Four Legs are Your Legs!

I am one of these lucky guys who gets to work with a really great Technical Animation Director - Javier Solsona, or "Goosh" as you may know of him. This guy has been connecting, constraining, multiply dividing and parenting for years! and can teach us all a thing or two about how to make a decent rig. In fact, he kicked off the whole "free rig" thing with the release of "PackageMan" a few years back. When Goosh pulls out his nurbs controllers, you know he's a man not to be reckoned with!

Well.. after a lot of headaches and hard work, Goosh has released an new quadruped rig that is freely available for download from Highend3D.com ... if you're going to Siggraph this year, make sure you check out his three part masterclass, that will give you a priceless insight into how it was created.

I worked closely with Goosh during the development of this rig ( despite the fact he did all the work of course ) and I can guarantee you he pushes "animator friendly" and "functionality" to the limit. He is constantly looking to give the animator all the control he needs - whilst seamlessly removing the brain ache factor for you in the background.

Go download it and have a play around. The link below gives a little more detail on what you're getting ( there are a few minor restrictions )... but check it out and be sure to post comments about what you think!

Advanced Quadruped Rig



( yeah I know I used this animation before on this Blog - but come on.. this one's rendered ! )

In the Works 1

Here's a few grabs of something I'm working on at home. It's a situational micro short about one guy teaching another inexperienced guy how to stake a vampire. Theres no dialogue, just facial expression and body language to tell the story.

This is gonna be the first real thing I create by working with a properly planned approach. I usually just dive into my animation, working layered and just letting stuff evolve from a loose idea in my mind. This is different. I've planned this thing out pretty detailed with thumbs, and I'm going through blocking my story poses now. To be honest - because I've never really blocked before - it taking me bloody ages. Can't wait to finish the blocking and get stuff moving. With hindsight though, I can't imagine how I would ever do something like this without blocking poses - its too complex otherwise.

It's super proxy right now - the background is totally temp, and the characters are deliberately low detail ( they're actually the same rig ). The grabs below don't really tell the full story at all - I`ve left a fair few chunks out - including the ending, but you a get a rough idea.

I really want to go for subtle animation in nervous versus confident body language, and the contrast between teacher and student. I`ll keep it comedic with broad and quick actions to spice things up a bit, and add some flair.

I plan to fully animate, render and audio track this little monster.. as well as set it all in a nice environment, so if you are reading this keep watching as I work towards finishing it.