All About "Rig Wrecking"

Rig concepts from "Jerich0"

What is "Rig Wrecking"? Rig Wrecking, more commonly known as rig testing, is the process of testing your character rigs to make sure they can do everything you need them to do.

Sometimes known as stress testing, this process involves testing out all the controls to make sure everything works as it should, and all the geometry deforms correctly.

Rig testing is a necessary production step; it involves letting animators loose on the rig to do test animation. Skip this step and you will almost certainly find many problems cropping up during the animation stage of the production.

Introducing "Moon Rockz"

Jonathan Humphries is an animation student at Escape Studios who is due to be awarded his MA in Animation this summer.

Recently Jonathan volunteered to help out with "Moon Rockz", a short film made at Escape Studios, written and directed by Molly Babington.

"Moon Rockz" was a collaboration between students at Escape Studios and also at Animation Apprentice, involving both Jonathan Humphries and also Matt Neputin, also studying for his MA in Animation.

The film is a short story about the moon landings - as told from the Moon's point of view. It's a charming and funny film, to which our students contributed some excellent animation.

"Moon Rockz" is currently being entered into film festivals, and we wish it every success.

"Charlie & Yip" in Neum Film Festival

My short film "Charlie and Yip" is a finalist in the Neum Animated Film Festival which runs from June 27th to July 2nd.

Charlie and Yip is a short film about a kid who takes his pet to school for Show and Tell, which turns out to be a bad idea. It's a really a teaser for my indie feature film project "My Haunted House", which is still in development.

Funding feature films isn't easy in the current business climate, but it's important to remember that, despite all the troubles caused by the Corona virus, the animation industry continues to thrive.

Even as live action shoots have been closed down around the globe, animation keeps on going, as studios have moved to a purely online business model.

Dragon Flight Tutorial

Dragon in Flight Tutorial 

We've added a new animation tutorial to our animation library, showing students how to animate a dragon in flight.

The tutorial uses the free Jaemin Dragon rig by Truong, which can be downloaded here.

The dragon flight tutorial can be found here, and is free for all our students.