Fair warning: this post is a bit of a confession. Because finding a skill that actually made sense for me to learn this semester was harder than I expected, and the path I took to land on the one I eventually chose was not exactly a straight line.
Let me explain.
The brief was to learn a new practical skill over the course of the semester and document the process. Which sounds straightforward enough, until you actually sit down and try to figure out what that skill should be, and suddenly every option feels either too random or too disconnected from anything you’re already working on. I really wanted it to tie back to my research topic somehow because if I’m going to spend a significant chunk of time learning something, it might as well be useful beyond just checking a box.
The AI Detour (And Why I Dropped It)
My first thought was to look into AI tools – specifically generative AI techniques for character creation. It would’ve been topically relevant, there’s no shortage of tutorials, and the output would’ve been visually interesting. And I spent maybe two or three hours going down that road before I realized I genuinely just didn’t want to do it.
I’ll be honest: I’m not a fan of AI-generated imagery in general. That’s a whole separate conversation I probably owe a blog post at some point, but the short version is that it didn’t feel like learning something so much as learning how to prompt something else into doing the work. Which just wasn’t what I was looking for here. So I dropped it and went back to my original idea.
The Actual Plan: Blender
The original idea was 3D character animation in Blender – specifically learning enough to model, rig, and animate a character from scratch, or close to it.
Here’s the logic: my framework is essentially designed to identify patterns across sympathetic antagonists. What traits do they have in common? What does a character look like – in terms of personality profile, visual presence, symbolic meaning – when it scores high on all the right dimensions? At some point, the obvious next step is to try and create a character that fits that profile. Not just describe what such a character would look like theoretically, but actually build one.
My first instinct was to do this with live action. Find an actor, write a brief, have them portray the character I had in mind. But the more I thought about it, the more that approach fell apart. Getting the right performance out of someone is genuinely difficult. You’d be dependent on another person’s interpretation, their availability, their range. And the gap between what I imagined and what ended up on screen could easily be enormous. That felt like a variable I didn’t want in the equation.
3D sidesteps most of that. Every choice is mine. The character looks exactly as designed, moves exactly as animated, expresses exactly what I intend. It’s a more direct translation from concept to output.
There’s also a personal reason. In all the time I’ve spent learning about video, film, and motion design, 3D is the one area I’ve basically never touched. I’ve always worked with real-life footage and After Effects, and somehow 3D just never made it into the picture. This felt like the right moment to fix that.
Why Patata School
The platform I’m using is Patata School, which is run by Cabeza Patata – a Barcelona-based creative studio known for their distinctive 2D/3D hybrid aesthetic. The thing that sets their teaching apart is the approach: they call it podcast-style, meaning you’re not memorizing menus and keyboard shortcuts from the start. You’re creating something in the first few hours and learning the tools through the process of actually using them. For someone like me who learns much better by doing than by studying, that’s exactly the right format.
Their course library covers modelling, rigging, facial animation, Grease Pencil work, and a lot more. I found several courses that looked genuinely exciting – especially the ones that mix 2D aesthetics with 3D construction, which aligns well with the kind of stylized, expressive character I have in mind.
What I’m Actually Aiming For
Realistically? I want to end up with a short animation – around ten seconds, nothing cinematic – featuring a custom character with facial animation and voice acting (yes, I’m doing the voice myself, we’ll see how that goes).
Is that optimistic? Absolutely. But I’d rather aim for something concrete and land somewhere slightly short of it than aim for nothing and have nothing to show at the end. The posts going forward will track the actual progress: what I tried, what broke, what somehow worked, and how far I got by the end.
In the worst case I still learned Blender. That’s not a bad outcome.
See ya!
