Hey Reader,

Zach here,

In behalf of the entire CG Boost team, wishing you a Happy New Year 🥳 and bringing a bunch of inspiration from the 3D world to kick off 2025.

Today, I have a fun video by Noggi about recreating "Arcane" style in Blender, how to develop your stories from the Blender Studio as well as an interview with the director of "Flow" - a beautiful feature animation made in Blender that is likely to be nominated for an Oscar.

Let’s dive in.

​"Flow" (shortlisted for Oscars) - Interview with the Director​

"Flow" is an amazing, animated movie made in Blender (you can watch the trailer here) that is gaining more and more praise and awards on film festivals across the world.

The director - Gints Zilbalodis was interviewed on the official Oscars channel (the film is shortlisted among 15 selected movies for an International Feature category for Oscars).

It’s amazing to see such passion projects turn out this great. There are a lot of lessons you can take from this short interview.

​Recreating "Arcane" style in Blender​

Recreating the unique look of "Arcane" in Blender is a challenge that Noggi simply couldn’t resist. He shares his experience with this fun project in his latest video.

Noggi shows his entire process in a form of commented timelapse, highlighting some important steps and discoveries he made along the way. This includes what he calls "a secret ingredient" which is compositing.

Most of Noggi’s video revolves around creating the iconic character Jinx, but enough spoilers.

​NPR with Blender - Sticky Grease Pencil Showcase​

Looks like NPR is the focus of many in animation, and it’s no different for the Blender Studio. They’ve shared an interesting featurette of anime-inspired Cowboi animation.

The project as usual for Blender Studio was a testing ground for some cool new features they called Sticky Pencil that allow for hand painting Grease Pencil objects easily and integrate 2D/3D mixed workflows even more.

​Project Gold: Storyboarding in Blender​

If you’re interested in making your short film in Blender, you might be interested in how Blender Studio developed their story and shots for the Project Gold animation.

They’ve published a detailed post about the process of storyboarding for this short. You can learn how they used the latest Blender tools for the project and try it out for yourself.

That’s all from me today, have an amazing week and Happy New Year! 🥳

~Zach