When the day is over..the riggers come out

Yes today was a looooong old day...mainly packed with contextual studies which was interesting to watch and learn about but all the same yet another project has emerged from the depths and theres so much to do for this unit! 

Anyway, before I go into a panic spiral of hellish rubbish...ness...the day became productive when Matt and I decided we'd start plotting the next stage in terms of rigging and worked through a tutorial in my rigging book on creating FK and IK handles for the arms. Success...well....we made both sets of handles but decided not to press any further with making the switch for one to the other as were working on a basic model Matt had made but I think it was very helpful for us both to do and introduced us to a bit of MEL scripting (which up until now...i'd quake in me boots at if someone mentioned i'd have to do it) well MEL....you...don't...scare...me. Unfortunately I haven't got any images of the controls we added as Matt didn't save the model (silly Matt). We also started looking at different controls that could be put into our characters and discussed what we thought we might need so our time would be used wisely when acutally rigging instead of making all the controls under the sun and never actually using them. I have now bought another book on rigging (i must....learn.....i.....yeeeeerrrn for knowledge on ze rigging o maya lord) which has much more advanced rigging in it...have had a brief look but trying not to read everything and do nothing at this stage!

I now have a back up plan if my rigging is taking too long and have decided I will stick with FKs for arms instead of having both FK and IK. I can always return to my model and update it in the holidays.

Anyways this has been a short broadcast to illustrate my growing confidence in rigging. If I actually manage to do it...thats another big goal ticked off of Sarah's Maya target list :)

Here's a quick rig plan i completed when I got back home. This will give me an outline of what needs to be included for character setup but could change if I realise any controls need to be added/reduced depending on time constraints/characters requirements.