Rigs For Multiple Projects

[FoundPebble]

I'm planning on making an online series made of five minute shorts for long term, but I need to practice making funcioning rigs for some time. However, I want to know what I should aim for so when I am ready, I know how to make the final rigs. My goal is to have something simple to work around without too many complex animations so that I can hopefully make 1 or 2 episodes per month. I know animation usually takes much longer (6 months to even up to 2 years) for one person to make a short animation, but I have seen teams of one person make animation, even if very stilted, online much faster so I know it is possible with some tricks and shortcuts. There's 13 characters that are used in different episodes, but they all have completely different body types so I don't know if I can reuse bone structures.

One option I can do is use a "universal rig" for each character. What I mean be that is each character would have one rig that has all the major views (front, back, profile, 3/4),, but I now that will be really complex and take a long time. I may not be able to make a functional rig with that approach. Another option is to make simple rigs with maybe just one view and one or two functions. I don't know if I should do that after storyboarding to know which poses I need for that specific episode and keep making a bunch of extremly simple rigs as I need or just do them at once before storyboarding and combine two functions for one rig so I can have less rigs. I do want the rigs to be very expressive in terms of facial experessions so maybe any crazy facial expressions should be their own rig? Is there a way to transition from a normal rig to a crazily shaped or weird faced one or maybe I should skip the transition? I don't have much experiance in this so I don't know what is the best option for what I am trying to do.

[Hoptoad]

Five or more minutes of animation per month is definitely do-able in Moho, assuming you start the clock ticking with already rigged characters and the audio recorded.

If I were you, I might look through the Library of free Moho characters and pick one that seems somewhat like what you might eventually make, and then change the color of their shirt and hair and a couple details. Then move some points around on their head shape, ears, eyes and nose, so their face looks different. Then save that character with a new name. Tah-dah! You have made a rigged, unique, functional character within an hour or two. That's step 1.

Step 2 would to add more layers to the character, such as more hand variations in the switch layer containing hands. Truly make the character your own in Step 2. Do you want forehead wrinkles? Add them. And so forth. This could take a couple more hours, depending on what you're going for.

Step 3 would be to duplicate the character and give the duplicate a new name. Ten to twenty seconds. Afterwards, apply Step1 and 2 the duplicate. Tah-dah! Now your character has a friend!

[FoundPebble]

I do see people using premade characters online, but for what I'm doing the characters already have their own designs, personalities, and stories written. Also, they are not human. I know the rigging process itself will take a long time, but I hope the actual animation process along with, writting more short stories, editing, and voicing the characters can be done for five minutes of a completed project in a month without having to work 24 hours every day. I still want it to be my vision and have a charm to it, but I don't mind it looking a little low budget especially compared to stuff on television. When I was first trying to do this I was thinking of making everything look all high budget and professional, but after some years, I realized I was setting my standards way too high for myself.

[MrMiracle77]

Most of my characters are either 45 degree left/right view (via smartbone) characters. But earlier this year I've made a few 360 degree smartbone 'universal' rigs that have a fair bit of detail and complex rigging, but are also very render-intensive. In the future, I want to move to a fully-shaded 'bust' character (face, chest, arms) with a 60 degree left/right smartbone rig and a separate, unshaded 360 degree rig for distant shots or blurry action.

Switch layer rigs are good, but I recommend 30/60 degree views instead of 45 degree views. People are rarely filmed from straight ahead, unless they're narrating, and 30/60 is closer to the way you'd see a character angled for most scenes in film. And the 30/60 angles aren't that different from each other. Often you can just move the parts around a bit.

5 minutes a month is certainly possible for a dedicated hobbyist (I manage about 4). My first rig in Debut took me 6 days to finish. The second took 3. The third took a day. The fourth took about 3 hours and looked way better than that first one. Start with the script that has the fewest characters and work on the character that needs the least detail first. Set aside focused, undistracted time for your projects; no snacks, no tv, no kids, no pets, use a playlist that you don't have to micro-manage. Drinks are fine if they keep you awake. Take breaks only long as you need to prepare for the next step.

[slowtiger]

In my recent project I found I could do 80% of all scenes with a -60 to 60° head - that's turned sideways as much as just the mouth doesn't make an opening in the silhouette when open. In the future I will add a 60° to 180° head as well because I found I needed lots of over-the-shoulder shots as well. That's 2 head rigs which, including mirrors, give me a 360° head. Now I only need the same for shoulders/upper body ...