Technical Journal on Rigging (Week 2-3)

If you are interested in rigging in stylized Disney animation style, you might want to look up the Advanced Facial Rigging of Eyad Hussein posted last year.

In this post I will mention the stuffs that I learned and observed in his short explanations and previews.

Summer 2013 Review – Advanced Rigging - Eyad Hussein

The video doesn't explain a lot of the Rigging features, you still have to read through the link on top.

However, in my Rigging journey I just noticed one of the mistakes I've been doing previously.

The topology of Facial Hairs (Eyebrows, Eyelids), should match the topology of the skin it is sticking on.

Notice the topology of the Eyebrows fitting perfectly with the forehead.

I am still continuing my rigging improvement on the application of Judd Simantov's Tutorial on Rigging and applying it to my own model, Comfy. It will take a while to make it work.

Notice the topology of the Eyebrows still not fitting perfectly with the forehead.

The Research and Development on Facial Rigging will help us with what kind of rigging we can use for certain styles, the pros and cons of each kind of rigging, and therefore help us in future of what works most efficiently in our projects.

Why are we making Art?

From the moment I moved into Animation course, I thought there won't be much connection to fine arts Painting, and I believed so for one and a half years. The contextual studies of paintings I used to write and read has almost disappeared from my daily life.

In this class I rediscovered that there are still many elements in painting that are happening in films. (Even the most abstract, expressionist ones.)

(I use the word rediscover, because I knew these elements were there but I never thought they are significant in films as well, in a very similar way)

However, in Media Arts, especially in Lasalle Diploma Animation course, we are dealing with a lot more technical stuffs compared to the Degree course. In a way we have lost touch with concepts and contexts since the last semester started.

Because contextual studies is not so important in terms of getting a job. Building a demo-reel with good technicalities is our main goal at the diploma course.

However, Contextual studies is still important for an Artist.

We don't just create art randomly, we need to ask why we do it, has anyone done it?
How will the piece affect the viewers? How is it made?
Who will be the target audience? How would they react or respond?
What elements do we incorporate in our artworks?
Are they conveying the message we want to convey, effectively?

I think to be sensitive towards these questions will further improve our art
not necessarily in an aesthetic way, but in a contextual way.

In the video of Simon Sinek speech that was recommended for us to watch last week, he talked and proofed in a marketing point of view that:

 "People don't buy what you do; they buy why you do it."

In a correlation between Marketing and Media Arts, the target market is equivalent to target audience. People will only enjoy a film when they relate with the emotions, not with the objects. These emotions are conjured because of the why and how, not what. Previously when dealing with animation, we will be asked a lot of the question, "Why?". "Why is the character sad?", "Why is he tired?", "Why is the background very dark?", "Why are you designing the character to be short?", etc. because in the end, the audience won't be interested in characters playing tennis, they will be interested in why and how these characters play tennis.

We don't want our artwork to conjure unnecessary messages to the target audience, instead we want our message to be clear, non-ambiguous, yet subtle in our artwork. Which is where the semiotics take place. So in these two weeks, we have learned how these signs affect our subconsciousness while viewing an artwork or a movie and how a lot of the staging (Mise-en-scène) affect the deliverance of these messages.