made a Grease Pencil head turn tutorial where I set up a pose library for automatic lip syncing - ua-cam.com/video/8LqqdrXpUaE/v-deo.html here is where I set up the pose library for the mouth shapes. I am about to publish a character tutorial that shows me setting up hand shapes with a frame offset modifier.
Man, I've never thought of this kind of rigging in Grease Pencil, you by-passed the frame by frame and got Moho results. That was an eye opener for me.
Thanks for you encouragement and comment.
Holy cow! Please do more Blender Grease pencil animation tutorials.
I am an ex Moho user and just fell in love with the 3d aspects of Blender.
Please keep doing more 2d tutorials using Blender.
Love the head turn tut you did too
Instant Subscription. I was wandering around looking to see if Grease Pencil had improved since I last used it a year and a half ago it just wasn't there but wowsers with what you made it looks astounding and so much control! Your a wizard Sketchy!
Thanks for the sub!
@@SketchySquirrel I did want to point out a problem though because at 3:59 you say "Remember you don't need a head turn you can just do a simple cut out rig and it's relatively straight forward". It's straight forward to you but to me who is someone sitting here in aww trying to figure out how you did it and really wanting to jump ship to blender from my current 2d software I don't know what you're talking about and I'd love to know how you made that girl and her rig so a tutorial on that would be really helpful. Your skills are at a level of professional so If you feel like you need more motivation then make a decent series and jump on Udemy and sell a course and upload snippets of those onto UA-cam.
Finally this is ehat I am looking for, i hope your tutorials are like this, like,subbed
Your videos are so cool; they inspire me to try learning to animate, which is something I am new to. Keep up the great work, dude!! I can’t wait to see what you do next!
Thanks for your encouragement. Learning to animate is fun, and it's like most things, it's best not to try to learn everything all at once. For me it's about learning something small each day and applying it. I hope to see your animations one day :)
Thanks for the advice!! I really appreciate it!!❤️❤️
Brilliant. The 4 grease pencil rigging videos I watched before this one made me think I'd be better off just redrawing every pose. They all seemed to rig their 2D characters the same as they would rig a 3D character, except it was stuck in one plane. You, on the other hand, understand 2D design and how to imply volume and convey depth by juxtaposing simple shapes (and still using the 3rd axis for overlapping). Limited animation like this is beautiful because it uses the strengths of simple abstract shapes, rather than treat them as a hindrance. The controls look very organized, and I especially admire that you combined a cut-out puppet style character with replaceable shapes in places like the hands, where it is better to redraw the forms in the desired pose/perspective than to try manipulating them into the desired shape with controls. I will be studying this video, referring to the Blender manual, and looking at what else you present on this channel. Your rigging technique is tip top.
Wow, thanks Nathan - that's a huge encouragement! Rig complexity can certainly discourage the use of this style of animation and sometimes degrade the end result. Simplifying the rig by using hand & mouth shapes can certainly help. I've also found (in Moho) that using separate rigs for side, rear and front view can often speed up the rigging process without restricting the animation process. I no longer seek to rig a 2D character with a 360 degree turn around. I wanted to keep things a little more straight forward for this one. Thanks again for your kind comments. Joel
Would love to see a tutorial or stream of the Start to finish on a character like this.
I'll try to make a simple start-to-finish cut-out animation style tutorial soon (with perhaps a separate one detailing rigged head/body turns).
Beautiful! What you did is awesome. I discovered grease pencil like a week ago and i began searching for tutorials, I'm really grateful to have found you. Keep up the good work and... Consider making a full paid course on some platform, because i'd definitely buy it!
Thank you for your encouragement, I'm so glad that my videos have been helpful. My next tutorial will be freely available, but after that I'll certainly think about putting together a more in depth course. Thanks again for the kind words and I hope to see you around. :)
Wow, I am amazed by your talent and dedication! Also you're so professional, I would have never guessed that you're only 15 (possibly 16 now). I'm really looking forward to what you will do in the future!
