Production time has hit for the Inky Squid team, and while some of us are busy modelling, others are planning animation thumbnails and creating shot lists. But before we can block out the animation we need to rig the characters!
This is the current work in progress for the character rigs. So far the basic functionality is now in place for the animators to take the characters and begin step blocking the initial poses for the animation.
The idea is as time goes on, the rigs will be slowly improved, and as they are referenced into the scenes, they will update in the animations without us losing any work. Neat!
The next stages will be to add the facial rigs to each character. Also Loretta needs special attention because she's a girl and does girl things like wears a skirt and has a pony tail. So there is still plenty of work left to do to the rigs, but for now they're in great shape to begin animation.
The models placed on the rigs will not be the models rendered at the end, instead the skins will be replaced during the rendering phase to put nice shiny textured models that make the kids look a fair bit.. healthier. But by having lower resolution models on the rigs means that when we animate, Maya won't slow down because of having to deal with loads of extra polygons and shaders.
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