David Brooks Character TD/Rigger

This is old work, completed last September. The Hoverboy rig sort of stopped at this stage, due to work...I have since learnt a great deal, so will be making some fresh rigs soon :D

I'm now back at Aardman, work is going really well.

I just finished a months work in Bristol on a US television commercial. About two weeks in I learnt the room I was working in was where 'The Wrong Trousers' was made. I met some amazing people with really strong ideas and I got a great sense of family there.

I was lucky enough to work alongside Victor Vinyals, a Character TD whose work blew my mind in my third year of uni. He's well respected in the rigging community and it was an honour to meet him in person and discuss various ideas.

In my spare time I've been developing the way I rig limbs in characters, and I've been revisiting Hoverboy's head topology. Victor gave me some great pointers on facial edgeloops, where they should be and how this aids the face shapes you can make. I also picked up a copy of the second edition of 'Stop Staring' by Jason Osipa. I already own the first edition but it looks like there is some new stuff in this new edition that might come in handy.

I graduated 2 weeks ago, so now I have that happy piece of paper to stick on my wall somewhere :D. It was great catching up with old coursemates and hearing what they were up to now. It seems this year is going really quickly for me, I keep on having ideas and not having the time to see them to completion. But that gives me plenty to do on a rainy day I suppose :D

Right now Im working for a nice London based company who do a wide range of television commercials and children's animation. I worked with them back in July on a Clarks Ad.

Last time I was in London I was discussing the cartoony squash and stretch head with an animator friend. Today I was talking about it again with another animator and I remembered the way we decided worked best. I decided to make it into a little tutorial here should anyone intend to make a squash and stretch head.

Okay so I'm going to be using my Hoverboy head geometry for this tutorial.



First of all, create a lattice deformer on your head geometry so that it has 4 divisions in the Y, with the settings in the options box looking like this.



Once you have your lattice, select the lattice points for the two middle divisions and cluster them. Like so.



Clusters are great for controlling groups of lattice points all at once. We are going to use this middle cluster to give the head that trademark squash and stretch volume, where the middle deflates and swells (Think of a bag of flour being squashed and stretched). More on that in a bit.

For now, create a cubic CV curve down the middle of your head. Make four control points in your curve, the same as the number of divisions in the lattice.



Select the top control point in the curve and cluster it. We will use this cluster to stretch and bend the head.



Now create a wire deformer connecting the CV curve to the lattice. On the wire deformer set the dropoff distance to something high like 50. This is so that the CV curve affects the lattice properly.

And the head setup is complete! You can name all the components and create some fancy control objects later, but for now, let's play.

So if you grab the top cluster and wiggle it about you can make the head lean and stretch like this.



Now turn the rotation attribute on the wire deformer down to 0. When you move the top cluster around now you get a shearing effect like this.



What I like to do is create an attribute on a control somewhere that is hooked up directly to the rotation attribute on the wire deformer. This gives the animator the option to 'bend' or 'shear' their head.

Now all you need to do is set up the volume bit. This can be setup fairly easily through set driven keys, although I tend to use nodes in my final rigs. All you need to do is set the scale of the middle cluster in X and Z (driven) according to the translation of the top cluster (driver).

Then you can get shapes like this driven by the position of the top cluster.



Hope this tutorial gives you some ideas. It's fairly simple, but presents a lot of control to the animator. Which is awesome :D

Thanks to Dave Beer and Tom Woodbridge, the two animators :D

So I'm now off to work! I've had an exciting summer, I needed time to gather my thoughts and unwind a little. Before I start work here's an update on a couple of things I've been working on during the summer.

'Hoverboy 2015' is a going to be a cartoony rig with a full facial setup and toolset for animation. I hope to have him completed before December.









I recently updated my DB_Biped Auto-rig MEL script, which I started developing for my innovations project at Bournemouth University. I have rewritten the tool and plan to keep developing it.



I'm using my Auto-rig for Hoverboy, and intend on automating the facial setup if I can. The face shapes displayed at the top are a setup I have made by hand to see how many shapes I might need.

The joint position tool has these features:-

*Joint positions can be mirrored, left to right, right to left
*Each part, the leg, the hand, the spine can be scaled individually and mirrored
*The whole layout can be scaled

The hands have these features:-

*Condensed finger controls for quickness of hand posing
*Quick finger pose controls, that can position each knuckle and stretch the finger
*Stick controls to make the finger tips stay on an object
*Stored poses such as fist, cup, splay
*Additive FK controls

The limbs have these features:-

*IK/FK switching
*FK scaling
*Adjustable volume preservation
*Bend controls in lower and upper limbs for cartoony distortion
*Elbow lock, allowing the elbow to be planted/positioned, with optional hand follow
*In arms, rotatable and translatable clavicle, for ease of posing
*In feet, full reverse foot

The spine has these features:-

*Adjustable volume shape on the fly, extremes of squash and stretch can be adjusted
*Waist, chest and hips controls, with control circles for shaping.

