Hey there friends,
In the past few months I’ve made barely any new video content for Heroes of Bronze.
Well, for those of you who follow my work on Instagram, you probably know that I’ve been busy working on my latest CGBoost course Master Cinematic Storytelling in Blender, which is now finally out.
But no, I don’t want to turn this post into a commercial. Instead, I want to talk about a big thing that happened to me during the process of creating this course. One that very much influences the future of Heroes of Bronze.
At one point, the simplified art style of the various course scenes and exercises finally crystallized, and I found myself enjoying these simplified shots immensely. No need for realistic effects, PBR textures, normal and roughness maps—not even expensive simulations. No, this was just pure creative process, tinkering with colors, composition, lighting, and camera movement.
In the meantime, I delved deep into Grease Pencil, and once I started experimenting with it, I was hooked. I tried my first frame-by-frame animation—an explosion—and I had such a blast (no pun intended). Simply drawing and seeing the animation grow under my hands was so satisfying.
At that very same moment, I was struggling with a slight feeling of depression. I’ve been building this world of Heroes of Bronze for six years, and you could say that I’ve accomplished a thing or two. A six-minute short, several illustrated short stories, and plenty of renders and illustrations I’m quite proud of.
What I haven’t been able to accomplish yet is the thing I set out to do in the first place: tell animated stories in this ancient world.
To show you all the wonderful characters I’ve dreamt up in motion, talking, feeling, interacting with each other. Even the short film has been just a trailer so far.
That’s when the two things connected. In no small measure inspired by the amazing Blender Conference 2024—where I saw many fellow Blender artists showcase incredible animated Grease Pencil results—I had a thought: what if I changed the style of Heroes of Bronze? What if I steered away from the incredibly difficult photorealistic style and gave the non-photorealistic one a go?
I’ve been creating painterly content for several years anyway, mostly for my short stories. But static images aren’t my goal. I really want to create animations.
And that’s when the decision was born. I started devouring every tutorial I could find on the topic and slowly began realizing what new combinations of tools and skills I would need.
The result of my research? This non-photorealistic style is much more forgiving in many aspects, allowing me to focus less on technical details and more on art and storytelling. Character emotions and dialogues are now much easier to make, difficult effect like water and dust are just a matter of... drawing. And that’s exactly what I’m after.
These days, I’m learning about stylized effects and shading, about painting textures and adding that hand-drawn feel to everything. The rules of animation are also a big thing—how to make things feel less fluid, more like the animations we love from Ghibli and old Disney movies. Combining 3D and 2D, camera projections... Oh, and also painting backgrounds. I’ve always loved that.
What can I say? I fell in love with the process once again. I'm finally doing all the things I always planned to focus on, but never quite found the time for.
And yes, you bet—I’ll be making tutorials focused on this stuff. My Patrons can already watch the first part of my behind the scenes workflow... And there will be more :-)
In this day and age, when everything’s becoming automated and AI-generated, it’s incredibly refreshing to go back to the roots and actually build a new skill. It’s so much more rewarding than just clicking a button and choosing a generated image.
I can’t wait to see what this new style will allow me to do with Heroes of Bronze. But you can be sure I have plenty of ideas and that I’ll be sharing the process with you.
So, until next time, stay creative, my friends,
Martin out.
