When you have a process that you repeat over and over, the inefficiencies are eliminated very quickly. Shots like the one pictured here just “come together.”

Planning/Reference

THE BEST WORKFLOWS START with a strong foundation. This means thoroughly planning out your scene. There are a lot of planning methods but the most common and beneficial planning tools are definitely thumbnails and reference video.

With thumbnails, it's important to your workflow that the drawings are very strong. Focus primarily on the body positioning and pose, and less on the staging and camera. You want these drawings to be your guide through the entire shot, so getting too caught up in the staging and direction of the shot at the thumbnail stage will get in the way.

Reference video is easy to gather on YouTube. Spend some good time finding as many related clips as you can. The more the merrier. You should also be creating your own reference footage. For this shot, the animation needed to be very cartoony. I've found the best way to make a reference video for really cartoony actions is to “puppet” your hands around and create a “sound effects track” by making noises with your voice. It may seem a little silly to be yelling and screeching at your desk, walking your fingers around like legs, but when you see how closely the animation was timed to my reference video I think you'll see the benefits outweigh the embarrassment.

We're going to go through a few cheats that are great for making sure your drawings and reference video are at your fingertips. We're then going to import your reference video as well and keep it handy.

1 Open 01 - Cartoony_Start.ma. This scene has been laid out with the character and set, and is ready for our awesome planning to be imported in a way that will keep it at our fingertips.

2 You can simply view a file. Go to File > View Image. Select Thumbs.tif. Maya opens the image with FCHECK by default. The only advantage of using this method is Maya remembers the file path in case you close it accidentally. Instead let's make sure that isn't an issue.

3 Go to Create > Cameras > Camera. Name your new camera “ThumbCam.” In any panel go to Panels > Look Through Selected. In the panel go to View > Image Plane > Import Image. Select Thumbs.tif. Very nice. The image is now loaded into this Maya camera.

4 Let's save this view for later. Go to Panels > Panel Editor… Go to the New Panel tab, select Model Panel in the list and hit Make New Panel. In the Panel Editor go back to the Panels tab, select the new panel you just made (at the bottom of the list), name it thumbPanel, and press .

5 Maya may change your panel back to camera1. Go to Panels > Panel > thumbPanel. In the Panel menu go to Show > None, then Show > Cameras. Lastly turn off the grid by hitting the Grid button at the top of the panel.

6 Now go to Panels > Tear off… . The panel now floats and you can move, minimize, and maximize it. This is a great way to work with your thumbnails right at your fingertips.

01 - Cartoony_Start.ma

If you ever accidentally close this panel, get it back by going into any panel, switching to the thumbPanel you created, and tearing off the panel for easy use. Your thumbs are never far away…

ONE OF THE BIGGEST CHEATS of all involves timing your scene. In the old days, animators would use stopwatches to time their animation. By repeating an action over and over in their head and timing it with the stopwatch, they could write down the specific frame numbers and always have this timing reference close by. I find it alarming that now that we've moved into the digital age, this cheat hasn't been updated as well! We are going to use a piece of video reference created specifically to give us really high-energy timing to our scene.

Maya 2013 imports all kinds of movie files now, making video reference accessible and valuable deep into the production of your shot. With multiple codecs and formats supported, you will always have your video reference at your fingertips.

The movie file we're going to load was created to give a very specific sense of timing that could not be acted out. Hence the reason why I use my hands and sound effects (whistles and screams) to get a feel for the energy. “Acting out” your scenes like this, especially when they are cartoony-styled shots, is an invaluable piece of reference. Don't be shy, the more energy you put into this “timing reference,” the better the shot will turn out!

1 Open 02 - Cartoony_Timing_Start.ma. Here is our scene with the thumbnails loaded that we created in the last cheat. In order to nail the timing and energy, let's load the reference video.

2 Create a new camera, name it refVideoCam, and look through this new camera. In the panel select View > Image Plane > Import Movie. Select shot_Ref.mov in this chapter's scenes directory.

