Izzy Wood, Chesterfield

Building a good rig is one thing, but if it’s not correctly locked down it can easily be broken

Antony Ward replies

Having the ability to construct complex systems that allow an animator to easily and intuitively bring a character to life is a true skill, and one which takes time to learn and master.

It’s not just a case of adding IK and FK to a creature’s limbs or producing a few blend shapes so they can emote. Rigging goes deeper than this, but the truth is all anyone will ever see are a series of colourful curves overlaid on top of a model. All the time spent developing systems, building node structures and tweaking skin weights is hidden away, and so it should be. At the end of the day, it’s our role as technical artists to create a rig which on the surface looks so easy to pick up and pose that a child could do it, while underneath the simplistic shapes actually lies a far more complex web of joints, ribbons and constraints.