Uploaded July 2025 | Updated September 2026, 1 week ago
Sign up to Milanote for free with no time-limit: milanote.com/crossmindstudio0625
🎬 Part 2 – Making a Mascot for Your Brand or Community
In this second part, we focus entirely on the animation process – shown fully in timelapse form.
We'll start by blocking out rough poses, then move step-by-step toward the final animation using Blender’s Grease Pencil. The result is rendered in flat colors, ready for use in After Effects for compositing and shading.
👉 If you haven’t seen Part 1 (where we design the mascot), check it out here:
youtu.be/QKrgbCUZiLk
About this project/tutorial series
Designing a Channel Mascot – From Sketch to Animation
In this short 2 part series, we’ll go behind the scenes of designing a mascot — starting from a blank page and taking it all the way to animation. You’ll see how I break down client input, sketch out ideas, test proportions, explore character personality, and eventually bring the design to life using 2D animation.
This demo is inspired by a real client project I worked on recently for a channel branding campaign. The character and story have been tweaked for educational purposes, but the creative process you're seeing is very much the one I use on actual jobs.
Whether you're building a mascot for your YouTube channel, a creative brand, or just exploring character design and motion, this should give you a clear picture of how to structure your thinking — and hopefully spark some ideas of your own.
We’ll also be using Milanote along the way to collect inspiration and plan the project. If you're curious about how I stay organized through these types of workflows, you’ll find some helpful takeaways there too.
🟡 Link to Milanote: milanote.com/crossmindstudio0625
🟡 Related series (Title Sequence Design): PLgO2ChD7acqFDiqXvKe8cm9QIUVsqqARJ
🟡 Animation tools used: Photoshop (or Krita), Blender Grease Pencil
🟡 More free tutorials & courses: youtube.com/@CrossMindStudio/playlists
Our Premium Courses
Animated Character Creation in Blender 3D
crossmindstudio.gumroad.com/l/animatedcharacter
Procedural Thinking / Blender 3D - Small Steps to Big Ideas
crossmindstudio.gumroad.com/l/proceduralthinking-blender
Check out Gumroad and Superhive (Blendermarket)
crossmindstudio.gumroad.com
superhivemarket.com/creators/crossmind
Let me know in the comments what kind of creative breakdowns you'd like to see next — animation, storytelling, branding — I’d love to hear from you.
⏱️ Timestamps:
00:00 – Blocking Main Poses
03:00 – Adding Rough In-Betweens
04:34 – Cleanup: Main Body Animation
13:22 – Cleanup: Details & Props
28:00 – Flat Color Fill
32:48 – Compositing in After Effects
Join this channel to support us :
youtube.com/channel/UCHihootMqyGz175gqOPahtw/join
SYSTEM CONFIGURATION FOR NERDS:
Windows 10
Core i9 12900 k
RTX 3070
64 GB 5600 Mhz DDR 5
SSD NVME
discord.gg/3Gcq6znr6W
instagram.com/instacrossmind
patreon.com/CROSSMIND
vimeo.com/instacrossmind
gumroad.com/crossmindstudio
crossmind.com
Sign up to Milanote for free with no time-limit: milanote.com/crossmindstudio0625
🎬 Part 2 – Making a Mascot for Your Brand or Community
In this second part, we focus entirely on the animation process – shown fully in timelapse form.
We'll start by blocking out rough poses, then move step-by-step toward the final animation using Blender’s Grease Pencil. The result is rendered in flat colors, ready for use in After Effects for compositing and shading.
👉 If you haven’t seen Part 1 (where we design the mascot), check it out here:
youtu.be/QKrgbCUZiLk
About this project/tutorial series
Designing a Channel Mascot – From Sketch to Animation
In this short 2 part series, we’ll go behind the scenes of designing a mascot — starting from a blank page and taking it all the way to animation. You’ll see how I break down client input, sketch out ideas, test proportions, explore character personality, and eventually bring the design to life using 2D animation.
This demo is inspired by a real client project I worked on recently for a channel branding campaign. The character and story have been tweaked for educational purposes, but the creative process you're seeing is very much the one I use on actual jobs.
Whether you're building a mascot for your YouTube channel, a creative brand, or just exploring character design and motion, this should give you a clear picture of how to structure your thinking — and hopefully spark some ideas of your own.
We’ll also be using Milanote along the way to collect inspiration and plan the project. If you're curious about how I stay organized through these types of workflows, you’ll find some helpful takeaways there too.
🟡 Link to Milanote: milanote.com/crossmindstudio0625
🟡 Related series (Title Sequence Design): PLgO2ChD7acqFDiqXvKe8cm9QIUVsqqARJ
🟡 Animation tools used: Photoshop (or Krita), Blender Grease Pencil
🟡 More free tutorials & courses: youtube.com/@CrossMindStudio/playlists
Our Premium Courses
Animated Character Creation in Blender 3D
crossmindstudio.gumroad.com/l/animatedcharacter
Procedural Thinking / Blender 3D - Small Steps to Big Ideas
crossmindstudio.gumroad.com/l/proceduralthinking-blender
Check out Gumroad and Superhive (Blendermarket)
crossmindstudio.gumroad.com
superhivemarket.com/creators/crossmind
Let me know in the comments what kind of creative breakdowns you'd like to see next — animation, storytelling, branding — I’d love to hear from you.
⏱️ Timestamps:
00:00 – Blocking Main Poses
03:00 – Adding Rough In-Betweens
04:34 – Cleanup: Main Body Animation
13:22 – Cleanup: Details & Props
28:00 – Flat Color Fill
32:48 – Compositing in After Effects
Join this channel to support us :
youtube.com/channel/UCHihootMqyGz175gqOPahtw/join
SYSTEM CONFIGURATION FOR NERDS:
Windows 10
Core i9 12900 k
RTX 3070
64 GB 5600 Mhz DDR 5
SSD NVME
discord.gg/3Gcq6znr6W
instagram.com/instacrossmind
patreon.com/CROSSMIND
vimeo.com/instacrossmind
gumroad.com/crossmindstudio
crossmind.com
