To learn how to rig a character I started by using a cylinder and adding a skeleton inside so that when I move the bottom of the skeleton up and down it will bend the cylinder itself. I then tried to do the same thing to a character that was given to us. So instead of just adding a single leg I added a whole body. Through doing this though I found that it is very very easy to mess up the skeleton and ruin the entire model. This was something I learnt pretty fast. After experimenting with trying to add a skeleton to a model I then moved onto a model that had already had a skeleton placed in it. This is when I was able to animation with a character. It so happened that that character was the hulk. I went nearly frame to frame changing the position in a run for that kind of character. Then the software filled in the gaps by moving from one position to the next.
I found it was really exciting to know the entire process from drawing a design of your own character to then model the character to then learn how to rig it and animate it. When I get the chance to animate my cat model I'll really appreciate learning the entire process.
Animating Hulk from Merry Eady on Vimeo.
