Hey Reader,

Zach here,

With new inspiration and resources from the 3D world.

Today, I’ll share a cool animated short movie with an incredible backstory of it being stolen from the creators, who managed to get it back in the end.

Next, I’ll share an incredible sea-creature rig showcase in Blender. We’ll end with a friendly reminder about our ongoing sale and 3D challenge and a free animation mini-course from ToAnimate.

Let’s dive in.

​"Butty" Blender Animation and an Art-theft Story with a Happy Ending​

​This short film, made in Blender by Julius and Moritz - two students from Germany, was to be their breakthrough into the world of animation (and a graduation project). The art-theft story that happened after they made it was so crazy it’s hard to believe it’s true.

The film was stolen by a young man from the USA named Samuel Felinton, who changed the title and credits, and even won multiple awards in film festivals. When Julius and Moritz found out about this, they decided to take their creation back. The legal path proved to be too expensive and cumbersome, so they came up with a crazy, but creative idea of going to the US and confronting the thief in person.

At the same time, they made a documentary about it. It was produced and published by German television ARD. Watch the documentary in German here. (The link only works from within Germany, unless you use a VPN 😉).

This unusual approach turned out to be successful. Samuel Felinton admitted his fault and learned a valuable life lesson. Julius and Moritz have not only regained their original creation’s rights and the festival awards it won, but through the documentary film, they also sparked an interesting debate about the modern social-media-driven culture, artistic ownership, and choosing a positive resolution and dialogue instead of justice or revenge.

Their out-of-the-box thinking in the face of seemingly hopeless circumstances turned something bad into a positive and uplifting experience. What a truly impressive way for artists to enter the filmmaking world.

​Amazing Monster Rigged in Blender ​

​Artem Shaphiro, a 3D artist from Barcelona, Spain, shared his recent experiment in rigging with his Leviathan creature.

The sea monster has great (and scary) design with lots of 3D sculpted details, but the real-time swimming motion is super-smooth and natural-looking. Artem’s artwork is a living (and swimming) proof that Blender is capable of truly stunning results when used by a skilled artist.

If you want to level up your skills in Blender to create and rig creatures in Blender, I recommend our Creature Forge course, which focuses exactly on this area.

​Birthday Sale and Birthday Cake Madness 3D Challenge are still running

Speaking of our courses, let me give you a quick, friendly reminder that our CG Boost Birthday Sale is still running (till October 31st), and you can grab any of our Courses 30% off or any Course Bundle 15% off.

To claim the discount, use the coupon code below at checkout:

Coupon Code: HBD25

​Check out our courses here​

Our Birthday Cake Madness 3D Challenge is also going strong, with people already sharing their Blender cakes, half-baked blockouts, and concepts in our community. It would be sweet if you joined the fun as well!

​Free Animation ​Mini​-Course - Blender Bender​

If you want to start your animation journey in Blender, this will be a real treat!

Brian Kouhi from ToAnimate just released a free 3-day mini-course called "Blender Bender".

It contains videos introducing Blender’s animation tools, the most important concepts you need to understand, as well as workflows that professional animators use to create and polish their shots.

All of this with some free useful assets and extra discounts for other ToAnimate products.

Did I mention it’s free?

​Check out Blender Bender here​
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That’s all from me today. Have a great weekend, and till next time.

~Zach