Purpose of Effects

Effects can be a very important part of making an animation feel impactful or unique. They’re not always necessary, but having them can set you apart from other animators. If you do want effects, however you want to make sure that you consider them before animating, so you know how to make your character react to them if need be. Some effects may be a conscious choice by the character, such as purposefully spraying a can of paint into the eyes of their enemy. However, for most effects, it’s a reaction of the environment to the character’s movements. We’ll be going over how to quickly execute those effects with simple assets in two ways. 2D animated cards or particle systems.

For those of you who are wondering, fluid fire and smoke simulations are available in Blender, but they’re not super practical for stylized animations like the one we’re making. But if you’re interested in those effects, there are tons of resources available online to teach you how to use those as well.

In the next video, we’ll go over how to use 2D animated cards, which are basically 2D animations on image planes in our 3D scene.