Always Test Your Rig in Close-Up

Low poly spider "Raa" animated by Alex Southcombe

There are many many free rigs and sets now available to students on an educational or freeware license for use in short films, creating a wide variety of creative choices for student film-makers.  

But not all rigs are created equal, and many problems only become evident when the film calls for a close-up, such as this image of the spider "Raa" shown on the left. 

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.

An Introduction to The Art of Storyboards

Storyboarding is a vital part of the animation process, and in the old 2D days of traditional animation, many animators did both. Nowadays, with drawing skills less necessary for 3D animation, storyboarding has tended to separate out into a different discipline. But even animators who don't like to draw should understand a bit about how the storyboard process works. This short ten minute video explores what storyboards are all about - and what the different kinds of storyboards are.

Toonz 2D Software Pipeline Free From Today!

Toonz, The animation software used by legendary Studio Ghibli (The Tale of the Princess Kaguya, Howl’s Moving Castle, and Spirited Away) is set to become open source today. Which is to say, in plain English: free.

The new free software will be called OpenToonz, and will allow animators all over the world to make 2D animation at no charge.

This represents a big new democratisation of the medium of animation. Now, any animator can download Toonz, watch the software demo (see below) and start animating.

Of course, Autodesk has long allowed students to learn its 3D software, Maya, for free. But now, 2D animators are getting a big helping hand. Essentially, Toonz now represents a free pipeline for a short film, feature film or TV series.