Staffs Uni Animation department rig; iKON II

Here's something that is nearly ready for the students at Staffs Uni Animation Award to road-test.

I have updated the character that I made a couple of years ago for the students to play around with and make stings for the Awards. The iKON I rig (left) was inspired by box like paper toy figures / Minecraft, and was intentionally a low poly as I could get!

The new iKON II (right) that is now rigged and ready to go is inpired more my collectible vinyl figures like Qee's and Dunny's. The idea is to have everyone personalise their own copy with unique textures. It will also be 3D printed so we can cast up sets of them to be painted in the real world as well.

Stay tuned; I will post the results!

Follow this link to see the original version in action; 'BoxBot' - Adam scarisbrick & Ciaran Slavin

https://vimeo.com/142078152

Inspiration for the shape and texturing possibilities...

Qee collectible figures.

Mod Nation Racers

Base head mesh for student 3D Printing projects

One of the things that we want to support on the Animation Award is 3D printing; particularly for replacement puppet heads. It is a massive growth industry that will change the principles of consumerism in years to come, but right now it bridges the gap between CGI and traditional puppet making really well; making it relevant for Traditional Drawn, CGI and Stop Motion animators.

Replacement Puppet mouths from Aardman's 'Pirates; an Adventure with Scientists', create in CGI and printed.

              

Above is an excellent example of student work at Staffordshire University; by Andy Bell; Level 6 Stop Motion Animation & Puppet Making. All these mouths had to be hand made, which works for some people but not everyone.

The base head below should give one ore route to the pipeline options already available.

            

But it is a bit of a big ask to get Stop Motion students to get there heads around Maya in the time frame needed to make their puppets heads from scratch; as they tend to have the least interest in CGI; being more craft based by nature. 

So I have created a base mesh head with a replacement jaw ready to be adapted to their own character designs. Hopefully this year we can start to use this to speed up the development of replacement heads and mouths for student films. 

Fortunately our Engineering Department is well equipped with several different types of Rapid Prototyping machinery so getting them printed on site is straight forward. 

Mesh density is much higher in areas where the eyes and mouth will be modeled.

The bottom jaw can be secured using a small inlaid magnet with a steal plate inside the head.