Patata School

Complete Introduction to Blender

We recommend beginners to Blender start with this course. Here you’ll get an overview of the programme, learning the different tools and techniques needed to create this scene from scratch.

After completing this course, or with an equivalent knowledge of the basics of Blender, you can choose any route you like, depending on your interests. Our courses are all beginner-friendly and self-contained; we aim to build on learning and explain concepts, and won’t assume prior knowledge.

Just choose what interests you from the courses below and jump in!

Courses

2D to 3D: Whimsical Characters, a Pipeline in Blender

11 Lessons

Tutorial Duration: 170 minutes | Create this whimsical character scene and see it come alive in 3D: fully rigged, textured and with realistic lighting. As well as covering the modelling, Grease Pencil and Texture Painting, bonus details to make waving flags attached the pole, and rigging a human and bear character are included. All from scratch, so you're ready to jump in and create your characters today!

Create an NPR Monkey in Blender

7 Lessons

Tutorial Duration: 100 minutes | From a cube to a rigged, NPR rendered monkey, this course will guide you through modelling, rigging, texture painting, Grease Pencil, Halftone Dots, hair simulation, and more! You'll learn the tools to create this character and the knowledge to create so much more. We'll cover all the tips and tricks you need, whether you're a beginner or a Blender pro!

Grease Pencil in the Real World

12 Lessons

Tutorial Duration: 70 minutes | Learn to blend handcrafted Grease Pencil art with reality. Master "imperfect" pencil strokes, efficient looping animations, and seamless real-world integration using Blender or After Effects. You'll learn to achieve a tactile, crafty aesthetic where digital sketches gain an impossible-looking physicality in real 3D space .

PataClay | Blender Clay Materials & Brushes

12 Lessons

PataClay is our easy-to-use, drag & drop, super realistic clay material collection. Plus a set of sculpting brushes to help you imitate real life clay modelling techniques. We've prepared a range of files showcasing the collection and we explore them here together so you'll get the most from PataClay. Create your own elephant, learn about animating with PataClay, and draw in clay - yes, really! All with Pataclay.

Bouncy Rigs in Blender

10 Lessons

Tutorial Duration: 100 minutes | We'll teach you to build complete, custom rigs from scratch and integrate bouncy, secondary motion into them. This technique can be applied to any character element - hairstyles, tails, whiskers -to inject natural, appealing physics to your animations. We'll build the character and rig from scratch, and analyse Case Studies for the full knowledge to create your bouncy character.

Architectural Sketching Using Blender

13 Lessons

Tutorial Duration: 135 minutes | Create beautiful, hand-drawn architectural drawings with all the benefits 3D brings us; a reference for perspective and realistic lighting, modifiers to create different effects, camera movements, and so much more. We'll cover the whole process using new modelling techniques and different brushes. Make whatever 2D style you can imagine with the knowledge from this course!

Model, Rig & Animate Your Hero in Blender

14 Lessons

Tutorial Duration: 155 minutes | Learn everything you need to model, rig, and animate your character in an incredible 2D/3D scene. We'll use Blender's nodes for geometry, materials, and compositing to create this 2D-style illustration with all the benefits of 3D; cel shaded objects that react to lighting, use of Grease Pencil in your rig, a dynamic camera movement to add drama to your Hero animation, and more!

2.5D Illustration in Grease Pencil

26 Lessons

Tutorial Duration: 175 minutes | 2.5D means keeping the look of your 2D illustration while getting the best of 3D world; physics, camera lenses, animation techniques, and much more! This course covers it all: how to model your character from scratch, effectively use Grease Pencil and its modifiers, even rig and animate your character. Get ready to create something unique and bring your 2D scenes into the 3D world!

Rig Anything in Blender

11 Lessons

Tutorial Duration: 130 minutes | Learn to rig anything with this varied and versatile course. No auto-rigs here; we'll work from scratch, adapting to whatever character you can imagine. You'll learn to rig the body and animate using Inverse Kinematics, create your own eye rig, use Shape Keys for complex movements, incorporate Grease Pencil into your rig to get a unique look mixing 2D and 3D, and much more!

Pixel Art in Blender

17 Lessons

Tutorial Duration: 85 minutes | More than just a course about Pixel Art, this is also a library of materials that allows you to create different styles in your own unique Pixel Art compositions. You'll learn how to model this scene, add lighting, materials, dithering, and strokes with different colours and sizes. All without leaving Blender. Learn all you need to know about Pixel Art with this course today!

