Ah thank you internet! I first saw this classic cartoon by Canadian animator Cordell Barker back when I was in college. It’s the kind of animation that shows the recent comments made by film critic Mick LaSalle to be total and utter tripe.
Health Advisory Notice: It’s been fifteen years since I saw this film and I had only just got the song out of my head last week. So don’t say I didn’t warn you.
If there’s one job that I hate to do as an animator it’s rigging a character. For any of you who don’t watch the extra features of Pixar DVDs, the rig is the skeleton of any 3d character and it’s what the animator uses to, well, animate the character. But before you get to that part, the fun part, you have to first build your character and then you have to attach him to a skeleton. This is the part that’s called rigging and to me is about as tedious as it gets. A 3d character is made up of hundreds of triangles (called polygons) and each point of these triangles is called a vertex and each of these vertices must be attached to the joints of the rig in such a way that if you move the index finger joint, the index finger of the model moves and only the index finger moves…not the right knee or the big toe. And if you think reading that last sentence was boring just think what it’s like to actually do it!
This process can take days (or weeks if it’s me), and in large games and animation studios there are technical artists whose job it is to do only this. They are usually the nervous, twitchy ones sitting in a corner mumbling to themselves. It means that the animators are handed ready-rigged characters and we can just get on with the animating. So that’s great for the studio stuff but, if you want to do your own animation, maybe for that short film you’ve been secretly wanting to make with dreams of film festivals and Oscar nominations, you’re probably going to have to attempt the rigging yourself, at least if you want to have your own original characters.
Well, I was perusing Keith Lango’s blog and hallelujah but some clever people have come up with a programme that does your rigging for you and they only want $99 for their brilliance.
The Setup Machine is going on my Wish List for this Christmas and if Santa doesn’t get it for me I’m just going to have to get it for myself because this is the one thing that’s been holding me back from making my own film…well, that and the small matter of not being able to come up with a good, simple, witty idea…anyone want to come up with a programme for that?