Three's Nearly A Crowd pt.1

I've been a bit behind with updates, so I think it's time to rectify that.

Now that my animatic's finally finalised, I'm getting to work on the character's rigs. Since Zombie moves about the most, I decided to start on his first, since he'd likely need the most pieces despite having the simplest design. These were the initial sketch pieces I started off with...

And this is what I finished off with. I was really unhappy with the initial lineless test, as it was far too simple for my liking. A lot of the character's details kind of got lost, so I decided to go with lines again and make use of the deformation tool like I did with Percy's Breakfast Adventure, although less so since I'll be making use of replacements and things this time.

I don't remember how many pieces there are in total, but there are well over a hundred. This is a general use rig - I'll probably be making separate, less elaborate ones for poses that only show up in a single scene and whatnot.

Here are some screenshots from when I was putting his rig together. His eyes were bugging me as they didn't really work with his head, but I decided to leave them as they were for the time being and get to work on a test animation.

 

This was the first test animation I did with Zombie's new rig. I didn't have much time until the studio closed when I started this, so that's why it's so quick. I also had some issues with pivot points messing with the replacement parts in one of his legs, but I was able to get that sorted.

When I got some feedback on the rig, the general consensus was that the eyes didn't really work with him - they made him look a little soulless, which shouldn't be what I'm going for considering he's the puppy of the story. 

I was able to make a longer test animation afterwards, and edited his eyes a little, but I'm still not happy with them. The softness of the shine doesn't really work with the line style, so I think I'm going to redo the eyes completely and make them more rounded, as opposed to oval-shaped.

And really, what's a rigging process without a few amusing mishaps?