CHEF DONE!

Blender Grease Pencil animation with face rig and After effects treatments.

Challenges:

Facial Rigging:Learning to rig the face took roughly two weeks. I repeated several tutorials multiple times to fully grasp the concepts and workflows. The following resources were particularly helpful:

• Mumu Mundo’s Peppa Pig Rig (YouTube)

• Sketchy Squirrel’s Grease Pencil Head Turn Tutorial (YouTube)

• Jared Freitage: Ultimate Character Rigging (Skillshare)

DUIK vs. Blender:

My original plan was to master full-body rigging using DUIK in After Effects. Unfortunately, that plugin slowed my computer down to a crawl. I switched to Blender, which offered equally advanced rigging capabilities without impacting performance — a critical factor for staying productive.

Grease Pencil Inexperience:

This was my first time using Blender’s Grease Pencil. Due to my limited experience, I wasn’t able to give the character much depth directly in Blender. To compensate, I added dimensionality using After Effects with multiple feathered masks.

Facial Hair Rigging:

Animating the character’s mustache and beard proved tricky during the head turn. I resolved this by segmenting the face further — splitting the beard into two parts, as well as isolating the cheeks. This approach gave the illusion of facial structure and added depth during the animation.

Future Learning Goals:

• Mastering Drivers

• Implementing Shape Keys

• Building Custom Control Boards

• Creating functional Rig UI Layouts