As part of the Open Up project launched on blender.org, the Blender Animation Studio team is proud to present you with a brand new project: Settlers!

Settlers is a small “playground set” that everyone can use to create adventure and exploration scenarios. Escape from the daily routine and make your own world! Settlers is freely available on Blender Cloud and will consists of:

• A set of rigged characters
• Environments and props
• Plus all the behind the scenes and source files, starting from concept art, to final rigs and animation

We are going to share every step of this journey, day by day, regularly uploading pictures, videos and production files. We want to get the characters in your hands as soon as possible, so you can have fun with them too, and create your own scenes.

The progress so far

Last week, after some brainstorming with the team, concept artist (Vivien) designed the first settler called "Lunte", which then went straight into the modeling department (Julien).

Here is quick preview of the first modeled version.

After some review and touch-up, the revised model went to the rigging department (Demeter), where it's currently being prepared for animation.

Julien recorded the entire modeling process, which will be available both here on Blender Cloud and on YouTube. Here is the first part, about looking at the concept art and preparing for the actual modeling. Check it out!

Follow @blender_cloud on Twitter @blender.official on Instagram and of course, check out the Settlers project page here on Blender cloud for a daily stream of updates!