Hey Reader,

Zach here,

With a fresh round of inspiration and resources from the 3D world.

Today we have a fun CG Boost tutorial on making a low poly parrot-bot, a video about making a cool watercolor effect in Blender, an impressive sci-fi short about a cosmic mining industry and an interview with the director of the award-winning feature film "Flow" (that was made entirely in Blender).

Let’s dive in.

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​Making a low poly, realtime-ready, pixel-textured Parrot Bot in Blender​

Louis (our Robotic Planet course instructor) has just made another fun Blender tutorial for our YouTube channel, on how to create a cool low poly parrot-bot, step by step.

What’s even cooler is that the bot will be animated and prepared for realtime applications like game engines or online 3D viewers like Sketchfab.

Creating it will involve modeling and decimating the model for a low poly count, UV unwrapping, texture painting in a pixel-art style, and finally rigging and animating, all in Blender (and all in this one video).

The tutorial is made for people with at least a basic understanding of Blender (if you need to get through the basics, I recommend our free Blender beginners course).

​Watercolor Effect in Blender (Tutorial)​

If you’re interested in creating nice-looking watercolor effects in Blender, you need to watch this video by Kai.

Using a combination of NPR shader nodes mixed with Grease Pencil and a little bit of Geometry Nodes for the line art, Kai explains the process step by step so you can understand the technique and tweak it to your liking.

As a cherry on top, he introduces some compositing to add paper background, and a more painterly look using Kuwahara filters.

​"Solistice - 5" an ominous vision of space industry made in Blender​

Space exploration and technological advancements can make us look forward to a bright future, but they also can raise questions about possible threats and possible environmental impact of our actions as humans.

​This stunning pseudo-documentary sci-fi animation by Paul Chadeisson shows an impressive but also scary vision of the future where machines take over an entire planet for greedy exploitation of its environment.

The imagery is really beautiful and cinematic, which only makes the warning message it conveys ring louder.

​Interview with Gints Zabalodis - Director of "Flow" ​

"Flow" - an animated feature film made entirely in Blender, is winning more and more awards. In this in-depth interview, Gints Zabalodis (the director of the movie) shares his unique approach to filmmaking.

This includes an unusual method of exploring the story with a 3D-made cinematic that allows for exploring the virtual set with the camera to find perfect shots. Gints also developed the music for the movie, along with editing. This allowed for more synergy between the visuals and the music for a bigger emotional impact.

If you’re interested in making your own animations that tell a story, I have good news for you, as we’re preparing to launch a new course about cinematography in Blender (by the amazing Martin Klekner). I hope this will give you a good foundation to build your cinematic experiences. Stay tuned for more information soon.

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That’s all from me today, have a great week and till next time.

~Zach