People – character animation
design, rigging and animation study
Designing and moving characters is conceptually and technically very demanding. Above all, it requires an understanding of the rigging process. In this video, I explored this intensively with the rigg tool DUIK BASSEL.2 using three examples:
• forming an riggable character from just a few letters
• make simple figures walk and interact with DUIK's walk-cycle automation
• animating the upper body and facial expressions of a complexly designed character in a finely tuned way.
• forming an riggable character from just a few letters
• make simple figures walk and interact with DUIK's walk-cycle automation
• animating the upper body and facial expressions of a complexly designed character in a finely tuned way.
Working with DUIK BASSEL.2 requires its in-depth knowledge and some practice with the specific workflows. But then it rewards with easy to animate characters. I am looking forward to getting to know the successor version DUIK ANGELA.
creation process
letter character
A character quickly developed with a few elements and easily animated. This is the rig of the entire letter character:
The animation of the character head takes place in a custom composition located in the character's rig. The animation of the eyes and mouth are controlled by controllers in the rig.
walk cycle figures
This type of semi-automated animation is often used in social media content because it is easy and quick to implement. But beware: The result is only satisfactory with precise planning of the animation, coordinated construction of the figures - and knowledge of how to "trick" the walk cycle automation.
This is the background of the video, an animation of several layers with parallax effect:
These are the different characters with their rigs.
The characters are designed in Illustrator. In the rig there are single or whole body limbs, connected classically or partially with puppet pins - depending on the requirements of the animation.
Complex character
This character is constructed entirely in Photoshop and consists of nearly 80 individual parts:
Eyes, eyebrows, face shapes and mouth are in sub-compositions of the head. Hands and cap are separate compositions. All compositions are controlled by sliders of the animation layer.
The construction of this setting and various masking works is complex, but the animation is wonderfully easy.
Thank you for your interest!
© 2022 Christian Thamm
