A stylised 3D character
I love working with characters and after hearing about the Frensham Cauldron, I was inspired to design, rig and animate a cheeky cauldron on its way to create some mischief. I wanted to create a rig that wasn't overly complicated to set up or use, but had enough functionality to give some real personality to the little guy.
Design sketches
Rigging
Most projects don't have the budget for fully rigged human characters, so I wanted to challenge myself to make a simple and flexible rig. The body is controlled with 3 joints and an FFD deformer which gives a nice amount of squash and stretch.
The legs are jointed, with an additional Pose Morph tag to keep the back of the 'knee' nicely proportioned when they bend.
The handles are entirely automated with dynamics, no animating required, phew!
The result is easy to animate and pose for multiple clips and purposes.
Using only a couple of lights and optimised materials meant that this movie could be rendered out of Cinema4D in under half an hour, which just goes to show lovely 3D doesn't need render farms and extortionate budgets to deliver a beautifully charming result.
Think you've got a character in mind for a project?
to drop me a line with your ideas!