Wow, thanks so much for your encouraging comments! Yes, I'm now 16.
I moved from Moho to Blender Grease Pencil. I find it to have a steeper learning curve, but significantly more powerful and fully featured, not to mention that it has a full 3D modeling and rendering environment. I think the Grease Pencil system still has some growing up to do, but it's amazing even as it is now and add-ons make it even better.
I totally agree. I am a Moho user and will transition to Blender Grease Pencil over the next wee while. Like you, I already see the benefits of the Blender environment, and look forward to seeing how the Grease Pencil team will expand it's tool set (especially regarding rigging and smart-bone like tools).
@@SketchySquirrel So great and promissing your little guided tour - thanks!!! i was aswell a faithfull Moho user, fond of its smartbone actions, layer animations... and most of all - it's "clean" timeline , great for reworking timings (-without having to deal with loads of keys on tons of layers - at least 30+ for a simple character in Duik AE, Animate or Toonboom, making timing corretions a real drag) ...but sadly, SmithMirco doesn't seem to want to invest and push on this powerfull animation tool any more... So i might aswell migrate to Blender having to learn everything from scratch... The fbf animation seems already much better than in Moho (but thats not difficult ;) i know not enough about the rigging to know what the animation process would be. What seems so very hopefull is that you seem to have found similar "tools" (like actions and switch layers for your rigs !..). So i'm realy looking forward to learn this workflow for rigging aswell as for animating in Greacepencil. I wonder is it possible to keep the dopesheet (timeline) simple or are there hidden keys on tons of layers in the end? Are sculpting fbf in a rig combinable ? i wonder... but first i have to get aquainted with the environement ... ;) thanks in the meantime for your generous sharing.
I’m really interested in how the head turn/rigging is done; there doesn’t seem to be too much about how to do that sort of thing in Grease Pencil. Also, like that you did it in the style of Hilda, it’s such an appealing style.
Thanks for watching! I'll try to put out a more step by step guide on rigging a simple GP character after my next project is complete.
Sketchy Squirrel Cool! I’ll look forward to that.
@@SketchySquirrel i cant wait
@@SketchySquirrel yes please!!!
Just stumbled upon this video, comprehensible, to the point and even a bit touching since I'm also into Hilda, instantly subbed!
Thank you so much. It really means a lot. :)
for someone who uses moho i love that the tutorial helps transition into blender please make a full tut
I didn't know I could do all of that with Blender. Time to try that out as well.
Blender is truly amazing... thanks for your comment
WOW squirrel I am happy you are doing some great stuff with animation !!! this looks amazing!!!
Thanks so much, moving on from our anime studio tutor days :)
Jesus! Thank you and thank you Jesus. This is too much awesomeness!!! Learnt a lot from this.
Glad it was helpful!
3:49 I see Hilda, and Sketchy Squirrel
This is what I looking for, Sir Please Make Full Series or a beginner blender grease pencil course. There are so many videos on grease pencil but not on point or hard to understand. Btw Nice Video 👍
Yes, soon. I'll try to make a simple start-to-finish cut-out animation style tutorial soon (with perhaps a separate one detailing rigged head/body turns).
@@SketchySquirrel waiting 🤩
wow! kid has talent and brain and soo much more :O well done!!!!
That's what i was looking for❤️
Love you bro ❤️
wow really nice looking forward for the tutorials
Thank you!
Great stuff! You have serious skills. Thanks for sharing. Continued success in all your projects
Thanks a bunch!
@@SketchySquirrel You're quite welcome.
the hip movements is great lol
I love the hilda shoutout I loved that show and no one talks about it
Very nice rig! Reminds me a lot of rigging in After Effects with Duik, nice to the same principles being applied here, great video!
Glad you like it! Thanks for your encouragement!
Very good work. There is a lot of useful material on how to make a simple but also impressive (in terms of artistic outcome) video.
Thank you very much!
Oh that's lovely! Such nice work on those rigs. Simple but powerful as far as I can tell.
