In this lesson, students are introduced to the Fundamental Character Animation module, where they’ll shift from animating objects to bringing character rigs to life. They’ll learn rig controls, posing, blocking, walk cycles, run cycles, personality, and polish so they can build stronger character animation skills in Blender.

In this lesson, students learn how to build a lower body walk cycle by focusing on contact poses, transfer poses, timing, hip movement, foot placement, and clean looping mechanics. They’ll refine the walk in the Graph Editor with details like foot slap, leg swing, hip sway, and subtle offsets so the character’s movement feels more natural and believable.

In this lesson, students get reacquainted with character rigs and explore how different rigs are used throughout The Animation Society curriculum. They’ll review Blender Studio rigs, learn about the TAS character lineup, and begin working with the customizable Poly twins as their main rigs for posing, walk cycles, run cycles, and portfolio practice.

In this lesson, students build on the lower body walk cycle by animating the arms, torso, head, and full-body weight shifts to create a complete character walk. They’ll refine arcs, offsets, follow-through, looping, timing, and forward translation so the walk feels balanced, natural, and ready to use in more complex character animation.

In this lesson, students learn how strong character poses start with clear silhouettes that communicate action, balance, personality, and appeal from the camera’s point of view. They’ll create multiple poses with the Poly rigs, refine them through a silhouette view.

In this lesson, students learn how to create a run cycle by building the key poses that make running different from walking, including contact, kickoff, transfer, and up poses. They’ll refine the torso, hands, head, ponytail, looping, NLA setup, and forward translation so the run feels energetic, balanced, and believable.

In this lesson, students learn how blocking helps them plan character animation by laying out key poses, breakdowns, timing, and camera framing before refining the final motion. They’ll practice using stepped keyframes to rough out action scenes so they can experiment with ideas, solve timing issues early, and build a stronger animation foundation.

In this lesson, students learn how to add personality and polish to walk and run cycles so character movement feels more unique, expressive, and story-driven. They’ll explore reference, exaggeration, cycle reuse, animation copying, and NLA layering to turn basic locomotion into portfolio-worthy character performance.