Animating with Blender

Summary

The design of your characters is constrained by the theme, how the characters are used in the storyboards, and by the needs of maintaining responsiveness during animation and good deformations in the final render. Character design will both be informed by and strengthen the theme. The realism of characters will depend upon your resources and the goals of your animation.

While modeling characters, they need to be high enough in resolution to look good when rendered but small enough in face count to provide a good experience when working with the animation tools. Often a subsurface modifier and normal mapping can provide an excellent solution to this dilemma. The requirements of animation must also be respected, with quads and edge loops ...