2D & 3D Typography in Blender and Cavalry

18 Lessons

Tutorial Duration: 145 minutes | You'll learn how to create 2D typography animations in Cavalry and mix them with 3D effects in Blender. This course invites you to use your lateral thinking and get unique results that can be applied to your own projects. Perfect for complete beginners and more seasoned Blender users alike, we can't wait to see what you make!

2D to 3D in Blender

15 Lessons

Tutorial Duration: 95 minutes | We cover the entire process of translating a 2D character into 3D; first modelling the character with tips and tricks along the way and including theory to apply to your characters. To achieve a uniquely crafted feeling, we'll show you how to use our exclusive Patata School brush set for colour and texturing. Finally, we'll rig the character so you can create your own animations.

Physics for Character Design in Blender

25 Lessons

Tutorial Duration: 155 minutes | Scared of Physics Simulations in Blender? Not any more! We teach Physics without breaking your computer, and while having fun. You'll learn techniques that you can apply to your own characters and that will change the way you think about 3D simulations.

Paintify | Digital Paint for Blender

7 Lessons

Tutorial Duration: 40 minutes | This handmade shader gives a unique painterly effect to any 3D model. Coupled with our collection of animated shadows, we give a hand-crafted and tactile feeling to any Blender creation, working live in Eevee or Cycles. As a bonus feature of Paintify, we teach you to animate a jellyfish scene to help with learning and understanding the Paintify collection.

Patterned Illustration in Blender

10 Lessons

Tutorial Duration: 70 minutes | Exploring styles and techniques is at the heart of this course; you'll learn how to model, texture, light and render this illustration, using Blender in unusual ways to achieve beautiful results. Create your own graphical patterned illustrations in 3D and make them feel tactile and unique with this course!

Typography in Motion using Blender

21 Lessons

Tutorial Duration: 150 minutes | Want to create your own 3D text in motion? We go in depth to cover a range of techniques in Blender to achieve unique results, mixing classic graphic type design with a modern, illustrative flair. We'll guide you from start to final render, even with a bonus colour correction lesson, so you have incredible animations that will grab attention everywhere!

2D to 3D: Grease Pencil in Blender

20 Lessons

Tutorial Duration: 155 minutes | Want to make your 2D character in 3D? This course will go in depth analysing the 2D character and the best tools to bring it into 3D, always keeping the spirit of the drawing. First we'll analyse how to best translate the flat image to a 3D model then, using Blender's Grease Pencil feature, we'll add frame-by-frame animation, 2D details, and unique ways of making your image special.

Face Rigs in Blender

22 Lessons

Tutorial Duration: 95 minutes | Bring your 3D characters to life with rigged 2D faces! Apply your own designs with our easy-to-use Face Rig preset, sync it to audio, and even learn how to create your own complex rigs from scratch. We'll guide you through every step so your characters will be expressing every emotion you can imagine, and chatting away, in no time.

Mastering Lighting: Make Better 3D Renders

14 Lessons

Tutorial Duration: 65 minutes | Want to improve your 3D renders to get a more professional finish? This course will teach you how, through a better understanding of your lighting and camera setup. We'll cover the theory of lighting, analysing varied examples before we jump into Blender for a practical, step-by-step example. You'll even be provided with this sample 3D file so you can follow along easily.

How to Rig a Bicycle in Blender

16 Lessons

Tutorial Duration: 150 minutes | If you want to learn how to rig objects and vehicles for your character to use in Blender, this is the course for you! We'll explain the theory of rigging and go through the different processes step by step so that, by the end of this course, you'll be able to rig whatever you can imagine. You'll also learn how to create a looping cycling animation for your character.

Creative Shadows in Blender

6 Lessons

Tutorial Duration: 16 minutes | This varied series of images are used to add complexity and visual interest to your 3D renders with the suggestion of a world outside the visible scene. As well as this extensive collection of 50 images for you to download we've prepared a tutorial explaining how to use them in Blender and get varied and unique results that bring your images to the next level.

Complete Character Rigging & Animation in Blender

22 Lessons

Tutorial Duration: 240 minutes | This in depth course covers it all: character modelling, rigging, animation, and rendering in Blender. You'll learn the entire process step by step, with handy tips and real design and animation theory at each stage, all to help your project shine. By the end you'll have your own 3D walk cycle with extra animation details for your character and other objects.

Making Games in Spline

17 Lessons

Tutorial Duration: 95 minutes | Making your own interactive games has never been easier with Spline; free and simple to use, we'll show you everything you need to know about Physics and Game Control features so you can create your own characters, world, and countless game-play interactions. This course has everything you need to create your own game, so start learning today!

