rigging:animation

As an animator I want as much minutiae control as possible, however in practice I find having fewer, more ingenious controls is what I need. I apply this perspective to my rigs and have found animators to be generally quicker and just as happy with the results.

One of the challenges with this rig was allowing humanoid controls while maintaining the mechanical joint articulation, which is much more rigid.



The "gizmo" is commonly  used with facial rigs. "Gizmo", simply referring to any control with multiple functions mapped to it. Here I use it in a less traditional role.



The shark rig in the video was a precursor to the final rig and helped determine what could or couldn't be procedurally animated.



Keeping up-stream and down-stream control handles from diverging in overlapping controls can be tricky. Much like compositing, when the jobs done right, you can't tell there was anything at all.