FFDs FTW!
Model by Chad Stubblefield
Another request came in last year for the My Freaky Family movie this character is not from that movie. Animators are trying to hit all poses according to the storyboard. There's noticeable distortion to the face so away to the drawing board and we were able to implement a great little system
One of my greatest tools in my arsenal through out my career was the usage of Lattices or FFD cages if you are use to Max terminology.
FFD's are not only extremely versatile in many situations not just rigging, modelling and animating.
Animation Principle #1
So why is squash and stretch so import on a stylised cartoon character.
First of if you didn't know the first principle in the principle of animation was sqaush and stretch shame on you... jk :D Psychologically It can evoke certain emotional response. but is a tool the animator will use that in it subtlety is quite powerful. The shape can connotate certain feelings the animator is trying to express.
Back to the SS system, we first select the verts on the face of the base mesh of the character Create: the lattice. Next we add a curve with 3 points at the top, middle and bottom of the face.
Using a wire deformer we can create ideal shapes.
Now for the squash and stretch, we can use one non linear squash handle for the top of the face and one for the lower. Using the low and high bound we can restrict the behaviour. Ive used a remapValue to set the conditional when the squash and stretch needs to happen.
and Boom Squashy Stretchy!....
if you need a hand implementing this setup feel free to reach out. jason.dobra@gmail.com
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