Warhammer: blacktalon

role: lead RIGGING

I was leadrigger in the production part of the second season at animation studio Kalio. I had the responsibility in rigging a handful of members from the maincast, including Neave, and helping other riggers on the project.

The rigs were made from scratch in an inhouse program, open to more possibilities than regular animation software, with a central principle of a 3d-esque look. 

All of the content below this page are soly made by me.

POSEGRIDS

To create these 3D-esque looks, I worked in posegrids. A mathematical environment that can, with given some keyposes, move 2D shapes around a grid making them appear to be 3D. First in this process was to create some vector nodes on the grids. This gave a general look on how the image would move on the grid. Then, I started sketching with an old, trusted and digital pencil on the keyposes (these sketches would of course, not move). Then I added the vector shapes. Building an image with multiple layers, staked on top and below each other. With the front image done, I started dragging and reforming these shapes into an upwards, downwards and sideways position, filling the grid. The program would then calculate the inbetween and diagonal poses.

It required a lot of comprehension on 3D principles, which in all honesty, always have been my strong suit.

BONES

A simple variation of 2D digital puppet animation is working with skeletal bones. The coolest thing about these is that they could be paired with posegrids. 

building rigs

With a too brief explanation on the workings of rigging. Here’s an actual example of the technique applied to the first version of Neave’s torso and also the beginning of the base-rig.

The posegrid demanded 12 poses for symmetrical shapes and 21 for asymmetrical shapes! Below, I created some key sketches of Neaves head. 

STACKING POSEGRIDS

Ofcourse, there was also a complex possibility to stack pose grids on top of eachother—which was a delicate process. This was predominantly used with the mouth (in the head posegrid). There were a dozen mouth variations (open, closed, O-shaped, grinning, etc.), each drawn up, down, left to right and so on. 

With control panels, the animators could animate the mouth for the lip-sync in any position they wished! It’s an efficient tool for the animators, not so much for the rigger…

using RIGS

Most of the rigs had 3D: heads, torso's, shoulderplates, hips and hipplates. Other bodyparts, like the limbs, hands and feet would simply be switched on action (a very common practice in 2D digital puppet animation).