Rigging, Rigging, and more Rigging

I started to rig my Alien Invader model today for my short film. I had specific qualities that I wanted to be able to employ with my rigs. The ability of my characters, which are of a cartoony nature, to squash & stretch their arms and legs, and display other characteristics of a cartoon character. I stumbled across a really good tool from Digital Tutors, "Cartoon Character Rigging in Maya". 7 hours of tutorials of rigging a character for cartoony animated geared purposes.



So, I'm going through and learning how to better my rigs for my capabilities and needs. Its pretty neat. Stay tuned for more progress. Should have the 3 characters rigged by the end of this week. chicka chicka chicka :)

Here's video of me showing what I have so far in my Alien Invader rig. I basically have the whole skeleton laid out and I finished connecting the influences for the knees, and foot controls. Tomorrow the squash & stretch feature I have to add to it then move up to the spine to do work there. It's coming along well. Painting weights is going to be a little easier then I had previously factored in. :)