Creating Hair in Blender

9 Lessons

Tutorial Duration: 35 minutes | Learn everything you need to know to create the perfect hair simulation in Blender. We'll guide you through the best way to prepare your 3D file for hair, adjust properties to create unique styles, and use nodes to personalise your project like a pro.

Creating Hair in Cinema 4D

5 Lessons

Tutorial Duration: 25 minutes | This course covers all the ins and outs of hair creation in C4D, using different modelling tools, adjusting material properties, and changing the colour of different areas of hair. We'll show you how to prepare the perfect scene to get the best results in your 3D hair.

Making Food & Drinks in Blender

20 Lessons

Tutorial Duration: 110 minutes | Want to model your own favourite food & drinks? We'll guide you through the modelling, colour & texture, lighting, and rendering so that you can hone your 3D skills and get the inspiration and knowledge to create your own artworks. Plus some fun extra tricks like animating liquid and creating different textures and lighting set-ups will take your Blender skills to the next level!

Complete Character Animation in C4D & Marvelous Designer

26 Lessons

Tutorial Duration: 190 minutes | This is the ultimate course on Character Animation in Cinema 4D and Marvelous Designer, straight from the studio that started it all. We'll guide you through our workflow from animation, through cloth simulation, sharing our secrets to make your process smoother and your 3D character animation stand out from the crowd.

A Complete Guide to Octane Render Engine in C4D

22 Lessons

Tutorial Duration: 60 minutes | In this complete guide to Octane with C4D, we'll guide you through different features of this powerful render engine. You'll get to be an expert in photography skills like depth of field and motion blur, simulate materials like glass and smoke, and emit light and glows in your 3D scenes. We'll provide you with the tools and knowledge to take your 3D work to the next level.

Blender for Complete Beginners: A Complete Guide to 3D Modelling in Blender

25 Lessons

Tutorial Duration: 285 minutes | This is the perfect 3D modelling course for beginners and those more familiar with Blender alike. You'll learn how to model this entire scene, including your own Smokey the Bear kawaii character, using different tools and techniques. We'll then cover adding colour, texture and lighting, and we'll guide you through the final render in Blender's own Cycles render engine.

Interactive Animation in Spline

15 Lessons

Tutorial Duration: 90 minutes | Animating for the web is the perfect tool to add to your portfolio and this course will teach you all you need to know about getting started with interactivity in Spline. We'll create 3 different interactive animations and export them for the web, teaching you all the tools you need to make many more, and upload to your website!

How to Model a 3D Scene in Spline

12 Lessons

Tutorial Duration: 130 minutes | This is the perfect course to get you started Spline; we'll go through the entire process for 3D modelling your own character and scene. From walking through the workspace, through modelling, colouring and lighting, to exporting your finished 3D character and scene, this course has it all!

How to Rig a Character in Cinema 4D

16 Lessons

Tutorial Duration: 155 minutes | We've created the clearest and most direct course out there for rigging your character's body using the powerful tools available in C4D, in this case the Toon Rig. We'll go through the different key processes, explaining the theory and showing you how we create character rigs for our animation projects. We'll even provide the C4D files to help with your learning.

How to Make Your Own Shoe Collection in C4D

16 Lessons

Tutorial Duration: 115 minutes | Nothing feels as good as a new pair of shoes. They express so much in a character; their job, personality, and fashion sense to name a few. Here we'll teach you how to make six unique pairs of shoes from scratch using different tools and techniques. Learn how to better understand 3D modelling and the beauty of creating your own models from scratch.

10 Week Character Design Challenge

21 Lessons

Character design is much more than using specific tools. No matter the style, there are some principles that are essential across character design. This course is a mixture of theory and practice, divided it into 10 weekly challenges. As you complete the course you’ll start finding your own style and improving the quality of your character design by understanding what’s behind a great character.

A Complete Guide to Silk Screen Printing

6 Lessons

Tutorial Duration: 10 minutes | Silk Screen Printing is a centuries old technique originating in Ancient China. Revisiting old techniques with our modern designs is a great way of connecting with the history of art. There's so much we can learn from the process and incorporate across media into everything we make. It's time to move to a different screen for a day, this time a slightly messier and less precise one!

Clay Material Collection Vol 1

13 Lessons

Tutorial Duration: 25 minutes | If you want to achieve a more authentic, handmade effect in your work this is the perfect material collection for you. Make any 3D object feel instantly tactile with our collection of 20 drag & drop clay materials. Here we'll show you how to get started and how you can edit the materials to get personal, unique results.

