Jeffrey Ball’s Animation II students are beginning to take a huge animation jump from 2D to 3D animation. Students are developing the skills to create three-dimensional objects in Blender, a 3D animation software, with the help of Blender Guru’s YouTube tutorials. 

“Learning 3D animation is a very complicated task,” Ball said. “However, learning through a tutorial and learning the hotkeys of blender will be very beneficial to you guys during the learning process.”

Throughout the tutorial, there are several stages of designing. First, students must use the squishy technique to make a donut, followed by the solid technique to create a coffee cup. During the last section, students are required to make a simple animation of the coffee cup moving into the scene. 

“The reason I picked Blender Guru’s tutorials is that it takes you guys through the basic steps,” Ball said. “Remember this assignment is based on learning the fundamentals of Blender, not making something perfect.”

However, Ball’s students are still facing obstacles due to the difficulty of 3D animation. Some obstacles students might encounter include software glitches, finding exact colors, and measuring things perfectly. 

 “I do like how we are learning with a tutorial,” sophomore Gavin Ariota said. “However, there are many things such as measurements and sculpting that we have to do on our own that the tutorial doesn’t cover which makes this assignment harder.” 

Other students are finding the assignment to be a stepping stone into 3D animation and are enjoying the learning process. This unit will last until the end of the year and will be the final animation students create. 

“I am enjoying the opportunity to finally get to do real animation,” sophomore Hai Tong said. “The tutorial is making things hard and easy at the same time, but I am enjoying making these objects.”