Hey Reader,

Zach here,

With the launch of our Master 3D Characters in Blender course just around the corner, it's the perfect time to share the story behind this course.

I’ll also share the release date of the course and introduce you to my talented friend and course author, Jim Morren.

The Master 3D Characters course has been on a longer journey than you might think.

Back in 2020, I had the good fortune of meeting an incredibly talented 3D character artist (who for privacy reasons, I will not name). This artist was not only talented, but a great teacher, which is very rare. With great excitement and passion, we started working on this course.

We made steady progress, and things were looking very promising. However, due to personal circumstances, they couldn’t continue, and by 2021, we had to stop production completely.

It was a tough blow. So much time and effort had gone into it, but with the project unfinished, I wasn’t sure if we’d ever find someone with the same blend of skills and teaching ability.

Fast-forward to 2022. I was casually scrolling through Twitter/X, when I stumbled upon a post by Jim Morren. I’d met Jim at the Blender Conference a few years back, and I remembered he was a talented 3D character artist too.

Seeing his work again sparked an idea. Could Jim be the one to help bring this course back to life?

I reached out to him, and to my excitement, Jim was up for the challenge.

By the end of 2022, we were back in production, this time starting almost entirely from scratch, save for the character concept art we were able to reuse from the earlier version.

It was incredible luck to find another great character artist, passionate about teaching and with such a fun personality to bring this course to completion.

Over the next two years, Jim and I worked hard to make sure this second iteration of the course would finally come to life, all with one goal in mind— to teach artists the best workflows to create practically any 3D character.

And this time, we did it!

Why Jim is the person to teach you character creation in Blender

Jim’s journey with 3D began in his teenage years, making mods for video games. Since Blender was free, that’s where he started—and where he ended up staying.

As his skills grew, so did his ambitions. He began working as a freelance 3D artist, tackling a variety of projects, including character-focused ones.

Over time, Jim’s passion for character creation took center stage. Characters, in his view, are the primary actors in storytelling. They don’t even have to be human, but they immediately draw us into a world and story.

For Jim, creating characters is the most direct way to convey stories and emotions—a power that always fascinated him.

As Jim honed his skills, he became proficient in both stylized and realistic character creation. He’s been so busy, he hasn’t had the time to update his portfolio, however his work speaks for itself.

Some of his projects have even made their way to the Blender Market as 3D character-focused products. You can also check out his older character studies on his Twitter/X account.

And if you want to get a taste of Jim's teaching style and talents, check out the head sculpt tutorial he created for our channel.

We’re thrilled to have Jim as part of our team, and I can’t wait for you to experience this course when it launches on October 9th!

Stay tuned!

~Zach