2022 provided the opportunity to experiment quite a bit. Over the course of the year, I finished the short called "Bad Timing' which premiered December 12th.  I also helped Jared Beltran complete his capstone, 'Drosera Abductor of the Night' , which finished production on December the 19th. I am currently working with another student to finish her capstone, and expected to be completed May of 2023. 
   This semester I was in Animation Lab, where I created 9 character rigs in a four month time span. All of the rigs were accepted by the animation team and where used in the short.  These rigs ranged from humanoid characters to props.  I recorded my weekly progress making them, and the videos can be watched by clicking the ‘Weekly Rigs for the year of 2022’ button. During the second semester, I was tasked with going back and fixing the rigs if the animation department found an issue with them, or wanted something changed. 
   My favorite rigs for the 'Bad Timing' short were the clown doll and the purple monster the production team calls Rude Monster. The clown doll was one of my first rigs I did for the short, and though admittedly not technically challenging. It was an interesting process getting the weight painting right. She had very limited geometry and the animation team came to me with a specific way they wanted her to move. In the end, I compensated for the lack of geometry with specific joint placements. I am extremely proud of the outcome because she moves just as the animation team wanted her to.

   Another weight painting challenge from this year was the Rude Monster. The base rig was created by another student, Julia Welch, but was given to me after she graduated. I redid the spine, head, eye, and added shoulder joints. I did the weight painting for the character as well. The animators were very specific on how the expressions they wanted the character to have. They wanted a character that was 'soft and squishy', which I had done before but not on a character this complex. Even though this character was complex, I delivered a product the animation team was excited about. We were working with a strict timeline, if I had more time I would redo the weight painting process. I would be more careful with adding influences to joints. There were several times when I added influences to parts of the spine that I didn't want and they were difficult to get rid of. I have also done more research since then, and have learned about several different deformers I could’ve added to the character to make them more expressive and squishy. Overall, I am very excited to have worked on this project and the familiarity with the pipeline, and the experience of communicating with other departments it gave me. 
   During the production of 'Drosera: Abductor of the Night', I had the opportunity to work on the main character, the Exterminator. I loved the challenge the character brought. The entire character was asymmetric by design, and it had lots of accessories the team wanted rigged. I also got to experiment with a joint-driven facial rig and hair system. I had a lot of fun going in depth with this character and adding lots of details such as a rig for it's belt and zipper. If there was anything I could go back and redo, it would be it's facial rig. I feel like I could have pushed it farther and allowed the animators to have more control of his face. Ideally, control that a blend shape wouldn’t allow. Overall, I am excited to have worked on this short and the opportunities and experience it gave me.
On my own, I have started to do more research on rigs. I started this over the winter break and had lots of fun working with new deformers and code to create and enhance my rigs and my workflow creating them. My favorite rig where I used my research is the book rig. I wanted to give animators as much control over the pages as possible, while still creating a rig that was super light weight and easy to control. To do this, I created a page that could be easily duplicated and could bend like a real piece of paper. The page has a coded locator system meant to simulate gravity. The locator system can be changed by the animators at any time in real time. The cover itself is also rigged, and can realistically close and open and flex. Overall, I am very pleased with the rig and I look forward to making adjustments to it and creating more rigs with this level of complexity. I thoroughly enjoyed researching it, and am continuing to research more going into next year. 

   During this year I learned what it was like to work in an environment similar to the industry, and worked on making my work-flow highly efficient to insure quality rigs in a short amount of time. I also created a book rig with a self-coded locator system meant to simulate gravity. This system was created with the animators in mind, and can be changed by them in real time. I was apart of two shorts that finished production this year, ‘Bad Timing’ and ‘Drosera: Abductor of the Night’.
   Check out the major rigs I did this year by following the buttons!

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   I also had the opportunity to be part of two shorts this year. The first was done as part of Animation Lab, where a team of 80 students completed the production of Bad Timing.  The short is about monsters try to take over the world on Halloween. The other short is Drosera: Abductor of the Night. The short follows an exterminator as he tryies to exterminate a bug he was called in for. Click the respective buttons below to learn more!

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   And lastly, click to button below to see my rigging reel from 2021.

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