Comic and Zine NPR Outline Tutorial In Blender with e-Zine Guide

Push stylization in your NPR (non photorealistic) 2d/3d animation with this tutorial and guide, which covers how to do a comic styled cut out outline animation similar to Spider-Punk in Across the Spiderverse! I was impressed with the idea presented in the film that I found and adapted my own unique way of doing this animation style in Blender on 3D objects and characters. The original idea stems from an animatic presented by Spencer Wan and later Li Wen Toh for 3D animation in the software, Maya for the film.

The process is beginner friendly but because it requires a basic understanding of multiple tools in Blender such as material shaders, object modifiers, 3D modeling, vertex painting, it can be intermediate in understanding when put together. If you have difficulty understanding these concepts, the e-zine offers additional guidance on the terminology and conceptual ideas of the steps (it actually took me a while to comprehend and build off of it through trial and error) and manipulating certain features to get indirect effects.

The process allows you to quickly add a dynamic keyable, temporary stylized outline that sits behind your object and can be constantly interpolated to get that sweet grungy frame chopped look (really popular these days) that can be added without being destructive to the mesh topology of existing objects. Instead of constantly animating a 2D cutout, this technique will save time on a moving object by being editable in real-time . As well as allow existing objects to still be affected by lighting in the scene.

A video tutorial will become available on Youtube and covers the process from the very beginning:

The gumroad package aims to offer better clarity and allows for a firm understanding to be able to pull apart the demo .blend file where the video leaves off. This package intends to fill in information, save time and give you a step ahead in this style of NPR. It can allow you to be able to deviate from the process and eventually create your own variants and/or continue to use the texture collages included.

The gumroad will include:

(1) .blend file with the default cube, torus, and Suzanne monkey head with comic outlines and animation applied.

(3) .png image texture collages digitally modified and adapted for the outlines. (Punk Collage, Japanese Punk Collage, Femme Punk Collage)

(12) .png image texture lightning bolt shaped cutouts of the texture collages.

(1) 21 page e-zine digital guide .pdf simplifying and clarifying some concepts step by step.

If you decide to buy the package, thank you! It helps me create sustainably and provide content that doesn't require you to shell out for a full academic class on the topic. Long live Spider-Punk!

The file is Blender 3.5, so keep updated in order for the file to work.

If there is any new information, that makes it an easier/better process than the one presented I will update the existing files and they will become available to you free of access if you have already made a purchase.

Blender is open source and free: https://www.blender.org/ , https://bnpr.gitbook.io/bnpr/

Edits:

12/29/2023 - I have checked compatibility with 4.0 and haven't seen any issues with opening the blend files from 3.6 to 4.0. There wasn't any big changes to Grease Pencil by the Blender Foundation as originally anticipated during Winter 2023.

3/21/2024 - I deleted some unnecessary duplicated data blocks and packed the image textures into the file in case it wasn't loading before.