The Character Kids Season 3

The Character Kids is a series of short webisodes for elementary to middle school-aged children, teaching how to be a good citizen. The challenge for these rigs was to keep them simple to animate while capable of many different poses. Because the AniMAGIC team is a learning studio, the rigs needed to be advanced but simple enough for a new team member to animate comfortably. If something breaks, or needs to be changed, the next rigger should be able to follow the logic of my style, meaning a clean and consistent node view is essential. Each season brought significant updates to the rigs. Season 2 was the team's introduction to complete turn-around rigs, while season 3 introduced a cleaner, more graphic style, so the character designs were updated and the rigs simplified even further. Because I graduated, I handed off the shoes, mouths, and hand design elements to the summer team to implement, which is why these elements are missing or unfinished in this rig walkthrough. My main focus for these season 3 rigs was design sensibility and ease of use. OGL controllers allow the animators to move quickly up and down the hierarchy and make useful pegs even faster to access.