ANIMATION & RIGGING REEL

This is a custom rig I built for the Ninki Nanka. This rig was challenging as I had to troubleshoot various aspects of the rig to ensure that it could move in all the ways that we needed. A few of the attributes that I added in the rig are muscle physics to ensure that the dragon looks grounded in reality with flesh that reacts to its movements and sine-wave deformers on its whiskers, neck, tail and fins to enable animators to achieve the snake-like movements without having to hand animate an FK chain.

Auto Limb Tool: Wrote a tool using python to create a quadruped limb setup. Incorporated an IK-FK switch, stretch and bendy limbs using ribbons and muscle dynamics. This tool was instrumental to efficiently rig the complex dragon on our film and was also reusable for other quadrupeds.

Animated a short face rig test for the Ninki Nanka to ensure that the rig was flexible and expressive.

Added muscle dynamics to dragon rig using ribbons and muscle deformers. This helped ground the dragon in reality and added an extra level of believability. Utilized deformers instead of a muscle system to meet project constraints, ensuring performance efficiency.

Ribbon Tool: Created a tool to make ribbons from an edge selection. Added a UI to make it user friendly for other artists. This tool significantly improved the workflow efficiency and saved a considerable amount of time on the project.