Zenko Rig Reel

Zenko Rig Reel

Zenko was my capstone character that I rigged and animated for Zenko: A Fox's Tale.  He is built to have a very reactive spine that is easy to stretch and squash.  Unlike many rigs, Zenko is build with FK Space controllers in all four legs rather than regular FK controllers.  This kind of controller is great for characters that are in the air and creatures that fly.  I also build four visible pivots that the animator can use to show how the feet can lean.   Zenko also has two master controllers, visibility controllers, curvature controller in his neck, and a controller that controls which space the eyes are in.  Overall, Zenko was a very fun character to rig as he is the first character I have rigged for games.  Some of the considerations that went into Zenko's rig was the fact that his spine was not supposed to move like a regular fox.  His spine is inspired by snakes, ferrets, and cats.  We also wanted a lot of movement in his tail so there are a lot of controllers built to give fluid movement.  We also wanted a lot of expression in Zenko's ears as he does not have a facial rig.  Besides creating Zenko's rig, I also created Zenko's animations.  For his animations I looked at many fox videos and I captured over 60 clips of my dog Rivers doing many of the movements we were looking for Zenko to do.  I also created his original Character Sheet that broke down who he is as a character.  The beginning of this reel is clips from the Zenko release trailer and afterwards it shows off his rig.  The music is from Zenko: A Fox's Tale release trailer. 

Lucy Rig Reel

Lucy Rig Reel

Lucy was a rig I did in my undergrad before FIEA.  Unlike the rigs I created in FIEA, she is built for film.  She appears as the secondary and hero character in the University of Central Florida's Character Animation short animated film, Delivery.  Overall, she has been the most difficult rig I've had to work on.  Some parts of Lucy were rigid, while others were flexible, and in some places she was both rigid and flexible.  What made Lucy so difficult was the fact that I was learning how to rig while rigging her and she is the most complicated character in the character animation program's history.  It took me my entire senior year, and a lot of very late nights, to rig her and make her perfect.  Some of the parts on her that really tripped me up was her collar, front paws, the skeleton spine on top of her actual spine, and adding the back toes to her back feet.  Each of these problems needed a lot of research to have it rigged correctly, hours of troubleshooting and testing, or both.  Overall, Lucy is my favorite rig I have created.  Anytime I show Lucy, everyone loves her character.  Because I created the animation for her while at FIEA, I added it to the beginning of her rigging reel.  The music is called Summer Time by MorningLightMusic.

Lucy Walk Cycle Reel

Lucy Walk Cycle Reel

This is an animation I've worked on for a period of time.  Lucy was a character I rigged and animated in undergrad and has continued to be a character I'm constantly learning from.  With this animation I learned more about quadrupeds and how they move.  Quadrupeds are more difficult to animate then you might think.  My biggest learning experience with this animation was the idea of how her upperbody moves in correlation with how her lowerbody moves.  I also learned about adding fidgets to walk cycles and how they bring personality and life to characters.  I was very inspired by how my own dog Rivers moves and acts as both Lucy and Rivers have similar personalities.  Both of them also have similar physical characteristics such as big floppy ears.   One of the signature actions my dog does is to stick her tongue out and close her mouth with an excited and playful facial expression.  She does this when she's very excited to play with her toys.  With Lucy I wanted to have the same signature action but Lucy style with exaggerated movements in her ears and tongue.   I also learned more about facial animation as Lucy's face is a skull and in the moment she looks over, she needs to look happy and smile.  When Animating the head I actually never thought about the curves that the head motion makes.  The big indicator to visualize Lucy's curves was her nose.  I was constantly watching Lucy's nose to see what kind of curves her head motion was creating.  After understanding her head motion I worked on her ears and learned about how they drag behind and the floppy look they can give when being dragged.  Overall it was a super fun experience animating Lucy and learning more about characters that are just like her!  For animating Lucy I worked in Autodesk Maya 2020 and for rendering I used Pixar's Renderman!  The music is called Summer Time by MorningLightMusic. 

Persy Walk Cycle Reel

Persy Walk Cycle Reel

I've updated this reel from the previous reel that I created for Persy.  Since I created a walk cycle for Lucy, I decided to also create a walk cycle for the main character from Delivery, Persy.  Because I also typically work with animals, mostly canine like animals, I thought it would be a fun challenge to animate a biped too.  Persy's model and rig are from the University of Central Florida's Character Animation program "Delivery" film.  

My biggest learning curve from working with Persy was the fact that she has hair and it needed to move and react to how her head and body are moving.  I also learned that hair reacts and moves differently as you get further into animating the ends of the hair.  It's essentially long chain with each reacting to what the chain before it is reacting to.

Another big lesson was the animation curve Persy's arms created when moving forward and back.  I never thought about how arms gain and lose momentum and how the wrist and hands react to that movement.  As the arms lose momentum the wrists have follow through and catch up as the arms are beginning to gain momentum. The hands then also react as the fingers get closer and further apart. 

The last big lesson I learned was about facial animation.  Persy has her limits on her facial rig, she can be very expressive or very subtle.  If you combine  too many controller's Persy's face will start to cave inwards in some areas.  I have never been comfortable pushing Persy's face to it's limit but with this animation I really played around with what her expressions are and how I can creatively make her look happy without breaking her rig. 

Overall, this animation has taught me a lot about how the body moves on a biped and how it effects other parts for follow through animation.  This animation is definitely not quite completed yet as I need to work on Persy's fidget sometime in the near future!  The music in the reel is called Typography by MorningLightMusic.

VR Simple Shotgun Rig Reel

VR Simple Shotgun Rig Reel

This is a very simple shotgun rig I created for the No Country for Old Men VR experience in the common art class.  This rig has fully FK functionality and is able to move all parts of the shotgun.  For this prop I actually did some research and watched how shotguns work and watched people take apart and put together the shotgun.  Some of the considerations were how the player is going to interact with it, reloading, pumping, shooting and holding the weapon.  I learned a lot from rigging this weapon and this was my first weapon rig.  The model is by Eric McGinnis and the music is called Glock by NewsStreetMelody

VR Simple Money Case Reel

VR Simple Money Case Reel

This is a very simple rig created while in my common art class for a VR experience of No Country for Old Men.  The rig functionality needed to allow the case to be closed, opened, move the case handle, and can move the buckles on the case.  It is fully FK functionality and in the 3D world the player is able to interact and pick up this object.  The model is made by Desiree Gerlach and the music is called Glock by NewsStreetMelody.

Tarantula Proxy Rig Reel

Tarantula Proxy Rig Reel

This is a rig that is currently in proxy mode and that I want to in the future update with more complex controllers and skinning.  Because I've worked on quadrupeds, I decided to try a creature that has more than four legs, so I chose to rig a tarantula.  I find tarantulas to be very interesting creatures in the way they move and behave.  The big challenge with this rig was how the legs move and the way the body reacts to that movement.  With the body of the tarantula being very rigid, trying to determine how the legs move was a bit of a challenge because part of the legs are under the tarantulas body.  It's difficult to see how the underside of a tarantula moves unless they are flipped on their backs.  My biggest surprise when rigging a tarantula, was learning that they sometimes actually walk on 10 legs especially when they are very young.  Tarantulas have limbs called the pedipalp that they use to grab their prey and they will use those to help walk.  To describe how this rig works the body is forward kinematics and each of the legs is inverse kinematics with a knee and ankle bend controller.  I found this model on Sketchfab by JMuro1 and the music is called Tarantulas by Christian Nanzell.