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• Level: Beginner

• Tools: Blender, facial motion capture app of your choice, smartphone

• Focus: Character animation, performance, digital storytelling

• Prereqs: None

• Project: Create, animate, and teach a 3D character to sing in a short digital story

Full Description

What happens when we make a character and give it a face, a voice, a world? When we animate a character, are we bringing someone else to life—or singing a little bit of ourselves into them?

In this class, we'll use Blender and facial motion capture to create expressive 3D characters and tell stories through their faces, voices, gestures, and worlds. We'll experiment with character design, cameras, lighting, and rendering while learning the basics of 3D animation. As we make, we'll look at cartoons, games, and works by artists like Wendi Yan, Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley, Alice Bucknell, and Cameron Granger. We'll consider how artists use fictional and speculative characters to explore identity, mythology, technology, humor, politics, and alternative worlds.

Rather than working towards a technical proficiency of tools, we'll ask: How can we create digital stories through characters? What can a face communicate before a character speaks? How does our own performance influence a digital character? How do we make our characters come alive and sing?

These questions will lead us to a final project: a short digital story starring a character you've designed, performed, animated, and taught how to sing.

Course of Study

• Week 1) Meeting your character—storytelling and Blender basics

• Week 2) Making a character your own—design, customization, and identity

• Week 3) The expressive face—designing emotion

• Week 4) Performance—facial motion capture

• Week 5) Giving the character a voice—sound, silence, and lip-sync

• Week 6) Gesture, body, and reaction—movement, posture, and personality

• Week 7) Building a world— environment, lighting, atmosphere, and scale

• Week 8) Camera, story, and sequence—framing and storyboarding

• Week 9) Character performance studio—building and critiquing final projects

• Week 10) Singing to ourselves—screening and final presentations

Expectations

Time & Workload

• 1 hour of independent work per week, plus rendering time.

Technical Experience

• Beginner friendly! No previous Blender or 3D animation experience required.

Materials

• Computer with reliable Internet

• Blender

• Smartphone

• Compatible facial motion capture mobile app (e.g. Face Cap, Rokoko Face Capture, Animaze, or Unity Face Capture)

Is this class for me?

This class may be for you if you:

• Want to make expressive or funny digital characters

• Are interested in animation, video games or worldbuilding

• Want to experiment with character design, performance, and digital storytelling

• Want to make a character sing—even if you can't :)

This class may NOT be for you if you:

• Want to use AI for all your work

• Are looking for advanced or photorealistic 3D animation

• Want to focus primarily on technical proficiency in Blender