The dropshadow on the floor is a bit weak but I suspect that could be refined a lot if you wanted to
Thanks Kram, I was going for a subtle shadow, but you're right, it should be a lot better.
Great work. Keep the vids coming! I'm trying to soak up all the grease pencil knowledge I can.
Thanks! Will do!
nice
this is so good, i just subscribed!! hoping to see the full length tutorial cus i dont really see much of it yet
Thanks for subbing! Working on a tutorial today, will post soon.
@@SketchySquirrel yayyy cant wait ✊💖
Goodness! Superb!
Thank you for your kind words!
Lol I was thinking of Hilda when I saw your character, definitely a great show and thank you for this video as I’m trying to learn grease pencil now
You are so welcome! Thanks for taking the time to comment :)
He should become a teacher. No time wasting nonsense straight to the point makes memorizing alot easier .
Its realy great job)!!
Please - make more videos about your tips&tricks in Grease Pencil, Blender.
It will helps many people all over the world)
Thank you! Will do!
04:05 Thank for making this video... will be waiting for your video soon...
Okay you're incredible new subscriber
beautiful! thrilling!
I'm in :) look forward to seeing more videos.
Awesome! Thank you for the sub!!
Is this how Hilda made?!
So awesome!!!
Hi Rachel. As far as I know this is not how hilda was made, I believe they chose to create it using frame by frame animation. Even so, I'm glad you liked it. :)
Amazing work! Would you mind telling us again which add-on you used for the mouth? Did you say "Glue Bob?" I couldn't find anything by that name
You are very kind! "Glue Bob" = Rhubarb... I blame my Kiwi accent... Rhubarb Lip Sync - here is the addon and links to Rhubarb github.com/scaredyfish/blender-rhubarb-lipsync it is a great tool if you don't have time to lip-sync manually.
THIS IS PERFECT. EXACTLY WHAT I WANT. THANK YOU!
This is beyond great. Thank you!
You're very welcome! Thanks for letting me know you liked it.
Amazing, im waiting for the tutorial, thanks
Hi Agung, I don't intend to make a tutorial on this particular character, however I have published an in depth, four part series on making the head of character. ua-cam.com/video/gzxMrKAkvQ4/v-deo.html
Omg this is so cool and more better
How do you have only 4.52k subs. You deserve more!
Thanks for your wonderful comment, you are very kind!
Very well presented and great content.
Much appreciated!
Wow - very cool.
Thanks!
This is awesome
Thank you for your encouragement!
Subscribed for future tutorials
Just making one now :) Thank you for the sub!
Brilliant.you have so much potential 🔥🙌 .would love to see a tutorial on your rigging process.
Thanks for your encouragement! In my next tutorial video, I'll expand on the rigging video by making a head-turn using action constraints and will also touch on lip-syncing. :)
holy crap thats david
Almost :) I did model this character with the same art style as David. It's interesting to see the differing eyes and facial features of Hilda's main characters. Thanks for the comment!
@@SketchySquirrel yw
I like this can you make the video on step by step and how to animate this character
This us really awesome!! Please keep doing these Blender tutorials. So needed.
Question: How did you do the switch layers for the hands and mouth? Please expound on that on one of your tutorials or do a short one just on that. Greatly appreciated.
Thank you! This will be covered in my next head turn tutorial when adding the mouth shapes for lip-syncing. Thanks again for your encouragement!
great job.... wow
lovely and smooth~ fantastic!
Thank you!
Hello, I discovered your channel and animation. That is very nice and well done. I guess you would get a lot of audience if you start building tutorials in Blender Grease Pencil. It is a new and promising software and more and more persons start using it, as it is free and has a lot of possibilities. Thanks a lot anyway for sharing this little video and I am looking forward to see what you will do next. All the best :)
Thank you very much! Yes, I hope to start using GP more in the near future. I will especially try to put out a tutorial on ways to simulate head and body turns using GP and action constraints.
@@SketchySquirrel Great :)
Please upload the tutorial please
I'll try to make a simple start-to-finish cut-out animation style tutorial soon (with perhaps a separate one detailing rigged head/body turns).
