When I first saw Goro Fujita’s Quill VR work on my Insta feed, it instantly hit me like a gust of fresh air. Although created and rendered in an otherwise standard looking 3D space, the objects and world in the visuals had their own character. It was a bit uncanny, since we are used to much more clean and sterile stuff on 3D. These animated drawings, were just that. They retained the hand-drawn quality and splendor with the added freedom of being in a 3D space, allowing more flexibility in terms of camera work. But that’s something you’d get once you pay a premium price for a VR headset, the software and the powerful workstation that can support it. Naturally, it was out of reach.

Then I coincidentally came across the works of another Japanese artist, Gaku Tada.

The guy had conjured magic and had managed to create a beautiful watercolor look and got it running in real-time. This pointed me towards the prime suspect on which it could have been executed— Blender. His work was enchanting to say the least and got me into Grease pencil, a tiny but powerful corner of Blender I had not explored in the past.

And granted, the learning curve was a bit steep for the first week but once I got a hang of things (thanks to the lovely breakdowns by Gaku, Sophie, Kevandram, Lucasz and a few others and the resources on blender cloud) , it felt liberating to draw in 3D space and animate those drawings as well. And, these are a few works I came up with:

Now I certainly won’t say that it’s an easy alternative to something like Quill VR, but with the Blender subscription coming at a literal cost of goodwill, and there being nothing that comes close to it, it’s something in itself.

It’s a lovely playground to dabble in NPR, I dig the natural rough aesthetic, the resulting liberating freshness and delight.