Cowgirl Rig Annotated Node View

This rig is my first advanced Harmony rig and was created in December 2019 as part of a research and development project exploring the use of 2D rigs in animated 2D productions. This rotating rig is complete with a full 360 spin and head interpolation; auto-patch, cutter and line reveal systems; multi-layered eyes and mouth to allow for drawing substitutions; selection handles; master controllers and set up to run with the inbuilt pose copier script.

My character design is inspired by the animated TV series “Hilda”. Having a cemented character design allowed me to experience successfully adjusting a design to accommodate the rig without straying from the direction of an art department.

I used the multi-layered mouth technique in order to keep all parts of the mouth on a single drawing layer whilst still being able to control each part of the mouth individually. This also meant additional mouth poses, such as for lip sync, could be kept as separate drawing substitutions. To aid the animator when using these substitutions I also included the chin in my multi-layered mouth so the chin can automatically move in response to the stored mouth drawings rather than requiring the animator to move it each time.

To create the multi-layered mouth I duplicated and renamed the drawing node in the node-view and added new pegs to each piece. Each new drawing was renamed to stay organised and keep track of what part of the mouth it represents.

Usually I would then separate the individual parts of the mouth using sub-layers, however since there are more than four mouth parts in my multi-layered mouth I used colour selectors to isolate each part to its corresponding drawing. These drawings were then used to create the auto-patch/cutter system to mask the tongue and teeth into mouth/lips.

To successfully be able to replicate all of the mouth shapes seen for lip sync animation in “Hilda” I decided to build an auto-patch system on the teeth within my multi-layered mouth.

I also created multi-layered eyes using similar techniques. Here I designed a system where the eyelids were cut into eyes whilst simultaneously auto-patched to the face creating a similar effect to a line reveal system; a technique which I used on the front hair pieces.

When the rig has fully open eyes the eyelids are almost impossible to quickly select by the animator. I combated this problem by creating selection handles used to select the peg of the corresponding eyelid; I attached these handles to visibility nodes to prevent them from being visible in the rendered animation.