Blender Tutorial: An Intro To Grease Pencil (and some super secret tips!)

Hope you enjoyed this lil tutorial! Sorry it got pretty off the rails, but I hope you can dig up some helpful nuggets of knowledge in here : ) (also see the comments for important stuff that i somehow completely forgot to bring up hahaha)

Download my lil default drawing file and consider supporting me over on Patreon!

Check out my work on instagram!

Download Blender!

Download the storytools add on for easier grease pencil menus!

Download these sweet custom Grease Pencil brushes (for cool textures and stuff!)

Check out these other awesome Grease Pencil Tutorials that have helped me out so so much:

Worthikids! This is a long one, but it really digs into everything you need to know to make a 2D cartoon in Blender! watching a master create a little toon start to finish is a treat!

Dedouze! This is one of the greatest grease pencil artists you've probably already seen and wondered "what the heck how'd they make that". For awesome tutorials on using 2d grease pencil in 3D, check these out!

Sophie Jantak! Sophie is really one of the pioneers of grease pencil, and she has some of the most creative applications of grease pencil I've ever seen! Check her out!

Chapters
00:00 Intro
03:15 Navigating in Blender
06:09 Grease Pencil Objects
08:26 Blender Modes
14:20 SUPER SECRE TIP #1
20:15 Grease Pencil Modifiers
22:30 SUPER SECRET TIP #2
25:40 Grease Pencil Effects
28:00 Keyframes and Animation
30:36 Outro

[indmych]

7 minutes in, when you said "I didn't even know it was called 'Data', I thought it would be called 'Layers', " was a fantastic lesson for us all who are learning from you. If you watch enough tutorials on different topics Blender can seem overwhelming. But if you focus on what you want to do, you can learn what's necessary. Thanks. Grease pencil is a new interest for me.

[brysonmcbee]

Imagine spending like 5 hours making a Grease Pencil tutorial and not mentioning the Eraser once hahahah:
- Use the eraser tool to erase strokes.
- by default it's set to Eraser Soft, which will have a soft fall off that will create some opacity variation when erasing strokes.
- I recommend setting this to Eraser Point so rather than just reducing the opacity of strokes, it will completely delete the points making for a cleaner erase
- with the pencil tool selected, you can hold ctrl while drawing to quickly switch to the eraser tool!

Also Layer things!
- You can lock layers similar to in photoshop to prevent certain elements of your drawing being manipulated by proportional editing junk
- also layer masks can be super helpful for creating cool lighting effects and stuff on your illustrations!
- with strokes selected in edit mode, you can press M to move these strokes to a different layer in your grease pencil object!
- You can also press P in edit mode with strokes selected to separate the selection into its own grease pencil object!

[will probably add to this as I think of more helpful info I forgot to mention hahahah]

[KuncanDastner]

it's so cool to see your style come through in both the 3D and grease pencil methods, both are so full of character

[levimijaresochoa]

Dude this has been an eye opening for me. I've been interested in learning blender for a few years but I've always feel overwhelmed by the default viewport. I'm definitely giving it a chance. Thanks for this. I'll look forward for more of your content 🐝

[jeffosaphat]

this is a great video to go hand in hand with the worthikids grease pencil tutorial

[mics]

OKAY. FIRST OF ALL, this is beautiful. the art. the style, the frame. SECOND OF ALL. best concise tutorial about everything i wanted to know before getting started. THANKYOU

[lesliemartinez]

Dude you dont understand how grateful i am for this tutorial! You been one of my biggest inspiration for blender to see you break it down is just so AMAZING & INFORMATIVE Thank you so much this resource

[KeelanJon]

Great video! I'm an avid Blender user, but have yet to really dip my toe into the grease pencil. As a tip for any beginners, I'm not a fan of a numpad as I prefer a smaller keyboard, so I've always prefered using the tilde key to open the views menu for quick navigation. Feels much quicker and more intuative experience imo, especially for sculpting.

[Pakkuwakku]

Bro when the geometry section came up and I took a look at my little blob I made, I can not tell you the amount I was SHOOK finding out it was way more than it has any right to be. Thank you so much and I very much appreciate how much this has helped me!

[myopicdoll]

I stopped doing animation after using Photoshop and After Effects wasn't much better. Your tutorial gave me newfound interest! I tried it out in Blender and this process is so much cleaner and faster especially for adding noise. Thank you so much to both you and the Blender community this is amazing! 🤩🍓

[lacruzo]

Wonderful video Bryson! You blew my mind with the real time mirror trick haha, I tried finding a solution before but never did so thank you! ✨

[valiquette]

I'm the noobiest of noobs and have also jumped straight in to GP. I'm an elementary teacher with a big idea but absolutely clueless until you, my darling saviour, just taught me *everything* I wanted to know for my project. I cannot thank you enough! May your stache always be mighty, and your life full of bliss!

[iislagarcia]

Don't worry about this being a long tutorial, because it helped a lot. A LOT! Your explanation was very easy to understand and all of those secret tips were very helpful. Thank you so much for sharing this 💗

[Emelineeeeeee]

I actually really appreciate this tutorial taking its time. I don’t like watching guides that throw tons of info at you in the space of a few minutes and I’m left having to pause the video and replay every few seconds to understand. This was clear and slow enough that it’s easy to follow without getting overwhelmed

[zuzuechai]

THANK YOU SO MUCH. I just started my student shortfilm and i wanted to use blender. You explain everything in the perfect way. Id love to see more tutorials of yours about grease pencil. you just saved my life <3

[lonelymanslazarus]

I had no idea you had posted a tutorial !!! This is amazing!! Thank you for sharing I have learned a lot ❤❤❤

[ep]

whenever i watch blender tutorials theyre so angry but youre so jolly so thanks for that .great tutorial

[en]

You are a delightful teacher! Loved every second of the video, thank you for sharing!

[alananras]

Great introduction tutorial ! I've gotten into blender (and really enjoys it as an illustrator) last year with 3D modeling and sculpting, heard from my teacher about the grease pencil and seeing you in action really motivated me to try it out ! Keep going with your art it's awesome !

[literallygrass]

Thank you so much for making this video! Its helped me understand the basics of grease pencil like no other!