PickVidsBest Animation & visual effects Videos
The 83 Animation & visual effects videos here were recommended by different people across different months. Choose by who it is for: 7 introductory, 9 intermediate, 67 for a general viewer, and 0 for someone who wants the harder derivation. Most of them are an explainer. What they share is that one picture or analogy is used to supply a missing concept. Channels you will keep seeing include Blender, Captain Disillusion, Corridor Digital.
The Beauty of Bézier Curves
Freya Holmer explains how Bezier curves work, from the helper-line construction to their uses in animation, text rendering and shapes.
Ed Catmull, Pixar: Keep Your Crises Small
Ed Catmull of Pixar speaks at Stanford's 2007 Entrepreneurship Conference on running a creative company.
"Money doesn't interest me" - Ton Roosendaal 2017 Interview
A long interview by Blender Guru with Ton Roosendaal, creator of Blender.
DNA animation (2002-2014) by Drew Berry and Etsuko Uno wehi.tv #ScienceArt
A compilation of molecular animations of DNA replication and gene transcription by Drew Berry and Etsuko Uno at WEHI, made with no narration.
"NO CGI" is really just INVISIBLE CGI - 1
VFX supervisor Jonas Ussing examines what studios mean by "no CGI", showing how much invisible CGI hides behind practical-effects marketing.
Captain Disillusion: World's Greatest Blenderer - Live at the Blender Conference 2018
Captain Disillusion's comedic talk at the 2018 Blender Conference recounts how he uses Blender as a production tool for his VFX-debunking web series.
The Inner Life of the Cell Animation
An award-winning 3D animation by XVIVO for Harvard's BioVisions showing the molecular machinery inside a cell as a white blood cell responds to a stimulus.
World Building in Blender - Ian Hubert
Ian Hubert's Blender Conference talk on world building in Blender, covering photogrammetry, camera projection and assembling complex environments from simple shapes at great speed.
Learn Low Poly Modeling in Blender 2.9 / 2.8
Imphenzia's 83-minute tutorial covers the low poly modeling techniques he learned over five years of Blender use, with timestamps from navigation and extrusion onward.
How Prince of Persia Defeated Apple II's Memory Limitations | War Stories | Ars Technica
In an Ars Technica War Stories episode, Prince of Persia creator Jordan Mechner describes how he made the game on the Apple II, fighting hardware memory limits and the platform's decline.
Chinese Invisibility Cloak Hoax DESTROYED!!!
Captain Disillusion debunks a viral Chinese invisibility cloak video while parodying popular educational channels.
CD / Color
Captain Disillusion's comedic, fast-paced explainer on how color works in cameras, displays and video.
Wild Tricks for Greenscreen in Blender
Ian Hubert shows quick, unconventional tricks for greenscreen compositing in Blender, as a follow-up to his motion tracking video.
[4k, 60 fps] San Francisco, a Trip down Market Street, April 14, 1906
A neural-network upscaled 4K, 60 fps version of the 1906 film of a trip down Market Street in San Francisco, shot four days before the earthquake.
Blender Motion Tracking - Room Transformation!
Ian Hubert shows how to use Blender's motion tracking to turn ordinary footage of a room into a stylized digital environment for an indie film.
Blender 3.0 Beginner Tutorial - Part 1
Blender Guru's beginner tutorial series, in which you model, light, texture and render a donut while learning Blender's core features.
Flight of the Navigator | VFXcool
Captain Disillusion's VFXcool episode, led by Alan Melikdjanian, takes a 41-minute nostalgic look at how the visual effects of Flight of the Navigator were made.
Prius Hybrid Drive Explained
A Blender-animated explanation of the Toyota Hybrid Synergy Drive, showing how the engine, two motor-generators, planetary gearset and battery work together as an eCVT.
ANIME ROCK, PAPER, SCISSORS
Corridor Digital makes a roughly seven-minute anime short using Stable Diffusion and related AI tools, based on a technique they teach in a longer tutorial.
How does a Bowling Pinsetter Machine work? (Brunswick GS-X)
Jared Owen's 3D animated breakdown of how a Brunswick GS-X bowling pinsetter works, showing its mechanisms for sweeping, lifting and resetting pins and balls.
They Shall Not Grow Old – New Trailer – Now Playing In Theaters
The trailer for Peter Jackson's They Shall Not Grow Old, a WWI documentary built from restored, colorized archival footage and BBC interviews with British soldiers.
Stargate Studios Virtual Backlot Reel 2009
Stargate Studios' 2009 virtual backlot reel shows before-and-after shots in which green screen and compositing replace locations in ordinary TV dramas and comedies.
How I animate 3Blue1Brown | A Manim demo with Ben Sparks
Grant Sanderson of 3Blue1Brown shows his workflow for animating math videos with Manim, with Ben Sparks.
Classic Game Postmortem - Another World
Eric Chahi's GDC 2011 postmortem of Another World (Out of This World), describing how he built the game.