Character

ANIMATIONS

Art Director

I've made a ton of character animations at Firewood. Mostly for Google Play, but for other tech clients as well. Utilizing characters expands the creative options for a person telling a story. The challenge was convincing the team that we could create a character animation effeciently enough, so that it wasn't too costly to the client/project.

Animation for Google Play email campaign

Using characters

It can be a challenge, not just to bring a character to life, but to get a character rigged and ready to be animated. There is little room for error and mistakes can be costly. After a few successful passes, we had proven our ability, and were making new character animations each week.

Animation for Google Play email campaign

Rigging

The time needed to rig each character was beginning to add up. I realized I could use javascript to automate the IK rigging process, and use custom expressions to manage the IK joints.

Animation for Google Play email campaign

Bringing characters to life

Using an automated rig allowed us to maintain the pre designed proportions, but still have perfect rotation of the joints. I also liked using custom expressions over plugins like duik and rubber hose because custom expressions are lightweight and don't to bog down the application with unnecessary functionalities. The last major benefit was that the script would save a couple hours of time spent rigging for each character.