The Rigging Journey Continues - Miria Kutzner

Facial Rig

The first thing I've done after my last entry was taking part in a Facial Rigging Course at CGMA by José Antonio Martín Martín.
During the 8 weeks of the course I've learned how to do a blendshape based facial rig with some advanced setups - e.g. letting the lids follow the eyes when they move, so they look a little more fleshy.

I've learned a lot in these 8 weeks and I can't wait to use these techniques in future projects!

I bought the head model from Turbosquid.

Forest of Lost Lights

Forest of Lost Lights is a project I was part of for the gamescom last summer.
Our school brought together a small group of students to work on a character jam. The goal was to create a trailer for an imaginary game which we had to create from the concept to the final composition.

We had 2 weeks for this project, so it was a nice challenge to create that project in this short amount of time.
I was responsible for the character rig, prop rigs and video editing (credits are at the end of the video).

Scripting

Another course I took part in was the Python for VFX course at CGMA by Alexander Richter.
This was my first attempt to implement scripting into my rigging workflow and I actually wrote my first two scripts in these 8 weeks, which I use on a regular basis.

I wrote a Prefix/Suffix adder and an IK/FK Switch. They are obviously not perfect yet, but very useful so far.

(Not my arm, got the model during rigging lessons.)

Firefly

At the end of last year I was able to help out with two student projects, one of them being this cute firefly.
This project that I created the rig for was made by Ivan Pechalin and Stefan Klosterkötter.

Since the original plan for the animation was it landing on a flower, my IK/FK Switch came in handy for the six legs.

Mouth

The other student project I was part of was this project of a mouth with grillz created by Kaan Yilmaz.

Thanks to this project, I was able to practice my mouth blendshapes and also learned a new technique to do sticky lips!

The animation was done by Florina Minea.

Deer Creature

Finally, I wanna show you a new personal project I'm working on, which I unfortunately abandoned a little because of all the other projects I was and still am working on.

It is a beautiful, creepy creature concept by Dani, which they let me use to create it in 3D.
I hope to have a little more time for personal projects the following year. I really wanna bring this creature to life and I am planning to create my first 3D portrait later this year!

It's obviously still a work in progress - it still needs some changes - but I hope to finish it soon!

Show Reel

Last but not least, here is my updated show reel.
Thanks to everyone I had the pleasure to work with this past year, in terms of learning new stuff it actually was a great year.
Having a yearly update and reflecting on what I've learned through all the projects makes me realize how much I've actually achieved - even though it always feels like I am running on the spot and I could've done more.

I hope you enjoyed my little update!