Escape Studios AN5002: Storyboard & Rig
The first module of my second year of study at Escape Studios is AN5002, which consists of animal or creature animation in the form of locomotion and/or performance. After a few weeks of studying locomotion cycles of various animals (including leopards, horses, and birds) I am now tasked with creating a short creature animation, between 7 and 12 seconds long.
My first step in achieving this was to plan out my animation and find a suitable rig online, as well as video reference for the actions that my creature was carrying out. I knew from an early stage that the animation I wanted to create focused on a 'big cat' creature, as these were one type of animal that I had studied previously. Thusly I had some level of understanding of their unique characteristics such as the way their scapulas are pushed quite high up when weight is transferred to their front legs. As this was a feature that I wanted to highlight in my animation, I decided to incorporate a jumping motion into it. It was also recommended that the animation should contain a narrative: a challenging task to complete in a mere 12 seconds. Boiling the idea of a narrative down to its simplest form left me with the following idea: "There is a character. They have an objective. They try to reach the objective and either succeed or fail." Following this logic, I asked myself, "What objective could a big cat have?" My answer was quite obvious, and arguably surface-level: the big cat wants food, and is going to eat it. Simplistic, but for this particular project I considered the story to be a means to an end and the priority to be the body mechanics of the big cat. Sufficient to answer the audience's potential questions of "Where is the big cat going?" and "What was the point of the jump?"
After creating a storyboard demonstrating this, and also choosing the simple camera moment of a slow pan following the big cat, I had to choose a rig for this animation. I had initially planned on using the Truong CG Leopard Rig, however I was aware of the issues with the legs on this rig becoming deformed at certain extreme positions, therefore I decided to look elsewhere. The CGSpectrum Tiger Rig was able to handle the significant backwards stretching of the front legs whereas the Leopard Rig could not. The Tiger Rig also has a greater variety of movement options, such as dedicated controls in Maya's Channel Box for toe curl and spread, as well as the ability to change the pivot position of the foot rotation