@@SketchySquirrel hey sketchy I hope you and your family are well and safe during these unprecedented times I am so new to Blender I plan to move to Blender from Moho to be honest for my upcoming projects however I was wondering if we can achieve some kind of smoothness for not vectorial shapes but images like in Moho you know what I mean wrapping that type of thing is it possible to rig images inside Blender ?
@@dennissabrievski4543 Hi Dennis, thank you for your concern, I hope the same for you, I'm lucky enough to live in New Zealand, so covid isn't really affecting my life very much.
To answer your question, yes you can rig images in Blender just like in moho. In fact, my latest tutorial is on this topic: ua-cam.com/video/ChqSqDGCTRA/v-deo.html
I'm glad to hear that you're switching to blender :)
Sketchy Squirrel ash I see I thought you are from the UK or something you sound like a British never heard of New Zealand accent before but it’s more clear and sounds so unique! lol another side of the world! There is Weta over there I hope you make it to these big studios someday man! You have potential
I see I had a quick look on that tutorial for animating with images. Looks quite nice and simple doesn’t seem like you went through all wrapping thing like in Moho the bizarre thing is when you move the character around there will be deformation you have no control over paint skin Influence much in Moho like in Blender. I’m a 3D animator. But inside Moho I found it difficult to animate especially while offsetting stuff I want to specifically finesse each bones separately without affecting other bones so on and I want to see keys of the selected controller rigs if that makes sense like in Maya whereas in Moho you see all the keys it’s really hard to select keys of the selected controllers specifically maybe there is a way that I’m not aware of but with all that and if the graph editor is developed more like 3D software style Moho would be far the best software. animation wise I like working in sections, different rooms and different keys If they just copied some stuff from Maya and Blender yeah it will be much more effective!
I feel like Blender is quite nice and pretty straightforward, faster I might move to Blender if I figure it out like how to do
Another problem I’m having is in Moho after the first character setup and rigging is done. For some reason the second character tends to move by itself whilst animating the camera like legs, arms floating for some reason and move separately does it happen to you ? Or what’s causing this to happen while working with a camera ?
Thank you
Cheers
@@dennissabrievski4543 It took a long time to figure out how to offset keys in moho too. Turns out, the grey keys represent the keys for the entire layer/ rig while the red keys are for the selected bones. That means you can select the bones that you want the move the red keys, and they will be offset.
Regarding your other second character issue, I'm not sure what that is. :(
If it is a bug I'm sure Moho's new owners will sort it out soon. :)
It's interesting that you thought my accent was British. I grew up in Afghanistan, surrounded by people from all around the world. That's why my accent is subtle. :)
Wow 😳 awesome
Thanks 🤗
I'd love to see a tutorial on this!
Working on it today :) Will post in the next wee while.
Hi I'm new subs here! Thnaks for your video !
Thanks for subbing, Tom!
great work
Many many thanks
Wowowo this is amazing! What a nice work...that a sub for you
Thanks a lot! :)
Very nice 👌
Thanks 😊
Very cool and inspirational, im gonna start animating stuff so this are helpful ✌️😁 +1
Thanks so much - hope you find my tutorials useful
This so amazing I just subed👍❤
Thanks for your kind encouragement + sub!
keep on uploading more videos about grice pencil....
Will do.
Dude when we can expect full tutorial of this
Hi there. I plan to work on a tutorial after my next project is complete.
If it's not too much to ask, we would really appreciate a guided tutorial
@@SketchySquirrel Thanks friend.. hoping to see soon the tutorial..
@@SketchySquirrel niicee...i always love this greased pencil project
I’m currently using Moho, but I’m seriously considering switching to Grease Pencil/Blender. your rig is exactly the way I’d want to set up my rig, but I have no idea, how to do this in Blender/Grease Pencil. I’d pay money for a tutorial, please consider making one (you could sell it on Gumroad)
Thanks for the vote of confidence, I also hope to transition to GP. While I work on my current project, I'll be publishing step by step Grease Pencil character rig guides, these would hopefully be suitable for your Phungus & Mowld :) They will be free and available on this channel.
