How to Make Animated PIXEL ART Characters Sprites with Blender 2.9 | Quick and Easy TUTORIAL

In this tutorial, I explain how I cheat with Blender to create 2d animated sprites very quickly.

Summary of the workflow :

I created and rigged a 3d model of the character in Blender with exagerated features so it would pixelize well. Then I created the 8 frames walking animation and I change the camera 45 degre with each loop.

I use "Freestyle" to create the outer lines and a composite shader to get the pixelized effect.

Then I render all the frames and I use Aseprite to do the clean up and add things like the eyes.

If this interest you, here is what I did to learn how to do this with blender :

After that I used Aseprite to touch up the 2d sprite.

Have a great day everyone!

#Blender
#Tutorial
#PixelArt

[jeffstienstra]

To anyone who doesn't read descriptions...READ THE DESCRIPTION! There are a bunch of useful links there. Thanks so much Soyaa, this is great!

[APrettyGoodChannel]

While I'm not planning on doing any pixel art soon, this was still very fun to watch.

[ORtr]

dude, i'm learning blender and pixel art, how probable it is that someone showed up in my reddit feed and taught me the TWO THINGS AT THE SAME

[theonlycatonice]

I really like this approach because it allows for quickly getting the base shape and animation but also fine tuning and customizing in aseprite so it kinda has a more artistic look and polish ❤

[AvexFuddle]

brilliant, the one pixel bumps up and down make it so much nicer.

[desmondbrown]

As purely a programmer, I'm very fascinated by the exploitation of these tools and techniques to create very compelling pixel art. That's so amazing, great work.

[alexxkrehmen]

Little tip :

While using PNG output, you can set compression to 100% percent since the png compression is lossless (= zip compression)
Also, for pixel art, you can use 8bits only instead of 16 bits, which is not really useful in this case.

[rbaleksandar]

You can basically even add hair and cloth simulation and pixelate that for more realistic results. Amazing tutorial, thank you!

[benji]

Great tutorial! One thing I noticed with how you did the camera rotation; you can do math in any text box in Blender. So instead of incrementing manually you can just select Z angle and type +45 to the end of it and it'll do the math for you. It's not that big of a deal with one sprite, but I'm working on a whole ton of them at once and that little bit of time-saving saves me a lot of frustration and burnout. Though I will admit I'll steal that empty rotate thing, as it's way better than my 8-camera setup.

[charlestietjen]

This is extremely cool and as someone who has little patience for drawing but enjoys 3D I'll definitely give this technique a try. Thanks for the massively in-depth video and resources!

[bruh]

As an artist who can only draw digitally & do 3d, this helps me make pixel art for my game dev brother, thanks! :D

[noir]

*WOW*

not only is this wholesome, thorough, and clearly segmented with learning links...

but it covers such a wide variety of Blender tools, it might as well be a tutorial for the art modeling feature.

needed this.

[devanmauch]

bro you're amazing for putting the links to what lead you to that kind of model in the description...

[キラキラくりくり頭]

Wow, this quite quickly went way over my head.

[mistergriimm]

I would recomend adding PixelOver to your workflow. You can adjust the colors to be more consistent and less noisy/grainy. It's a pretty useful tool!

[keYserSOze]

I've been thinking about how this would be possible in Blender and then this brilliant tutorial pops up, bravo!

[TheFreckelz]

I find the wave of 3d to pixel art tech really funny because I find drawing much easier than 3d modeling. This is really cool though.

[annonimooseq]

Incredibly clear and well made tutorial. Thank you for it.

[MaximilianonMars]

I wasn't so sure until the last step and then it really came together, it looks very cool and the method is great. Thank you!

[spigui]

This is one of the coolest things I've ever seen. Going to be a massive help for a project idea of mine!