I deleted most of my social media accounts a few years ago with the exception of Instagram, where over time I’ve discovered and followed dozens of talented and inspiring artists and designers. One fresh design trend “the algorithm” has been feeding me in recent months (no doubt based on my viewing habits) is the work of Blender artists who synthesize organic 2D illustration techniques into their 3D designs to impressive effect. This look is typically achieved by employing flat 2D ‘toon’ shaders in combination with Blender’s Grease Pencil feature, which allows you to draw with natural media tools in both 2D and 3D space.  

Conceptually I understood these techniques and why they complement each other so effectively, but I didn’t know the recipes for setting things up from scratch. I’ll often sign up for courses on Udemy to learn new features (like character modeling and rigging), but that seemed like overkill, since I just wanted to learn the basic building blocks. Enter YouTube. Matthew Fryer hosts TipTut, a channel where he publishes bite-sized courses covering techniques for a variety of design and media apps, including Blender, Creative Cloud and more. His 39-minute course for modeling and embellishing these mushrooms inspired by art from Zelda the Minish Cap was exactly what I was looking for: concise but with the right amount of the “why” in addition to the “how,” making it easy to for me imagine how to incorporate these techniques into my own projects.