Character rigging is the next step in this process and this step will save me hours upon hours of work. So.... what the heck is rigging? Well it is simply the process of setting up a character to be easily animated. Let me explain.
Here's an image on Ing all disassembled. After I draw up the initial characters using Illustrator, I part him out and separate the parts so I can re-assemble him in After Effects.
So as you can see there's his body, legs, mouth, eyes (in different forms), hair, and eyebrows, Also one eye form that is him blinking. I also leave a little more room in the file in case I want to include anything else later.
So how does that become this?
Well I take chopped up Ing into After Effects, assemble him and them connect him to controllers that I can use to animate him. Or if you want the technical explanation; I import the illustrator file duplicate it and mask out each piece centering each anchor point. Next, I use the puppet tool and create bones where needed. I then parent his parts to bone controllers, null objects, and expression controllers that I can use to keyframe him.... sheesh...technology
Once I bring him into After Effects and assemble him he looks like this. All ready to animate.
Each one of those controllers make the animating process 100 times easier. Alternatively I would have to move every piece individually and rotate each piece individually to animate him.
And that's how I rig up a character. It's a bit of a tedious process and definitely not my favorite. But it has to be done. And once it is, it's on to ANIMATING! Now I just have to do this like, 6 more times.
Till next time.
Thaddeus: "After a confusing argument with the mailbox I returned to the house having forgot my Monocle."
No comments:
Post a Comment