The Rocket Girl Rig

I was approached by our animators before beginning the actual rig. This was a very good opportunity for me to analyse the requirements that they wanted for the animation.

Here is the first draft of the 2D animatic. This also gave me a very good idea of the capablities the rig would need.

http://vimeo.com/20952717

(password: rocketman)

We can see many cases where the rig may need to have flexible limbs etc. The animators wanted stretchy limb functionality. I decided that given the style of the character it would need a great deal of control. The feel of the character seems very cartoony.

 I also noticed that the rig would need control for the skirt- a feature I had never previously worked on. With this in mind I found some examples of rigs with similar functionality.

I noticed a similar functionality on the moom rig.

Here is an animation that I did last year using the moom rig which demonstrates some of the functionality I am looking for as a rigger in this term.





Here is another example of a very nice animation (not done by myself) that demonstrates the animation capabilities achievable with a good rig and a talented animator.





Another rig that demonstrates a great level of flexibility to the animator is the blake rig. Here is an overview of that rig.





With all of these examples in mind I will now attempt to set a similar standard in my character rig.