SO its been a while since my last post! Lots to mention! I have now completed my 3 year BA Degree at the NCCA in Bournemouth. My final piece wasn't complete storywise, so I haven't uploaded it. I'm hoping to pick it up some day, dust it off, and do it ten times better without any deadlines :D

I have a showreel though! For May 2008. And I'm hoping to get a new one done for September, when Im going into work.

Heres the reel.



Here's a link to my site

Yeah so a Character TD/Rigging profession is what Im looking for :D. I did a three week stint after term finished as a rigger for Blue Zoo which was awesome. I decided to have a breather before I start long term employment hopefully starting in September.

Last year I took part in a ten week internship at Framestore. Whilst there I was working on an animated feature called 'The Tale of Despereaux'. The other night I was lucky enough to see the trailer on the big screen before Wall E. Check it out.



Right now I'm working on a rig for animators to download and use. I'm also building some Mel script tools that my good friend David Beer tells me would be useful :D

So it's all go :D And the sun is shining (well most of the time).

So my modelling and rigging is complete and I started animation this week. I've got a walkcycle for my little boy character Jimi laid down, and now I'm doing key shots.

My pipeFace pipelining script has undergone some modifications, BUT I was pleased today when I compared file sizes. An animation file with pipeFace comes out at 179 kb, and when saved as a maya file it comes out as 5.6 mb. So thats quite a saving on space.

I want to do lots of look development soon to really pin down some visual elements. I also want to update my site....the ik finger tutorial has been waiting for months!!

My innovations project will hopefully consist of a biped rig building tool and a space switching tool.

And my masterclass will be a nice cartoony rig to put on my showreel.

Things are QUITE busy at uni so my posts might not come very often...but progress is being made :)

Okay well I've had a productive three weeks being back in Bournemouth. Got my website up, www.d-brooks.com. 'The Cirrus Project' is the working title for my major animation project.

Over the first two weeks we had some really good guest speakers, including Suzy Templeton, who created the stop motion 'Peter and the Wolf'. She showed us some of her student work, which was outstanding, and modestly explained she really didnt know how any of them would turn out.

We then had a guest lecture by Noah Taylor who works at George Lucas' ILM. He showed us some of his work on Pirates of the Carribean and gave a really useful lecture on pipelining.

With his speech fresh in my mind, I started to write my own pipeline system in mel script. I soon had a GUI with an animation importer/exporter going on. I can now load shots from the interface, with all of the props and characters with their various animations applied.

I'll put it up on my site when it's all polished.

For now I should really finish my storyboards and continue modelling parts of my scenes....

So here we are, like some little ants arriving at a giant boulder they have only seen on the horizon for years. 'It's large, flat and grey'. *answers in the post*

It's time to start our major projects. I'm drawing aplenty, thinking about cinematography, worrying about length, and refining the story. I've got to cut her down to the most minimal time possible, but retain all the bits I've been thinking about over the summertime.

Everyone in my house is really energised and working hard to secure their ideas fast. Such a great working environment. Encouraging too.

Today we had an animator Barry Purves give a guest lecture. Probably one of his most impressive pieces was Aardman's 'Next', a stop motion piece encompassing all of Shakespeare's plays in like 2 minutes. He was an energetic guy and had some good tidbits of advice at question time. Friday we're expecting a guy from ILM to talk a bit about his work on Pirates of the Carribean. Should be a packed house seeing as it's the start of term too.

I like our lecturer for programming this year, he explains things well, gave a good introduction to c++ today.

As my ideas for my project develop I'll do my best to post my progress.

So I'm back in London for a fortnight's stay. And it's fun being at Framestore.

I got word from one of my group members today that our second year project has caught the attention of some company (goodness knows how, it wasn't finished by any means). Apparently they want to buy it and re-edit it for their purposes. Now I'm not sure how that would work, but I'm fairly sure it belongs to the University, and therefore any revenue would go to them.

I was talking to one of my colleagues at Framestore the other day and he offered me some training material. Whilst discussing which ones I had seen already, he explained he had worked with Michael Comet AND Keith Lango.