@@SketchySquirrel respect for making that all free. Education shouldn't be a paywall :)
@@SketchySquirrel which tablet did you use for this?
@@maraudersrock2536 I managed to save up for a second hand Wacom Cintiq 13HD, but there are a lot of other great drawing tablets out there. I find that I use it mostly in the sketching stages, then simply use the mouse and keyboard when rigging. It's nice to have but certainly not essential. Thanks for your comments!
@@SketchySquirrel in thinking of buying a xp pen g960 tablet.....Would you recommend it for a complete beginner in digital art? Eagerly waiting for your answer.... Please reply
Thanks buddy
Awesome!!!
Thanks for your encouragement!
If you're wondering: Yes, you can do full Old-School Frame-By-Frame Sakuga Animations.
Good point, yes, using GP for 'cut-out' rigged animation like this is currently not the norm.
Awesome video. Please, could you make a tutorial of how you made the background of this video (trees, forrest, mountain...).
Thank you in advance.
Amazing
Thanks, you're very kind.
@@SketchySquirrel are you using instergram don't understand wrong I just want to support you the reason why I ask😁
oh my god. of course you can rig 2d characters in blender. Up until now everything I've seen has been frame by frame or basic move/rotate/scale. At the start of your video I was thinking gee it would be nice if blenders bones could work on grease pencil - well of course it can gp is all vertices at the base level.
Is the head on your character a 3d model with gp components attached? or is it somewhat clever movement of 2d parts in 3d space?
The head is simply 2D but animated with action constraints. This technique simplifies things when animating. You basically pre-animate a head or body turn and drive these actions with a bone.
Amazing.... Thanks...
Thank you!
Amazing bro you are just awesome.. learnt alot . Brother can you please share the blend file of the full animation shown in intro?
Please that will help me in learning the software.
Wonderful video! Any tips on how to design a good character for 2D rigging? I feel my characters often get too complicated in design. Your characters are so logical and make so much sense for animation. Really great work with this channel and the content you are sharing. I subscribed 🙂
Thanks, your videos are so informative! I'm only using Moho but heard that Blender is a great tool. How would you compare animation and rigging in both programs? Is Blender widely used in production, or is it like Moho mostly used by small studios?
Hi there, I'm so glad that you found my video helpful. Though the outcome is very similar when rigging in Blender or Moho, the process is very different. I would say that Moho favors speed over flexablity. You can rig a character very quickly, but if you want something too complicated there may not be the features in place to achive it, while in Blender is a little slower to use, but it works with a very modular system alowing you to do almost anything you could want, even if it's a litle tedious to set up. Blender in general is being used more and more in production, even when it comes to 2D Grease Pencil, however regarding rigged animation like that in Moho, it's very uncommon at the moment, but shows great potential. I hope this is helpful, and I hope to you see you around in future :D thanks again. :D
Pleas do Tutorial series
I'm currently working on one, will post it soon.
When you add a Lattice, you have to hit Shift A, and don't spend two hours trying
to get them to appear with the Vertex groups.
wow amazing
You are so kind
May you please do a step by step guide, on your character or on Hilda. Its very hard to jump into grease pencil as it's lacking on the tutorials side
Hi Enos, try following the tutorial link in the description, they will get you started. I plan to work on some tutorials (head and body turns etc) after my next project is complete. I'm new to using Grease Pencil too, but it looks promising and I plan to use it more going forward. All the best.
@@SketchySquirrel thank you
Waooooo, You can feel free to call yourself a real artist!!
Thanks, feel free to call yourself encouraging!
@@SketchySquirrel thanks !!:)
Nice work- a very Moho looking result. What do you think is faster- doing the 2D rig with head turn in Moho or Blender?
I find rigging slower with Blender (with the current toolset) compared to Moho, but once the rig is complete, I prefer to animated within Blender as there is a lot more control. Thanks for the comment.
