Blender for Beginners

Hi! My name is 'Harry Helps' and in this class, I’ll walk you through the simple and beginner friendly process of creating a Vaporwave style animation in Blender. Vaporwave is both a musical and a visual genre of artwork. The visual aesthetic is defined as “incorporating early Internet imagery, late 1990s web design, glitch art, and cyberpunk tropes, as well as anime, Greco-Roman statues, and 3D-rendered objects”. In this class we’ll be focusing on the visual aesthetics of Vaporwave to create our animation. I specialize in clear, easy to follow beginner’s classes. We’ll go through each process, step-by-step, to prevent as much confusion as possible. We’re using Blender for this tutorial, which is an amazing and totally free 3d software. The only barrier to entry is having a computer to run the software on. Creating a heavily stylized animation loop is a really desirable skill to have as a 3d artist, however it doesn’t need to be difficult. We’ll go through the entire process of creating this animation from a beginner’s perspective to avoid as much confusion as possible. In this class you can expect to learn: - Blender Interface and Tools: We’ll learn about many basic tools and interface elements within Blender while building and animating our statue. - Modeling: To achieve our Vaporwave aesthetic, we’ll be altering a 3d scanned Greco-Roman statue. - Lighting: We’ll set up a stylized lighting scheme including volumetric lighting. - Shading: Which can give objects the appearance of glowing neon lights, or golden metal. - Animating: We’ll create a subtle looping animation featuring our Vaporwave statue. - Rendering: Lastly, we’ll render our final animation in Blender so you can share it with your friends and family on social media. When we’re done you’ll have all the skills you need to create a Vaporwave animation loop of your very own! Instructor bio: 'Harry Helps' is a 3D artist and educator with over a decade of professional experience in modeling, texturing, animation, and post-production. Throughout his career, he has worked across diverse industries—from MMORPG game studios and video production companies to award-winning architectural visualization firms—holding roles such as Studio Director, Lead 3D Artist, and Greenscreen Editor. His work has been featured in 3D Artist magazine, where he also contributed tutorial content. With extensive expertise in Blender, 3ds Max, V-Ray, and Photoshop, Harry is passionate about sharing his knowledge and inspiring the next generation of 3D creators.

Hi, my name is 'Harry Helps' and In this class I'll guide you through a fun beginner exercise where we’ll create a 3d balloon dog in Blender. We’ll go through each part of the process step-by-step, so you should find it fun and easy to follow along with me. We’re using Blender for this tutorial, which is an amazing and totally free 3d software. The only barrier to entry is having a computer to run the software on. A balloon dog might seem like an odd choice for a beginner project, but it really is a perfect place to start! You'll learn: - Modeling - Creating the body of the balloon dog - Modifiers - Additional modeling effects, such as smoothing - Shading - Making the balloon dog look like a colorful rubber - Lighting - Adding lights to illuminate our scene - Rendering - Positioning a 3d camera and generating a picture of our balloon dog At the end, we’ll have a cute balloon dog to render to our heart’s content. It’s also a model that can be easily altered into a different animal just by adjusting some proportions or adding a new piece! Our class project will have you take all of the techniques you learned making the balloon dog, and apply them to make another animal of your choice. You can keep the shape simple and abstract like the balloon dog, or you can go all out and make a balloon masterpiece! Post your balloon animal to the gallery to show off your hard work and imagination to myself and all the other students! I hope you’ll join me on this fun little beginner’s journey through Blender by making your very own balloon dog! Instructor bio: 'Harry Helps' is a 3D artist and educator with over a decade of professional experience in modeling, texturing, animation, and post-production. Throughout his career, he has worked across diverse industries—from MMORPG game studios and video production companies to award-winning architectural visualization firms—holding roles such as Studio Director, Lead 3D Artist, and Greenscreen Editor. His work has been featured in 3D Artist magazine, where he also contributed tutorial content. With extensive expertise in Blender, 3ds Max, V-Ray, and Photoshop, Harry is passionate about sharing his knowledge and inspiring the next generation of 3D creators.