3 Open the Trax Editor by going to Windows > Animation Editors > Trax Editor. We want to see the footage in a camera, but also the audio in the Trax Editor for timing. In the Trax Editor go to File > Import Audio, and choose shot_ref.wav.

4 Slide the audio to the right in the Trax Editor so that it starts on frame 1. Retrace the steps in the previous cheat to create a new model panel so that you can always get back to the refVideoCam in case you close it.

5 Look how awesome we are set up if we open the thumbCam and the refVideoCam alongside our Perspective and Camera panels! Ready to Block and Roll!

02 - Cartoony_Timing_Start.ma

If you go into the Panels > Saved Layouts > Edit Layouts you can save this panel layout as well, and get even more time-saving customization in Maya.

FCheck Trick

WE ARE ALWAYS LOOKING FOR ways to cheat our timing. Any visual cues we can give ourselves to help the timing should be employed whenever we can use them. We've already checked out how the timing can be helped by using an audio file. Let's see what we can get out of a little trick using FCheck.

If you aren't aware, FCheck is the tool that ships with Maya for playing back.iff streams (or any supported file format). Commonly, you watch your playblasts in FCheck if you haven't changed the output file format.

One little-known thing about FCheck is that you can draw on any frame using the right mouse button. And, if you hit play, it will actually ‘capture’ your mouse gesture for some visual cues. We'll use this to get even more helpful reference for the energy of this scene.

1 Create a new scene in Maya. It's best to start with a blank scene with this trick so there's nothing distracting you. Make the frame length 200.

2 Add our sound file to the scene by going to the Trax Editor, and then click File > Import Audio… Don't forget to slide the audio to start on frame 1.

3 Let's create a playblast. Copy my settings here. Now, the output settings will depend on your computer specs: if you see the playback is choppy, reduce the image size and try again.

4 When it is done, the playblast will load up in Fcheck. The sound will play too, and this is what we want. Let it play through once so that the files all load into RAM. It will change from displaying dsk to displaying mem at the top when this is done.

5 Now, take a deep breath and feel the energy of the audio. When you are ready, click play. Click anywhere in the FCheck window with your RMB and drag it around. Use gestures of your hand to “sketch” the energy.

6 When the sound file is done playing, let go of the RMB and watch your gestures play back on screen. What a great visual guide for analyzing the rises and falls of the energy of the scene.

You can save this playblast with your gestures on it by going to File > Save Animation. Save it to a new folder and then load it into your Maya scene on a new camera for even MORE visual reference right at your fingertips!

Stepped Keys

WE KNOW FROM THE GRAPH EDITOR CHAPTER that stepped keys give us instantaneous transitions between values. When you key all of the body's controls in stepped mode, you could say that the resulting key frames are almost like “images” that you can retime at will to give yourself the best result.

Workflow-wise, blocking is the most efficient stage to be doing this retiming. Maya 2013 has awesome tools for retiming keys. We'll practice this by using both the brand new Retime Tool in the Graph Editor, as well as the Dope Sheet.

With the Retime Tool, our goal is to retime whole sections so that they line up with the energy of the beats much better. This is achieved easily because the retime tool is intuitive and rock solid.

With the Dope Sheet, a very underutilized tool in Maya, we get a top-level view of the distribution of the keys in our scene. It's very important to make sure you are hitting your beats exactly at the blocking stage. We'll use the Dope Sheet to make sure the impacts of the feet are right on the same frames as the sound, and the impact of the body on the ground also matches the audio we've recorded.

Many novices think that the best animators create perfect timing on their first try. Quite the contrary! The best animators are normally really good at quickly RETIMING and adjusting their animation. If you can go through a dozen iterations in the time it takes another animator to do just one version, you will be far ahead of the pack. Some might say it looks like you're cheating…

1 Open up 03 – Cartoony_blocking_start.ma. This is our stepped-key blocking. Hit play and see how, although the key poses are all there, the timing is off. Now select all of Groggy's controls and see how tidy stepped keys look in the Graph Editor.

