Learning Blender: A Hands-On Guide to Creating 3D Animated Characters

Character Reference Images

Ok, so you’ve designed your character. If you’re experienced, you probably can start modeling right away. If not and regardless of your expertise, you’ll want to create some references to use in the 3D modeling program, so that you have at least a general idea of the character’s size or basic shapes, which will make the modeling process much faster. These images will stay in the background of the 3D View while you model, so you can model on top of them to make the shapes fit those references. The reference images should represent the character in a neutral pose, as that is what you’ll need to model the character. Cool poses will come later.

For our example, you’ll need six different reference images that you can place ...