SUMMER PRE-SEMESTER 3
My original idea for the Portfolio Project was to create several rigs of the characters from my Pitch Bible ; Hazel and the Starlight Guardians, and attempt to create an animatic/animation of the opening title sequence for the show or a trailer using these rigs. After having a discussion with Sarah before Semester 3 started we agreed that the possibility of doing an animation on top of several rigs would be quite difficult, especially if I was aiming to learn new rigging techniques that I hadn’t covered yet in Semester 1 and 2. Going into the project I still had the mindset from my final year of it being like a Major Project which is why I had such high aims however I soon realised I needed to turn the scope of the project down since it's only meant to be an addition to my portfolio for employability.
NEW AIMS
A full 180° turning rig of Hazel
Learn new industry standard techniques
Master Controllers
New Drawing Swap Techniques
Small Animation and/or Demo of the Rig
Optional ; Second Rig of Archie
Once sorted I worked on pre-production for the rig, since I already had the full body designed I only had to do some small design work:
Turnarounds for Hazel & Archie
Expression Sheet of Hazel (Allow me to see how the face should look = how I should rig the face)
I used the app Monday to lay out the basic structure of my production plans for the project. I opted for a 50/50 split between my time. I hope that with the knowledge I've already built up through previous rigging projects I'll be able to work through this one a lot quicker with Hazels simpler design. This is all subject to change however.
I should also note that due to the limited time of the project, doing any additional pre-production for animated scenes like storyboarding, animatic, scripts, etc. wouldn't be possible. If I had additional time these pre-production materials would've came first to allow me to fully understand how I wanted the rig to move in certain shots then I would've moved onto rigging and background designing and so on.
WEEK ONE
Most of week one was spent just going over what I had learnt in Semester 1 and 2 for rigging, by rewatching Kyu-Bum Lee’s tutorials to refresh my knowledge.
I was starting to understand what each of the basic nodes meant; cutters/inverted, composites, pegs, underlay/overlay/lineart/colour.
I had a better understanding of what z-depth was, how it would be used within my rig and its relation to pegs and composites.
Got the front view of Hazels rig completely drawn and rigged by the end of the week.
Taught myself how to import Scripts, however this took me over an hour to figure out. Went between toon boom forums and reddit pages to get it working.
Added the Find and Replace script which quickened the process for editing the names of nodes when copying and pasting (i.e duplicating R to L limbs)
While week one was just getting a refresher on previous knowledge I found it helped me gain a deeper understanding of Toon Boom and solidified my base knowledge of basic rigging. In future I’ll be able to skip rewatching tutorials of the drawing process and quickly get the base of the rig completed.
WEEK TWO
Kyu-Bum Lee’s tutorials only taught a small amount of the rigging process. He hadn’t uploaded the rest of his tutorials in a few years. Discovered a new rigger named Matt Watts on YouTube and his Potato Rig Tutorials.
Matt is a rigger for TV shows in Canada/The States & is a Toon Boom Instructor so has valuable knowledge on what the industry needs for their rigs. This is especially valuable to me with plans of moving to the States or Canada in the next few years for future jobs in Animation.
Worked on the following for the rig:
Changed the shape of the face of the original design to have the cheek puffs sit lower on the face rather than higher. Looks more aesthetically pleasing. (Fig.1)
Noticed Matt had a different workflow to Kyu-Bum Lee but this helped me learn new things about rigging.
Went back to my front facing limbs and recreated them w/ additional deformers + cloned limbs.
Starting to notice my thought process while rigging is becoming more aligned with how it will animate in Toon Boom. Rather than “I'm rigging and piecing things together”, I’m thinking, “How should I set up the nodes and create deformers to get it to animate the way I want?”.
Learnt how to use the display node and set up new displays on my workspace to focus on particular drawing nodes, making it faster to add changes.
Decided to follow Matt’s method of cleaning up the Node View, downloaded his rig to see how he laid things out. (Fig.2)
Put certain limbs and body parts into their own groups in the Node View (eyes, arms, legs) to create a less crowded node view for animators.
Discovered how to use waypoints to have cleaner cable management in the Node View.
Cleaned up my Composites & Cutters (Fig.3), discovering I could put lots of drawings into one composite and cutter rather than having separate ones, cluttering the view.
Had to remake the arms to fix peg position errors > remade them with techniques that are more industry standard following Matts tutorials.
This week focused on fixing any errors I made in Week One, aligning my rig with techniques Matt used rather than Kyu-Bum Lee and cleaning up the workspace rather than leaving clean up till the very end. Watching Matts tutorials is helping me learn about different nodes I hadn't used before and different techniques for piecing them together with their pegs and deformers. While I didn't get any further into the side views of my rig, it was important I focused on having the rigging for the front view solidified before moving on and facing future errors. Matt made a point of this several times saying if it's not set up correctly it can be harder to fix later and more time consuming.
(Fig.1)
(Fig.2)
(Fig.3)
WEEK THREE
Working on the QF (quarter front) and PF (profile) view now.
Worked on issue with Arms for the 3rd time. Shaped wrong when starting to do QF positioning, reshaped hands to be more rounded and have a smoother transition to QF view.