2 The section of Groggy running and falling is timed too quickly. The Retime Tool is perfect for retiming sections of keys and preserving the rest. Select the Retime Tool and Double click on frame 56 in the Graph Editor.

3 We need to choose a moment that is easy to pick out from the audio file. The moment of impact when he falls is a good choice. It is currently happening on frame 70. Let's create another retime handle there by double clicking on frame 70.

4 Now let's find the moment of impact in the audio. It seems to be somewhere around frame 80. Drag the middle of the right retime handle to the right until it's sitting above frame 80.

5 It's a good idea to snap your keys to frames, so let's do that. Go Edit > Snap. Play the animation and see how much better the timing is working now.

6 The retime handles are preserved. To delete them, click on the little “x” at the bottom of the handle. You will want to put your handles on integer frame values if you do more retiming from here on out.

03 - cartoony_Blocking_Start.ma
03 - cartoony_Blocking_Finish.ma

If you right click on a retime handle, you can insert a key on all channels of the selected objects. This is a great, quick way to create a hold.

1 Now let's switch to the Dope Sheet. The Dope Sheet is the highest-level view of the keys in your scene that we have in Maya. While it can be cumbersome once you get too far into the progress of your shot, the Dope Sheet offers some very quick keyframe editing capabilities. Specifically, the ability to slide around all of the keys on a frame by selecting only a single block in the Dopesheet Summary row is a great way to cheat having to select multiple keys in the Graph Editor, or even more time consuming, shift click a range of keys in the timeline. Another little cheat is that moving the keys around in the Dope Sheet snaps the keys to integer frames.

2 Let's unclutter our workspace. Deselect everything and in the Dope Sheet uncheck View > Dope Sheet Summary, and check View > Scene Summary. Now we see all of the keys in the scene.

3 Let's use this top-level view to improve our timing. Select the keys on frames 46, 48, and 50, and hit to switch to the move tool. These keys are a touch late: move them a frame to the left by dragging with the MMB.

4 The third hit in the audio is happening on frame 64, but our keyframe is only on frame 65. Select it and move it one frame to the left.

5 The last moment is the big splat on the ground. Let's fix the timing there too. Select all the keys from frames 71 to 81 and move them a frame to the left. Play it back and see how these small changes make all the difference.

03 - cartoony_Blocking_Start.ma
03 - cartoony_Blocking_Finish.ma

If you notice in the top right corner of the Dope Sheet, there are buttons for the Graph Editor and the Track Editor. Maya makes it easy to switch between these common editors. Using these quick buttons will save lots of time!

Checking Silhouette

AS WE MOVE THROUGH BLOCKING, it's imperative we are also sticking close to our workflow. Deviations at this stage can mean we get so off track that we can struggle to regain control of our scene. Indeed, as the scene gets more and more complex, it will be our workflow that keeps things manageable. In blocking, what tends to happen is that, as we add breakdowns, the silhouettes get muddy. Posing tends to sacrifice itself to timing as a scene comes together.

It's a great idea to continuously check your silhouette as you work. Everyone knows the good old “seven” trick (we'll go over that one too just in case), but this cheat gives you an even better way to check silhouette. Using render layers, we can set up a silhouette check that still allows you to add lights to your scene (which negates the “seven” trick), and also allows you to compare the silhouette with and without the environment geometry.

Keep a constant eye on silhouette through the blocking phase and your poses will not go astray.

1 Open up 04 – cartoony_Silhouette_start.ma. Make sure you're on frame 1, and that you are looking through camera1. In the camera1 panel go to the Show menu and turn off everything but polygons.

2 Turn off the visibility of the set_GEO_layer in the display layers. Hit the key on your keyboard and the panel turns to Lit mode. With no lights in the scene, you get a good look at the silhouette.

3 This is nice and all, but it doesn't always work. I had to change the textures (turn off incandescence) for this to work in this scene. And it doesn't work if there's lights! Click Create > Lights > Directional Light. Oops. No worky.