If you don't know who these guys are, google em. Comet's now working for Pixar, he is the developer of the Comet muscle system, an industry standard tool. Keith Lango is an amazing animator and has done LOADS of cool things, aswell as making some sweet tutorials. I was blown away. The animation world is a small one.

On a final note I passed my resit fine. So here's to the third year :). Cheers!

Okay here's the guys I've had the pleasure of working with these past 8 weeks and why I'll miss them:-

Dave-ONE he throws a damn good barbeque. TWO he's the easiest guy to talk to. And his accent makes him so charming. THREE he actually lives animation and rigging. He doesn't realise it but he does. Thanks for everything Dave. You will go far.

Pete-My fellow coursemate and buddy. Sooo talented, and manages to just wave it by like it's nothing. V knowledgable too, mr bush-man! Always smiling and always up for fun :). See you soon man.

Thibaud-Has a deep and thoughtful way about him. Comes out with good one liners. And enjoys wine! You're a good laugh dude and I wish you all the best in the future.

Carlo-Ahh Carlo. One of the charming frenchmen!! Truly someone I smile upon seeing. You always make me laugh and we had some really good conversations. Definitely a friend to keep. And check out that laugh. Haha. Brilliant.

Yann-A true romantic! And amazingly talented. Both you and Carlo have nice things in store. Thanks for the breakfast chats man. You are a very reliable friend and very honest. All the best for you and Claire :).

Elliot-A funky guy, always smiling, always talkative, always part of the group. And a talented camera-man too. I'm so jealous of the shot of 'THAT FILM' that you got to work on. You are very hard working mister. I will see you when I come back up.

Martin-Always a parental figure in my mind. I loved the way you said 'stoopid'. And you have a good sense of humour. Thanks for the drinks and the coffee. You were always so direct and honest. That's great. I love no nonsense. Take care.

Mariano-Haha. Mariano. A lover of classic films. A brilliant animator. And so funny. I must have pooed myself fifteen times when you got your fake moustache out. Ahh. You were such a good friend. All the best.

Ross-Our mascot. I want to put you on my dashboard Ross. Damn you for making a dinosaur. Thats what I wanted to do!!! Hehe. But you did it so much better than I would have so hey :). So talkative, bit of a ladies man and youngest of the group. You have a lot of talent dude. Keep going buddy, you'll go far...

Ash-I think you are actually a genius. Some of the stuff you were dealing with was PHD stuff!!! SO well done. You were a very good friend during my stay, and thanks for introducing us to Icco! What would we have done without that pizza place. Died probably. Be good to see you again soon, and good luck for the future. You will do very well I'm sure.

AND ofcourse Amy-Our big sister of the group, taking us under your wing even when rollerblading in a tipsy state full of italian food. Hehe. You made the internship so much fun. We owe you a lot...

So yeah I'm packing now (2am) and Im catching the train home tomorrow. But alas it's not over. I've been asked to go back to work for an extra two weeks. So after this week I'll be back here laughing with you guys again (some of you!). It will be nice to see you again...

Thanks guys it's been awesome

I agree with Ali the exam did seem harder than the last one. I answered more questions, so hopefully that gives me the 5/6 marks difference that I was away from passing last time. Only time will tell.

The questions we were asked in those papers were in the semantics of the information we were given on paper. It was not a "learn these notes and you will achieve good marks" paper. It was more of a thinking on your toes exam and trying to rack your brain for information that was most relevant.

I'm hoping my Perl helped, because last time I didn't learn Perl thoroughly, where as this time it was the first thing I read through and learnt.

Good luck to everyone, I'm waiting too...

Five weeks down on my internship and it feels like only a few days have passed. Next week I have a resit of an exam on Operating Systems. In a funny kind of way it'll be nice to have a short excursion to uni and catch up with a load of people.

I went to look at one of my personal rigs the other day, and I instantly changed sixteen things. My approach to rigging is changing fast.

In the past few weeks I've:-

Visited the Tate Modern
Been to a Houmous Bar (A bar dedicated to houmous...amazing)
Seen a Banksy vs Warhol Exhibition
Seen Transformers, and regretted it
And I've eaten in a fascinating range of restaurants, including a shopping mall where I was convinced I could live there due it's availibility of food, shops and gym (for the showers).

So I have done quite a bit....it just feels like a week or so.

And I'll be moving to the Plaza Shopping Centre tomorrow.

This recent music video for the Chemical Brothers was made in the commercials dept during my first few weeks here at Framestore. The cool thing is Pete Claes, fellow intern and coursemate did the particles for it!