Changing the hands meant I had to go back to the front view and redo the entire arm w/ positioning + new deformers + Cloning limbs to match.
Worked from university PC’s this week but found the PCs were prone to crashing more often with Toon Boom than my own home computer, lessening time I had to work on project due to always having to reboot Toon Boom.
New Issue; getting the head to have a snout on the side view.
Tried to fix this by using two different deformers but the deformers wouldn’t translate correctly between keyframes to create the snout.
Solution: creating a second drawing swap for the PF view. Allowed for a seamless swap between QF and PF.
New Issue (Fig.4); New PF head swap caused error with the left ear not cutting into the new swap and leaving a blank line. This ended up causing issues across the entire rig so I had to re-open the save and start the head swap from scratch.
Solution (Fig.4); Remade the PF head swap and rearranged the nodes for the ear; moved around cables in composites, removed autopatch nodes. Not exactly sure what fixed this in the end but removing the auto-patch nodes seemed to be the solution + creating new cutters for the ears. A lot of trial and error with this solution.
Like the Ears, I added new invisible cutters to the shoulders and legs. Allowed me to make the upper part of the arms + legs invisible as the rig turns into different views.
Hand Swaps; noted that hands were more like small nubs with no fingers. Found it difficult to make the hand swaps due to the arm only being split into Arm > Hand rather than Upper Arm > Lower Arm > Hand. It doesnt make sense for my rig to have three seperate drawings for the arms because the arm is small and round. Want to come back later if I have time to troubleshoot this issue. Not a main priority. Unsure if I need the 360 hand swaps anyways.
Slower week this week due to mental health struggles and adopting a new kitten in our family but was able to positively overcome issues in Toon Boom with creative solutions thanks to how much I've learnt this year. Spent the majority of my Thursday and Friday watching Matts rigging tutorials on creating swaps for body parts. Helped me get a better understanding of the process before diving into it and risking getting confused and making errors.
(Fig.4)
Mid-Project Schedule Change
Realised the amount of work I wanted to do on the rig was going to take more time than anticipated.
50/50 project split was not going to work.
Discussed this issue with Sarah and we agreed that if I can animate by the end of the semester that would be good but the main priority is creating a high quality rig that's up to industry standard for my portfolio, animating it isn't fully necessary.
Could supliment the animation through different options; hand the rig to other animators or students to allow them to 'test' and provide feedback > reflect and/or just create a demo reel demonstrating how the rig moves.
WEEK FOUR
Started to get into the finer details of the rig.
First focus was creating eyelid and eyebrow swaps.
Watching how both Matt and Kyu Bum Lee made their eyes, I realised this was not the correct method for Hazel and I had rigged her eyes incorrectly by following these tutorials. The types of shapes I wanted for Hazel couldn’t be achieved with separating the eye into Upper and Lower lids alone.
Discovered ZeBirdBrains eye rigging tutorial, helped me realise there are many different ways you can rig body parts and there is not a one fits all method.
With this in mind, I recreated my eyes from scratch again, keeping drawings and nodes I knew I would need but deleting/recreating parts of the model I had to change.
I separated the larger eye line from the eye white, giving them their own separate parts on the rig. The new eye line would serve as the upperlid with an invisible cutter to cut through the eye when its shaped with either deformers or drawing swaps (Fig.5).
From here I learnt how to make better drawing swaps and how to create separate deformers for each new drawing substitution, how to name them and how to link multiple deformers to one drawing.
Issue; swapping the eye over with all the new deformers. Had to sift through several different Youtube tutorials and explanations
Solution: I found a video from DrawnSean who explained how to use Static Transformations which allowed me to flip the eye and keep its original keyframes on the rotation.
Another poor mental health dip this week, slightly burnt out. Majority of energy was spent trying to trouble shoot and fix the problems with the eyes.
(Fig.5)
Below is some images of my breakdown process for remaking the eyes and deciding eyeshapes. I'm a Visual and Kinaesthetic learner so sitting down in my sketchbook and drawing out what I need to do and taking notes really helps my brain piece together the puzzle of rigging. Matt Watts called rigging a form of engineering which made me laugh, will I be a certified engineer now? Haha!
Images arent the best quality but just thought I would include them to show the breakdown
WEEK FIVE
Entire week spent on the mouth swaps
Previous rig from Semester two, I rigged the mouth as one whole piece.
After watching Tutorials realised one rigged piece was not industry standard. Most rigs will separate the mouth into mouth > teeth > tongue > any other parts.
Watched through Matt Watts tutorials and some of DrawnSean for the PF views.
Separated my mouth into all the correct parts and reused the mouth shapes from the Cactus Rig in semester 2 since it closely matched how I imagined Hazels mouth to look based on the original expression sheet.
Learnt how to SYNC layers, this solved the problem I had with my rig in semester 2 where the teeth weren’t staying in place due to drawing them in each mouth swap.
This also meant I could now sync my eyelashes with the eye swaps, something I wasn’t sure how to fix in Week Four. I’ll do this next week.