4 No big deal. Let's make a render layer for checking silhouette. Select all of Groggy's geoemetry and over in the channel editor switch to the Render tab. Then click the New Layer from Selected button.

5 Rename the new layer “silhouette” and press . Right click on the silhouette layer and choose Overrides > Create New Material Override > Surface Shader.

6 Now check out your new silhouette checker. Even if you hit (flat lighting shaded mode), you still get a silhouette. Add as many lights as you want, change the textures at will! Click back and forth from masterLayer and the silhouette layer and see!

04 - cartoony_Silhouette_start.ma
04 - cartoony_Silhouette_finish.ma

You can even unhide the set_GEO_layer and it won't show up in your silhouette checker. You always have to manually add objects and groups to render layers in Maya. You can change the sets, characters, lights… everything, and this layer will remain the same.

Moving Holds When Splining

THE SPLINING STAGE IS SO TERRIFYING: it's very hard to know what you are going to get! When you are done adding essential breakdowns in stepped mode, most animators hold their breath, close their eyes, and click Spline in the Graph Editor, only to fret when the resulting mush doesn't carry any of the old appeal of the stepped version. Transitions seem slow and floaty, the character cruises “through” poses without any of the snap that you imagined in stepped, and overall it seems that all of your amazing timing choices have all changed.

This is fine and normal, but it won't do for production. Pros know that when you are going through your workflow, you can't have a step that basically leaves the success of your shot up to chance! And one of the most striking differences between stepped animation and keys that have been freshly splined is the absence of any moving holds.

In the last edition of How To Cheat in Maya we showed you how to do copied pairs. This cheat is an expansion on that thought; we'll start with a copied pair but this time in stepped mode. Then we'll use a fancy cheat I've devised to give just the right amount of movement on a character in a moving hold. It's the best kind of cheat – one that you can and should use over and over in your workflow, but more importantly one that takes all the guesswork out of a scary stage in your shot!

1 Open 05 - cartoony_Moving_Holds_start.ma. This scene has only the two poses that represent the beginning of the animation. Select all of Groggy's controls and in the Graph Editor you'll see the keys are in stepped mode.

2 Now let's take a close look in the Graph Editor at what happens when we spline the animation. Press ++RMB and drag upwards to zoom in vertically a bit in the Graph Editor. With all the controls still selected, hit the AutoTangent button and see what happens to your curves. This is expected. Maya thinks you want to ease each of these keys, so it chose flat tangents for you.

3 Click Stepped again to get us back to stepped keys. We'll now build the pose that gives us a good moving hold.

4 Let's build a relaxed pose. With this cheat, we try to imagine the character after he's been holding the pose for ten minutes. To do this, imagine the big muscles like his legs and shoulders relaxing the most, and the smaller muscles like the neck and fingers relaxing least. You'll see why in a second.

05 - cartoony_Moving_Holds_start.ma
05 - cartoony_Moving_Holds_finish.ma

Remember from Chapter 2 that clamped tangents give us flat tangents when there's not much change in value, and spline when there is a big change in value. We can use this knowledge to predict the results of going from stepped to spline.

5 On frame 20, rotate his pelvis a little bit forward, but straighten his legs a tad by moving his pelvis upwards slightly in Y. Rotate the rest of his spine to straighten him up a bit too. Adjust the arms to be back in their resting positions.

6 Switch to the Graph Editor and with all of the controls selected hit . Make sure a key is placed on all of the curves.

7 Now hit the AutoTangent button and look at the result. All of the tangents are flat. Maya thinks we need an ease in and out of all of the keys right now. But we don't want Groggy to start from a dead halt on frame 1.

8 Let's try clamped instead. Clamped will give us much more predictable results when creating moving holds WITHIN stepped mode. I recommend you convert from stepped to clamped as part of your workflow.

9 Now we're going to use a little cheat to adjust the amount of movement that is happening in our moving hold. Switch to the panel configuration of Persp/Graph as above and play the animation. He's moving too much!

10To reduce the amount of movement, we're going to use a tried-and-true cheat, of middle mouse copying the keys on the timeline. MMB click on the timeline on frame 10, and drag your mouse to frame 20. Release your mouse and press .

