Character Rig (Blue Fox Girl's Head)

mikeharveyart

Hey everyone. I've been building a character rig for a project I'm working on and just thought I'd share a head tilt test animation (art is done by another member of the team). The head tilt is controlled by one bone and the weights are adjusted in a way to give the illusion of 3D depth. I'm learning a lot by working on this rig and I hope to improve my skills even more now.

Erika

Very nice result, congrats! Did you also add controls for the facial features or not yet?

mikeharveyart

I have most of the controls in place now, but some are still incomplete. I have controls for the eyes (pupils, iris, eyelashes, and eyebrows), jaw (jaw line, lips and swap-able mouth images for lip sync), ears, and the hair (which is also a seperate skin).

Here's her head tilt with bones (some parts are incorrectly moving since I'm currently making adjustments to weights).

Here's an example of her blinking.

I made some major corrections to the head tilt and more than doubled the max tilt distance (25 units to 55 units).

I also added in lip sync.

Didn't like the idea of using images for mouth movement and lip sync, so I made a bottom lip (temp art) that can make general mouth movements.

I also make a lot of minor improvements to the head rig overall.

hollietree

You have a great sensibility for the 3D form!! Great stuff!

Erika

That's some amazing work you did there, good job!
Will the shadow on the mouth/chin always be this marked? Personal preference I liked it better with no shadow, or a more faint one, but everything else is just perfect!