Used helpful image guides provided by Matt Watts, free on his gumroad, for the mouth shapes and an explanation on how to name them.
Schedule Re-Work
At this rate I doubt I’d be able to animate the rig on time for submission. I’d still like to explore how to make master controllers and how to tween the full 180 turnaround which could take quite a while to get done. Discussed this again with Sarah and we both liked the idea of just creating the Demo Reel of the rig and possibly trying to re-create some of the expressions off the expression sheet with the rig, this should show how expressive the rig would be if animated.
WEEK SIX
Less time than anticipated to get everything done. Abandoned the idea of Hand and Feet Swaps. Her hands are rounded so she can get away with not needing fingers.
If I had more time I would 100% work on these swaps so she can smoothly hold things, have a nice walk cycle and unique poses.
Main Priority:
Tweening the turnaround and setting up some basic master controllers for my portfolio.
Made my first attempt at Tweening ; using Toon Booms Free Learning Courses. First tween; A lot of errors and clipping with parts missing from the model.
Realised I turned my rig incorrectly with the wrong pegs. Opened up a new version file and recreated my turnarounds from scratch again, this time making sure only to touch the correct pegs; watched ZeBirdBrain to understand this better. This was a frustrating process as I had to start the views from scratch again but it was worth it in the end.
Had to create new pegs and break parts down further like the facial markings so they wouldn’t move with the main face peg when it turned.
Kept track on how it was tweening as I was positioning the new pegs rather than leaving it till the end to fix this time.
Recognise there are a few very small errors on flipping the rig and its symmetry but at this stage of the project I dont have time to sit down and fix it. This is something I’ll keep note of in the future to look out for when rigging.
Sarah and I looked at the tweening from Quarter Front to Profile and realised it would be too complicated to troubleshoot the tween smoothly in time for the deadline. Decided to just tween between the Left QF > Front > Right QF views and leave the profile views as they are.
Took the extra time to Sync the eyelashes to the eyeblinks like mentioned in Week Five.
Issues with the lines appearing on the body and head as it rotates, tried to tween these smoothly so they would slowly appear as the rig turns. This is a quick solution, if I had more time I'd work on making this transition cleaner by rearranging composites and using z-depth.
Master Controllers.
Wanted to attempt the face grid controller but this would require me to draw out the head angles which I dont have time to do. Settled for making some simpler controllers instead that would still be used in the industry.
On the above note; I recognise the facial grid controller is likely something used in the industry so it’s something I’ll teach myself on future rigs to expand my skillset.
Made slider controls for eye blinks, mouth swaps, head rotation and body rotation.
In an attempt to at least learn how to use the grid wizard, I made a grid controller that could control what direction the pupils would look at.
Coming to the end of the week so I stopped working on the rig at this point, satisfied with the work done on it thus far.
There are still quite a few errors that need fixed like using the master controllers together.
> Moving the pupil with the grid, then attempting to use the blink controller resets the position of the pupil. Might need to remove the pupil from the blink controller so it wont be effected.
> Arm cutter on the body looks incorrect if the head is not already rotated before rotating the body controller.
If I had more time I would sit and work through the issues. But I'm happy that I atleast know how master controllers are made.
DEMO REEL
Noticed some issues with areas while filming the demo.
Need to fix pivot points on the arms to have them rotate smoother
Need to attatch a kinematic outputs to the markings on the tail so they'll deform with the tail.
Initial demo reel, head rotation master controller was working perfectly fine, then when I went to film recreating expressions the controller broke and flipped the head??? Unsure why this has happened
Deformers on Ears and Cheeks not working even though they worked in the original demo reel?
Quickly fixed some clipping issues and the issue with deformers not appearing & the remade the head rotation controller.
Eye Master Controller has still somehow flipped itself to be inverted, will be fixed after submission but still works.
Below is the final demo reel which can also be found under my Rigging > Toon Boom section on my portfolio website! It quickly runs through the rig, how it moves and some basic expression tests!
REFLECTION
Overall I'm very happy with the level of detail the Hazel rig has came out with! I took this project as an opportunity to start learning more advanced Toon Boom rigging techniques and I'm proud of what I've achieved for it being a first attempt for some of these processes. I successfully know now how to create master controllers, how to tween a rig to do rotations between positions, how to sync drawings to one another, understand nodes better, etc. etc. All of this has given me a great insight into the processes used to start making rigs that will fit into the local industry and will elevate my portfolio for future employment.
Of course I understand that this rig is no where near perfect, when recreating expressions for my demo reel I noticed a lot of small minor tweaks that had broken in the rig, or parts of the rig looking a little messy (example when the rig flips, some of the markings move and its not symmetrical) but these are quite minor details that can quickly be fixed in the future and its something I'll know to prepare for with future rigs. While I didnt quite finish what I had set out to do with animating the rig in the end, I think the extra time I took to work on this rig helped elevate it to a higher standard that I was looking for, having less time to work on the rig would've meant I couldn't have learnt the new techniques in detail.
Ultimately I have a greater understanding towards the process of rigging and I believe this to be a successful outcome with a lot of learning involved!
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