First Post

Greetings, my name is Ian, I'm a technical director for an animation company in Toronto, Ontario. A big part of my job is character rigging in Maya, the process of setting up a skeleton and control system for a character, and skinning, the process of binding the static 3d model to the skeleton so that it can move. In other words, a modeller carves the puppet, I give it hinges and strings, and an animator makes it dance.

Recently a number of small projects have begun at the studio and I've found myself doing a lot of rig development. My colleagues seemed quite interested (the ones who were riggers and character developers were anyways) so figured there's at least a small audience for this sort of thing. This blog will chronicle my rigs, rig components, skinning, and scripting.

So for all of you out there who are budding technical directors, students struggling with your character rigs, or hobbiests who just want to make something move, bookmark this blog, pronto.