We have already mentioned recently how the free 3D app Blender is increasingly being used for 2D animation since the success of Oscar-winning Flow.
Just this week, we were admiring the retro animation of YouTube series Funny Legs after its creator showed a behind the scenes glimpse of how she uses Blender. The software is also being used for a much bigger-budget animations, and that includes Amazon Prime's new adult-oriented comedy Il Baracchino.
You can watch the first episode below for a limited time.
What is Il Baracchino?
Il Baracchino is an Amazon Prime Original produced by Lucky Red and the Sicilian studio Megadrago. It was written and directed by Nicolò Cuccì and Salvo Di Paola.
With a dark, gritty black-and-white art style, the animated series tells the story of Claudia, an aspiring art director who wants to save the legendary but now crumbling comedy club of the title.
She pins her hopes on an open mic night with a lineup of eccentric performers, from a chain-smoking pigeon to a Boomer reincarnation of Leonardo Da Vinci, a doughnut called Noemi Ciambell and Death himself.
The characters are depicted in an unusual combination of 3D, 2D and stop-motion animation. The mix of media is blended perfectly (no pun intended), creating a memorable visual language that conveys a brilliant sense of the bizarre and surreal (also see the mind-blowing Chappell Roan Fortnite trailer for an example of how different animation styles can be combined to stunning effect).
The animation was made entirely in Blender. In fact, Nicolò and Head of CG Andrea Cigognetti spoke at the Blender Conference 2025 in Amsterdam. They explained how they wanted to use a mix of media to create a dark, stylised noir aesthetic where comedy and drama could coexist.
"The challenge was: how do you create visual consistency across multiple animation techniques? Our answer was to ground everything in the animation itself," Nicolò said. "No matter what technique we used (3D, stop motion, or mixed media), the animation principles would remain the same, giving the show a unified visual language."
Andrea revealed that a big breakthrough for the series' rigging was the UV Warp modifier. It became the foundation for multiple characters, allowing the team to create paper cutout-style animations in 3D space. The most elaborate use was for Leonardo da Vinci character: a 2.5D character created using five texture tiles mapped onto simple box geometry.
"It looked ugly as a raw model, but once everything came together with the UV Warp modifiers and careful driver calibration, the effect was magical," Andrea said.
For Leonardo’s mouth, they used a curve connected to bones, with the gradient achieved procedurally through geometry nodes. The mouth itself was created using shaders.
Most of the R&D budget went on the main character, Claudia, who Andrea describes as "part Olive Oyl from Popeye, part classic animation, with an artistic touch that made her feel like a 2D stop-motion character brought to life in 3D."
The character's rig was built on Rigify, using bendy bones for her rubber-hose arms. A shape key selector was used to allow animators to pose Claudia’s face intuitively, mixing and matching expressions from the storyboard reference, while still having the ability to tweak individual controls.
But there was the challenge of Claudia’s dramatic anger management transformation. The original concept couldn’t be achieved with the standard rig. The team first tried clay motion in Blender, but eventually, Andrea found a more convincing solution by mapping the 2D concept art directly onto a mesh.
You can read more details about the making of Il Baracchino on the Blender website
Whether it's a reaction to AI slop or pure coincidence, creative, handcrafted animation seems to be having a bit of a revival at the moment, whether it's for movies, series or adverts like Ikea X Tiny Chef.
Meanwhile, Blender is increasingly being considered as a serious option for a wide range of animation as well as 3D modelling, including by studios that might otherwise have chosen Maya or Moho Pro (see our guide to animation software).
For more inspiration, check out our watch list of animation in 2026, and check out the design secrets of Sony Pictures Animation's GOAT.
