Alicia

Alicia is an actress who fights with her villainous self as she takes a leading role on stage. I rigged Alicia for Ashley Trawick’s thesis film, Fairest of Them All. She was modeled by Parrish Baker.

This character has dramatic dialogue, and Ashley has a naturalistic animation style, so articulate lips were a major concern. I studied Ashley’s favorite rig, AnimSchool’s Malcolm, for inspiration.

The most exciting feature of this rig, for me, was the dress, which is made of nCloth. I have written more about the dress in the Character FX section of this website.

Legs: IK/FK switch, bendy. Foot control has roll, toe-lift, side, and lean attributes. IK knees have an aim control.

Breathe: expands and contracts the chest.

Arms: IK/FK switch, stretchy, and bendy. Clavicle controls. IK elbow has an aim control.

Hands: An IK handle controls the entire finger, and FK controllers bend each knuckle joint. Cup, bend, fist, and spread controls are built into an extra layer of group-nodes, so they don’t interfere with keys set by the animator.

Head-and-Neck: follows Jason Schleifer’s Animation Friendly Rigging IK setup. Space-switching between shoulders, neck, and world-space.

Mouth: blendshapes inspired by AnimSchool’s Malcolm. Tweak controls, control joints on a local rig, as described by Jason Osipa’s Stop Staring.

Teeth and Tongue: joint-controlled. Tongue is IK, with an FK tip.

Nose: joint-controlled. Also has a scrunch blendshape.

Chin: a joint will rotate the whole mouth and chin into assymmetricl positions.

Eyelids: One large controller moves together the eyeballs, eyelids, and skin-following joint. Smaller controls adjust the lids and eyeball individually.

Eyebrows: blendshape-based

Hair and Dress: are dynamic and described in the Character FX section of this website.