So today I cracked a nut I've been trying to crack for three days. Say you animate a guy's hand, and he picks up an apple. I want the apple to travel with the palm when I turn my thing on, and then get left where it is put when I turn it off.

If you use maya you'll probably say 'ah thats easy just use parent constraint and then turn it off'. But no. The object will always return back to it's origin that way.

So what my script allows is dynamic parenting. And it works if you keyframe the object (which was the tricky bit).

I read somewhere on the i/net that it's not possible. That makes it cooler. Hehe

First off I just want to say how shocking I found Pete's photos of the flooding in Oxford. I hope you're okay Pete and that your internship isn't majorly affected by the freak monsoons you are encountering.

I haven't been affected by the flooding, but I was was going home the other day when my folks rang to tell me there had been serious flooding and the tube had been affected. All the lines I travelled on were running fine.

Yesterday I was lucky enough to join for lunch Florent De La Taille, one of the creators of my favourite student animation of all time, Burning Safari. It was such a pleasure to meet him in person. He told me he never expected the piece to turn out as well as it did. To my mentor Florent was a casual acquaintance, which blew my mind. If you check out the makings-of through the above link, you can see Florent did all the cool rigging.

So I've been in London for a week now and I am having a ball. I'm working on a feature animation film called The Tale of Despereaux. It follows the tale of a brave little mouse caught up in a world of humans and rats.

I am always bugging my mentor for questions, which is great, because I learn lots. They keep me busy too. It's great to hear these pockets of ideas around me as the project develops, although lot of them are far too complex for my little mind.

My shell command knowledge is coming in real handy, although a lot of my learning is just understanding the pipeline and the way everything is organised. Everything is so well planned, it's beautiful.

Everyone works so hard! There is definitely a good working atmosphere here. I wouldn't say everyone is pressured, it's more that people really care about this project being good.



As for life in the big smoke, I'd say I've adjusted really quickly. I enjoy commuting to and from work (even if the tube is always full). People are very focused on where they're going, but I haven't been pushed or barged, so it's nice.

The guys on the scheme are cool too. A lot of them had an initial shock, but I think everyone is settling down now. The work they produce is amazing regardless.

I hope everyone is having a good summer, and I hope to see you all in person real soon.

Take care

It's odd coming back, nothing changes, I pick up where I left off with friends, catch up, laugh with them. They're all charming and chatty. I do miss the Borneo gang though. If only I could clump them all together somehow *schemes*.

Anyway, the buildings around here are breeding and having concrete babies everywhere. It's like lego town.

I haven't been out and about as much as I would have hoped. After an amazing stretch of sunshine whilst we were indoors revising, my return home heralds freak monsoons for 3 weeks. Hehe.

Being inside has forced me to be creative! Sketching and photoshopping. Pete would be very proud of me.

And now I have a week before I bimble up to London for my placement. Been keeping in touch with one of the animators who's on the same scheme, seems like a talented chap. There are quite a few animators on the internship, but I am the only character rigger! :S We'll see how that goes.

This placement feels oddly like an echo of the summer school I attended at Bournemouth Uni. It's as if every time I get near to the end of a learning experience, I'm ushered into a new one. This time its the crossing of University to real-life-application.

Lots to mention this evening!

After a week of solid revision broken up by three exams I'm happy to say I survived, along with the rest of the exhausted class. The first was, well, troubling. The second and third were better so hopefully I scraped a pass. Was so relieved on completion I ran straight up to the uni pub with Pete and downed a couple. Then a couple more for joy.

SO yeah term was over and I decided to pop up to Bristol to pay my gal a visit. Whilst there I found copies of 'The Art of Ray Harryhausen' signed by Ray himself! I was quite awestruck, and with a little persuasion from the girlfriend I checked my balance and bought a copy. I read the book as I travelled home on the train, animation-lore once held by Ray Harryhausen sitting in my hands.

I also got a placement sorted working for a visual effects company in London. I'm awaiting more details but have high hopes for the summertime now.

All in all it's been a crazy fortnight with a nice round off for the final term!

Looking forward to next year :)

So we got our specialist project done!



I really enjoyed collaborating with Ali. He worked super hard and produced some amazingly disgusting animation. I personally love the creepy teletext titles at the end there hehe. Handiwork of Al ofcourse.

I made the rigging for Herby, the skeleton that allows you to pose him. And I made his breasts and belly wobble (FUN).

The skin shading came out really nice too, which was great.

All in all a nice rounded project ALMOST killed by a renderfarm that had lost it's marbles :).

Ciao for now

And how