Character Expression and Action for Anime Production in Blender by minusT7

This is minusT’s full production class for fast, polished anime action in Blender. You take a base character, clean up the lookdev, build reusable FX, then animate and cut together three connected scenes — flight, dodge-and-counter, and aerial combat.

🎯 What you’ll learn

• Complete Blender action animation workflow for longer-form sequences
• Refine NPR characters with MatCap, hair shaders, linework and color nodes
• Build 8 reusable FX with Shader Nodes and Geometry Nodes — shockwaves, sparkles, particles, trails, beams, explosions
• Animate aerial flight, bullet dodges, counterattacks and aerial combat
• Direct speed, rhythm and eye flow with composition and camera work
• Light, composite and edit multiple shots into one finished animation

✅ Requirements

• Skills: Comfortable with Blender basics — viewport navigation, keyframes, Shader Editor fundamentals
• Tools: Blender 5.1 installed, 3-button mouse
• Hardware: Dedicated GPU and minimum 16GB RAM recommended for particles, smoke simulation and rendering

📝 Description

This class skips the beginner button-tour and gets straight to production. You start with a simple rigged character and turn it into something screen-ready: reflective clothing with MatCap, semi-transparent hair with angle-based highlights, distance-controlled linework, and adaptive color tones that hold up under different lighting.

Then you build your toolbox. Eight FX setups using Shader Nodes and Geometry Nodes — shockwave rings, deforming sparkles, bullet barrages, spreading particles, flight trails, morphing trails, beams, and a smoke-based explosion. The point isn’t one-off pretty effects. It’s flexible node groups you can drop into any shot and tweak fast.

The second half is all animation. Three scenes, one flow: an intro aerial flight to nail weight and arcs, a dodge-and-counter to work on timing and impact frames, then full aerial combat. You block layouts with Link/Append, pose the body and face, add hair follow-through, layer FX, then fix it all with lighting, compositing, and camera cuts. Same move, different lens and rhythm — minusT shows why staging changes everything.

If nodes always felt powerful but confusing, this connects the dots. You see exactly where rim lighting, color tweaks, and line thickness actually matter in a shot, not just in a shader demo.

🧑‍🎓 Who this course is for

• Returning minusT students who want more dynamic, polished action work
• 3D artists who want to make eye-catching NPR animation with a real 2D feel
• Blender users who can do basics and now want to finish a longer character animation

🧑‍🏫 About the Author

minusT is a 3D animator and YouTuber focused entirely on character animation in Blender. Self-taught over 16 years, he built an audience of over 30 million total views by posting fast, snappy anime-style action that most people assumed needed a studio pipeline.

He also produced animation for The Grand Touhou Project Exhibition 2023. His thing is practical production know-how — especially NPR rendering and node setups that actually survive a full animation, not just a still render.

🏁 Final Result

• A finished longer-form NPR action animation in Blender: intro flight + 2 action scenes edited together with FX, lighting, compositing and camera work, plus a refined character model and reusable FX files for your portfolio.

📢 Guys, this is a Group Buy campaign, check the GBC forum thread to get access

You can find the course preview in the download section below.