Fabric Collection Vol 1

8 Lessons

Tutorial Duration: 11 minutes | We created this huge library of Fabric Materials to help you bring more realism and a hand-crafted feeling to your renders. It's as easy as adding them to your Library so you can drag & drop any fabric you could imagine into your project. Here we'll show you how to get started and how you can edit the fabrics to get personal, unique results.

Model & Render a Globe in C4D

11 Lessons

Tutorial Duration: 46 minutes | In this course you'll learn how to model a globe from scratch in Cinema 4D. We'll use different tools and techniques to create the base, the support and the sphere with it's 3D map. You'll also learn about Displacement Maps and how to create and edit them to achieve different effects. We'll cover how to light your scene and add textures to create a rustic, life-like finish.

Photoshop for Beginners

15 Lessons

Tutorial Duration: 68 minutes | This beginners course is designed to teach you a range of different tools and techniques through four real-life projects: a collage, a poster, a beer can, and a photo to retouch. You'll learn how to combine shapes and layers, add effects and balance colours, use masks, smart objects, blend modes, and more. It's the perfect preparation to using Photoshop in a professional setting.

HDRI Lighting Collection Vol 1

13 Lessons

Tutorial Duration: 22 minutes | HDRIs are used to light your 3D renders in a more efficient way, achieving complex and realistic results with beautiful reflections in no time. As well as 50 downloadable HDRI images we have created an introductory tutorial to explain what an HDRI is and what it's used for, plus how to use them in your 3D scene in both C4D and Blender.

Creative Shadows in Cinema 4D & Octane

9 Lessons

Tutorial Duration: 16 minutes | This varied series of images are used to add complexity and visual interest to your 3D renders with the suggestion of a world outside the visible scene. As well as this extensive collection of 50 images for you to download we've prepared a tutorial explaining how to use them in C4D and get varied and unique results that bring your images to the next level.

A Beginner's Guide to After Effects

20 Lessons

Tutorial Duration: 113 minutes | We've created the perfect beginner's course to teach you a range of different techniques and effects within After Effects. You'll learn how to animate shapes and text to create titles, add audio and visual effects to footage, and all about motion tracking and using After Effects expressions to create UI. Jump into After Effects with this all-round beginners course!

The Ultimate Marvelous Designer Course

16 Lessons

Tutorial Duration: 123 minutes | New to Marvelous Designer? Or maybe you've used it before but would like to learn some more advanced features? Whatever your reason, this is the course for you. You'll learn different tools and techniques to make complex clothing with stitches, buttons, zips, pockets, and even a hooded jacket. You'll be ready to tackle a project in Marvelous Designer from start to final export.

Surface Imperfections Vol 1

22 Lessons

Tutorial Duration: 20 minutes | This specially tailored set of Surface Imperfections can be used in myriad occasions to create more realistic and pleasing images. We love these subtle surface imperfections in our renders and here we'll show you why. As well this downloadable collection we've also prepared a tutorial to show you how to apply them in C4D and some tricks to get the best results in your renders.

Wooden Textures Vol 1 - Blender & C4D

24 Lessons

Tutorial Duration: 33 minutes | This varied set of materials can be combined to add a realistic, craft-like feeling to your projects. We've prepared a tutorial to show you how to apply these textures in C4D & Blender and some tricks for how to get the best results in your renders. For a more direct approach we've also prepared a pre-made Octane Library with 50 ready-to-use drag and drop materials.

How to Make an Isometric Room in Cinema 4D and Octane

38 Lessons

Tutorial Duration: 290 minutes | This is the perfect Cinema 4D modelling course for beginners and those more familiar with C4D alike. We'll take you through the modelling of every element in this isometric room, teach you how to add colour, texture and lighting, and guide you through the final render in Octane.

Personalised Brush Sets in Procreate

8 Lessons

Tutorial Duration: 13 minutes | This course teaches the start to finish of how to make personalised brushes in Procreate, plus free downloads of our specially tailored Crafting Brush Set and a library of Shape and Grain images to apply to your own creations. Learn about digital brushes and how to make a Procreate Brush Set that fits your unique style with this step-by-step course!

Repeat Patterns in Procreate, Photoshop & C4D

13 Lessons

Tutorial Duration: 30 minutes | In this course you'll learn how to make your own tileable repeat patterns from scratch and apply them in Cinema 4D. We'll also provide some example patterns and a C4D project to apply them to. Tools used: Procreate, Photoshop, Cinema 4D, Octane Render