Overworked [WIP]

Day 4 / 5: More Rigging & Painting Weights

After some guidance & tips from the super smart mentors over at CGSpectrum, I re-worked the controls to ensure they now use offset groups to match a joints orientation, making it much easier and predictable to animate. This took a fair amount of time to re-work (I kept making mistakes :D) and get the FK all hooked up correctly, IK was simple enough.

Ensured joint arms axis are  now mirrored which allows easy copy and paste of keys when animating as well as being able to manipulate / scale controls in a mirrored fashion on the rig.

Rig now has painted weights and bound to the skeleton so next week I feel the rig is ready for some proper block outs for the animation.

Created a new test scene just to see if I can do a quick idle animation with the rig (in video).

On a side note I also used the rig as a reference file for the first time which is just an awesome and powerful feature.

Day 3: Rigging Enhanced

Carried on learning and enhancing the rig a little more for animation. Added new eye controls and also learnt how to add in FK and IK controls for the arms.

Global control has a switch to allow easy switching between IK and FK for each arm. Will also hide controls that can't be used.

Almost there with a basic version ready to try and block out some of the poses and ideas for the animation.

Day 2: Start Rigging

First time rigging a character from scratch to use for animation. Created main skeleton joints, then added some basic NURB curve controls for hands.

Additionally learnt how to add blend shapes along with constraining some of the controls against the Blend Shape Node with Set Driven Keys. There is an IK handle for the arms.

Coming together slowly, hopefully only need a few controls to then get cracking with most important part of this contest, the animation!

On a side note, I am enjoying learning the rigging side of things, blend of technical and creative disciplines.

Day One: Concept

Starting to get some initial thoughts together on the scene I wish to produce, still studying foundation animation with CGSpectrum. Need to be realistic about what I can achieve but should be fun to really try and produce a thought provoking 10 second animation.

Initial concept is how death is sadly overworked during this pandemic and will use the contest to try and invoke emotion and seriousness in a stylised way with some empathetic humour that people should be obeying the guidance in order to save lives.

I purchased a model I wish to use from CGTrader, had a basic skeleton / rig included but seems geared towards a template from Cinema 4D (I am using Maya) so will use this as a chance to practice and get it rigged how I would like it as the initial step.

Contest allows the use of external models / rigs for the animation.

Model Created By:
https://www.artstation.com/petersolodov

Found some suitable music to set the tone and atmosphere for the animation. For me music helps hone in on the concept and idea and overall vision of what I would like to create.

Initial thoughts are to purchase this song as it will hopefully gives a beautiful tone to it all and bring the message together.

https://www.premiumbeat.com/royalty-free-tracks/alice-lullaby