Cheetah Rig from HighEnd3D - Handle with Care

Cheetah rig for Maya by Vikram Verma

It's hard to find a good cheetah rig for animation in Maya, which is a shame, as these big cats are beautiful animals, and there is plenty of excellent live action reference available for animating a cheetah run cycle.

The best rig we have found is the free Cheetah rig by Vikram Verma, available for download at Highend3D.com.

Meet Mike and Tina!

One of the many character rigs that we recommend here at Animation Apprentice is Mike and Tina - available for free download at Creative Crash.

Mike and Tina get 5 Stars at Creative crash and 41 positive ratings - not bad at all for a free rig!

Best of all, Mike and Tina are highly customisable, so you can adapt the rig to suit the style of your shot.

Meet Bouncing Ball & Ultimate Ball

The free bouncing ball rig is one of the rigs we suggest that students download when they first start learning animation. It's available for free download at highend3D. We also recommend the Ultimate Ball, also downloadable from highEnd3D.com.

Why start with a bouncing ball? Well, pretty much every animation course on the planet starts with a ball. It's where students first encounter the concepts of timing and spacing, and also how to use important tools such as the Graph Editor.

But it's also where students begin to learn the importance of giving a performance. Even a bouncing ball can be made to look fun and interesting or dull and boring.

Eagle Animation by Lee Caller

Above is some excellent animation of an eagle in flight by Animation Apprentice student Lee Caller.  It's really nice shot, incorporating a live action plate and also using live action reference to get a realistic and believable result. We asked Lee to explain how to get the best out out of the Bald Eagle rig, free for download at Creative Crash.

Recommended Free Rigs - Squirrely!

This squirrel rig is a nice cartoony rig that can be used for some fun character animation. It was created by the very talented Josh Burton and can be downloaded for free at Creative Crash.

The only tricky part about animating with the Squirrely rig is the enormous tail - which is almost a character in itself.

Lots of your time will be spend doing overlapping action and follow-through, to make the tail feel natural.

Still, what did you expect - a squirrel with no tail?