Evaulation Draft

Rigging

                                                       Content

Introduction

• Rigging

Main section

• Rigging Circus Fantastic
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• Asset Sheet
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• Building rigs - node view
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• Talk and visits to studios the influences they had  
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• What went well / what didn’t
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• What was learned and what would be changed
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• Jobs and careers rigging could get me

Conclusion

Introduction

In degree year most people normally decide to specialize in the area of the industry they would most likely want to work in. Going into the course I knew which areas i didn’t what to work in but I hadn’t decide with area I would like to work in. Back in September I had started a course at Animation Skillnet An Introduction to Toon Boom Harmony Rigging with Stephen O’ Keefe. This was a 5 week course focused on rigging in harmony. I was really interested and fully enjoyed this course. This was the area I now knew i wanted to specialize in. The next question was how to go about doing this.

How i approached my final film with regards to rigging

I knew I wanted to show of my rigging but how was i going to do this. There was two ways I could do this. One was a showreel showing different rigged character and props. Second was a short film using rigged characters to animate it. As I had only started the rigging course I wasn’t confident enough to just do a showcase and I wanted to keep my opinions opening. So i decided to do a story based piece so that I could try every part of the pipeline and then decide which piece I most enjoy and seen myself doing as a job.

Asset Sheet

Before starting any of my rigs I did an assets sheet to figure out how many character rigs and props needed to be built. This helped organise time and keep me on track of what needed to be build.

How i went about building my rigs (Node view)

Building in Toon boom

To build a rig in toon boom, all pieces that make up a character or a prop must be all draw on different layers. Separating all the character into basic pieces, head, neck,body, arms, hands, legs and feet. And then If you want to be able to do more with a rig you might break it down even futher for example upper arm, lower arm and hand this allows to animate the rig without deforms and also with deforms depending on the type of movement is been made.

Below is an example of how the node view looks when building a Rig. Explaining from the Bottom Section 1 to the Top Section 6.

Section 1 . Main Composites

‘The Composite node allows you to use several images and output a single image’ (Toonboom. Composite Node)  A Display node must be attached to the Composite in order to view in drawings in camera. A write node must also be plugged into the bottom to be able to render an image sequence.

Section 2. Composites

Next up the hierarchy would be the composite for each element. This is done to keep node view tidy and easy to make your way around. If not done could look like this below. Although this doesn’t look the busiest.

Imagine this node view without multiple composites it would get impossible to read. Keeping your node view labeled and tidy is the easiest step to having a good rig. It also makes it easier to fix problems.

Section 3. Drawing layers.

Drawing layer is the layer the drawing is drawn. You do not animate on the drawing as you can’t just erase all animation were on a peg you can.

Section 4. Drawing Pegs

Each drawing layer must be attached to a Peg in order to animate on. Pegs keep everything clean and clear to read.

Section 5. Master pegs

Each section of the body would then have another peg so that you can move it as a whole. For example this eye has 9 pegs. It is like a puzzle piece each have to connect together in order for it too look and work okay.

Section 6. Highest Master Peg

The highest master peg is so that all pegs are connected as one so it can move as one

Example

Talk and visits to studios the influences they had

Kilkenny animated festival was on the weekend of  23rd - 25th of February. As apart of this festival you could book tours around both Cartoon Saloon studio and Lighthouse studio. Cartoon Saloon use the software Moho. Moho also allows you to build 2d rig characters but works a bit different to Toon Boom.

Lighthouse Studio use Toon Boom and I got to chat to a girl who was working on a new series. She was rigging a dog character. She gave advice about deforms, She told that in “Lighthouse we use mostly envelope deformers as they give the most freedom for the animators, We an animator gets a Rig they don’t want to be restricted and envelope deformers are the least restrictive.” They did use bone deforms for more simple things like tail wagging but she also had an envelope deformer too so the animator had choice.  

As I spoke before about doing the Animation Skillnet course with Stephen O'keefe from Boulder. Stephen also took a trip to are college to speak about how to work in a studio and also spoke a little more about rigging. ………. Going to add more

What went well / what didn’t

For the most part my rigs worked and functioned well. I had some help animating a scene from a friend Yasmin as I was becoming stuck for time. Yasmine had never  animated with rigs before and she found my Node view easy to navigate around and was able to animate perfectly with my rigs.

What didn’t work so well was the arm elements. When i first rigged the character they just had vest dresses on with no sleeves this didn’t allow the characters arms come infront of there bodys. When i had my first animation perstations tutors noticed this and suggested that I add or change the rig. I added a small shoulder piece of fabric to Penny character to allow her to juggle with her arms in front which worked well and wasn’t a hard fix.

Before I added a shoulder piece                  After I added the shoulder piece.

What I learned and what i would change

Reflecting back at the overall process of rigging the character I wish I done a little more in terms of rigging. I would of liken to rig a turnaround of a character and some detailed props. But as i was under time restrictions 3 character rigs and 3 or 4 rigged props was all my schedule aloud for.

If I was do this year again I might have dropped the story element from my project and just focused on a showcase of rigs within scene with sample pieces of animation. I do think having a story and pushing my rigs to perform complex animation shows how well my rigs work and what little changes I need to do to push the rigs further.

Jobs and careers rigging could get me

At the moment I only know how to 2D rig in Toon boom Harmony which is what is been used to animate in a lot of studios such as Boulder media, Jam Media and Lighthouse studios. If I wanted to further my knowledge and experience I should learn rigging in other softwares which I intend to do during the summer. Moho is another 2d software used for rigging characters and props etc. Cartoon Saloon use this software.

Conclusion

Bibliography

Toonboom. 2017. Composite Node. [ONLINE] Available at: https://docs.toonboom.com/help/harmony-12/premium/Content/_CORE/_Workflow/026_Scene_Setup/073_H2_Composite_Node.html. [Accessed 23 April 2018].