Blender is an incredibly well-known and powerful piece of 3D art and animation software. First created in 1994 as in-house software for a Dutch animation company, it would be released to the public during the coming years, quickly becoming a staple of 3D art. In 2002, it was released under the GNU General Public License, meaning it’s now open source and free to use forever. Blender sees widespread use by both hobbyists and professionals, and is consistently updated to include new and improved features. It’s also quite user-friendly and has a large community of artists who use it to create assets for their games, animations, and even 3D-printing projects, many of them uploading in-depth tutorials for the software. I’m by no means an expert at 3D modeling, and even I have found learning Blender to be an enjoyable experience, especially with how helpful Blender artists often are. Of course, no program is ever completely perfect. Blender in particular suffers from its tendency to crash at random, which can make it especially difficult to work with for those who don’t have high-end computers. In spite of its issues, however, knowing Blender is a valuable skill for anyone interested in 3D art-and even for those interested in 2D art. In 2019, Grease Pencil, Blender’s built-in annotation tool, was expanded to allow for 2D animation directly within the 3D space. I personally tried the new addition out in 2020 and found it quite interesting, though it was new and far from perfect. Now, Grease Pencil is picking up steam as a piece of animation software in its own right, making Blender even more popular among all types of animators.

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