@@SketchySquirrel Thanks for the reply!
Wow!
Thanks for the comment!!!
How did you change your hand poses? Been looking everywhere for a tutorial on that...your cutout animation tutorial has me excited for my own project!
Sorry for the late reply, I have recently made a tutorial series on rigging a head and I used the same technique to make the mouth. Essentially, it's just frame by frame animation which is controlled by a frame offset modifier, allowing us to switch between hand poses.
I hope that this helps, thanks for the comment.
hi, in addition to grease pencil, can you also include lip sync technique or method that you used in upcoming tutorial? and is there any additional software that you use to lip sync? thank you sir :)
I'll try to explain the automatic lip-syncing with Rhubarb Lip Sync - here is the add-on and links to Rhubarb github.com/scaredyfish/blender-rhubarb-lipsync
3:45 - awesome! but how did you make the ears pop forward? do you just move Y+ that bone?
Hi there. Yes. In this case that is what I did. This was possible because the ears were a separate object from the head.
hello such a nice video. is this animation done using only 1 sketch? like for head did u draw up, down L,R or use tools built in to rotate?
Hi there, I'm so glad that you liked it. I have made a tutorial series on this style of head turn if you're interested: ua-cam.com/video/tgy2j3yy9B4/v-deo.html
Basically, I start with one drawing of the face, and then shift body parts around, using actions to control the head turn. I hope that this was helpfull. :)
Thanks for the reply. Wow thats cool!
Awesome! wondering how you draw the hair?.. it looks so good,
Thank you so much. I'm not sure how much detail you would like regarding the hair, but just in case, I'll bore you with the details. Regarding the hair, I drew the hair as several different GP objects, each with their own lattice (I was just learning GP at this stage). Then I made shape keys for the turn, but for some reason I couldn't attach the action constraint directly to the shape key slider. I attached a driver to a bone, and then I could attach an action constraint to this. I would recommend using a lattice parented to a number of bones, and animate them in the action, as the way I did it, was slightly different and more time consuming.
Are you planning on making more blender grease pencil tutorials in the future? :D
Yes, hopefully soon.
Hi Sketchy Squirrel, thanks for your awesome tutorials!
I'm experiencing flickering with GP when camera moves :-(
I can see at 1:17 that you have the same problem (on the trees), what about, is there a workaround?
Thanks!
Thanks for your kind comment. Re: flicker - It's subtle but certainly there. Can I ask which render engine you are using? I had used EEVEE (also was using an alpha release at the time) but perhaps cycles would make a difference? Let me know if it persists in cycles.
@@SketchySquirrel Thanks for your reply! I have this issue in Blender 2.83.6 and 2.9 with Eevee and Cycles :-(
It looks like a Temporal Anti Aliasing problem... It's very visible when GP is static!
@@jeanlubtchansky I think you're right, it looks like a blend mode/alpha/anti-aliasing issue, hopefully it will be addressed again soon (it has been an issue in the past). Could try Blender 2.91 to see if they've addressed it already. One issue that may break the previous "fixes" is starting the blend file on one version then upgrading and continuing to work on it with another. I don't seem to be getting the same issues with my latest project, but we can be happy that this issue will be fixed (as it has been on the table before). Thanks for your comment.
going to beat you to it. Check out part one of my 2D rig tutorial everybody
ua-cam.com/video/sCHjoI_cEx4/v-deo.html
Really nice beginner GP tutorial!!! The more we use GP this way, hopefully the more development of GP rigging tools :) Great job!
@@SketchySquirrel Thanks! Your work is amazing. I would have been nicer if I thought you would read it
Sir,,please make a face controller tutorial etc like in this video !
Hi there, I have some good news, I already have. Here it is: ua-cam.com/play/PLvrk7pBVZDRl7yQExCoODrZbuFqajNfix.html
I hope it's helpful, let me know how you get along :D
looks like hilda 3d animation on blender 3d
Please make tutorials! 🤞
Working on one right now, should be published in the next wee while