Blender Animation & Rigging: Bring Your Creations To Life by Grant Abbitt

This course is all about getting your Blender characters moving. You’ll start with the basics of keyframes and the graph editor, then build up to full character rigs and expressive animations. Grant Abbitt walks you through each step, even acting out the motions himself so you have a real-world reference to follow. By the end, you’ll be exporting polished animations ready for game engines like Unity.

🎯 What you’ll learn

• Rig characters from scratch using bones, IK, and FK systems.
• Animate with principles like anticipation, follow-through, and overlap.
• Create game-ready action sequences including runs, jumps, and attacks.
• Use Rigify for advanced automated character rigs.
• Export animations as FBX files and import them into Unity.

✅ Requirements

• : Basic understanding of the Blender interface (a few hours of modeling experience).
• Tools: A 3-button mouse is recommended.
• Hardware: A computer capable of running Blender 4.

📝 Description

This isn’t just a button-pushing tutorial. Grant Abbitt teaches you the why behind rigging and animation process. He starts with the fundamentals—keyframes, the graph editor, and interpolation—so you understand the core mechanics moving on to complex rigs.

The course is built around practical projects. You’ll rig a deadly trap, animate a snake, and build a full human character rig using both manual bone placement and the Rigify add-on. The real standout is the animation section: Grant acts out every motion himself, a simple idle to a double swipe attack, giving you a clear, physical reference to study and replicate. This approach makes abstract principles like anticipation and follow-through click instantly.

You’ll also learn the practical side of game development: cleaning up your animation actions, exporting FBX files, and importing them into Unity with all your animations intact. It’s a complete pipeline from Blender to a game engine.

🧑‍🎓 Who this course is for

• Blender users who have a basic handle on modeling and want to move into animation.
• Game developers who need to create and export character animations for their projects.
• Hobbyists looking to add expressive motion to their 3D creations.

🧑‍🏫 About the Author

Grant Abbitt has been using Blender since the late 90s, starting with motion graphics for his own film company. He transitioned into teaching games design over 15 years ago, which rekindled his passion for 3D animation. His YouTube channel, Gabbitt Media, has over 500,000 subscribers. He has worked on professional game models for titles like Atlas Empires and has taken on freelance projects ranging from engineering to 3D printing.

🏁 Final Result

• A fully rigged character with a library of game-ready animations (idle, run, attacks).
• The ability to export those animations as FBX files and import them into Unity.
• A solid understanding of animation principles that you can apply to any Blender project.