All Grown Up: Blender Cloud Turns Seven

Blender Cloud is seven years old! Young for a person, grown up for a platform.

So let's break out the cake, brush away a tear of pride, and take a nostalgic look at the last year.

Coffee Run (2020)

Hjalti Hjálmarsson, director of 2017's Agent 327, also directed Coffee Run. An experimental animation in the style of an infinite runner, Coffee Run deals with universal human themes: love, heartbreak, and the need for high-quality caffeine.

Concept Art from Coffee Run, by the always excellent Vivien Lulkowski.

Settlers

Not a film, but a gift to the Blender community, Settlers consists of quirky characters, scenes and environments. Download, create, study, play: Settlers is a sandbox just for you.

A still from Pip City, part of the Settlers project. Download the working files by clicking the image above.

The Rain Rig

A fully-functioning, production-level character available for download. Rain requires no add-ons, no in-depth knowledge of rigging... and no fuss.

Training

Blender Cloud's dedication to studio level training continued.

Learn animation, including animal character modelling for beginners with Blender Studio's own Julien Kaspar, weight painting with Rigger Demeter Dzadik, and this gigantic series on creating tiny critters.

Julien Kaspar explains character modelling using primitives and straightforward techniques.

In Procedural Shading: Fundamentals and Beyond, artist Simon Thommes flips traditional 3D on its head by constructing simple models then making Blender's node-based shader editor do the heavy lifting. Prepare to say "Really? You can do that with nodes?" over and over again.

Simon Thommes supercharges your shading powers in this wide-ranging video series.

Sprite Fright (2021)

A birthday wouldn't be a birthday without a nod to the future.

In the Cloud's case, that means Sprite Fright, a new horror-comedy directed by Matthew Luhn, coming this Autumn from Blender Studio.

With decades of experience at Pixar and The Simpsons, Matthew is true animation aristocracy. Follow him and the Blender Studio crew on Blender Cloud: every week, you'll find a torrent of production logs, including add-on prototypes, training and downloadable assets.

Vivien captures a key moment from Sprite Fright.

So there we have it: the little fellow got so big. As in 9,080 subscribers big -- more than ever. For the next growth spurt, let's aim for a strapping 10, 000 subs.

If you're not already a subscriber, join here. And if you are a subscriber, 2,555 times thank you. That's one "thank you" for every day of the last seven years.

Here's to another seven years. And another seventy after that.