If you go halfway between two keys, you get roughly 50% change, but for more fine-tuned adjustment, you can copy a key only a frame or two before your last frame and get a 5% adjustment. It's common to do a 50% copy and then a couple smaller copies to get a finely tuned result.

11 What just happened? Since we went about halfway between our two splined keys, when we paste the keys on frame 20 we get roughly 50% of the movement we had before.

12 If it seems like there's still too much movement, then repeat the last step. Let's add a breakdown in between the end of the moving hold and the final pose. On frame 23, rotate his spine forward a bit as well has his head.

13 Don't forget the arms. On frame 23 check that his right arm is staying generally still by rotating the shoulder and elbow. Flip back and forth between the three keys (20, 23, and 26) using the comma (,), and period keys.

14 Now we create another hold until frame 36. Create a slightly relaxed pose on frame 36 the same way we did before. Middle Mouse Copy over and over until you've watered down the pose change enough that it's barely visible. Now the first part of this animation is almost done.

Converting your stepped keys to clamped when splining gives the most predictable results if you create your holds using this method. But change your default tangent to AutoTangent after converting everything to clamped to get the most help from Maya as you move on.

Moving Holds w/Retime Tool

THE BRAND NEW RETIME TOOL OFFERS a brand new paradigm for manipulating and creating keys in the Graph Editor. We can make broad adjustments to timing, or in this case repeat the copy-paste method of moving hold creation in a snap.

Most professionals know that the best way to cheat in Maya is to find quick, effective methods of doing tasks that you must do repeatedly throughout the workday. And while Maya offers very powerful scripting capabilities, rarely will a script come in handy when it comes to something like a moving hold.

Instead we must use all of the new tools Maya has to offer to refine and perfect our workflow. In the end, your workflow should take full advantage of the aggregate improvements added to Maya every new version. To ignore these awesome new tools is to ignore cheats that could save your shot!

1 Open 06 – cartoony_retime_Holds_start.ma. This is the same scene as before, only this time we're going to use the Retime Tool to create the moving holds. Open the Graph Editor and familiarize yourself with the keys again.

2 In the Graph Editor, click on the Retime Tool in the upper left, and double click on frame 1 and frame 10. This creates retime handles on those keys. Now right click on the retime handle on frame 10 and choose Insert Key. Now we have a key that represents our 50% point in the animation again.

3 Double click on frame 20 to add a retime handle there too. Now drag the retime handle from frame 10 to frame 20. The retime handle we just created will shift over to near frame 21.

4 Hit to switch to the select tool. Select the keys on frame 21 and hit . Go Edit > Snap to make sure your newly retimed moving hold is firmly on an integer frame. Moving hold, done!

06 - cartoony_retime_Holds_start.ma
06 - cartoony_retime_Holds_finish.ma

Remember Retime Handles are not saved into a scene. You need to make your timing adjustments before you close your file or you will lose the handles you've created.

Refining Arcs in Polish

BY THE TIME YOU HAVE WORKED THROUGH your entire workflow and have made it to the polish phase, you are most likely dealing with an amount of keyframes that is unwieldy, to put it lightly. To make even the slightest adjustments can take hours of deleting, redoing, tweaking, and frustration.

Arcs are such an important fundamental that we need to make sure at this point in our workflow that we double-check our arcs look great. However, like I mentioned before, finalizing your arcs in the polish phase means navigating a rat's nest of curves in the Graph Editor.

Fortunately for us, the Editable Motion Trail tool is good not just for creating and defining motion, but also for keeping arcs manageable in this time of super-dense keys. We took a look at how to use Editable Motion Trails in Chapter 1 and Chapter 4 so you should be pretty familiar with creating them by now. But unlike in those chapters in which we created smooth motion, we will now be using them to finalize arcs among very dense keys. Maya 2013's Editable Motion Trails are rock solid and very stable now.

1 Open 07 - cartoony_Arcs_start.ma. This scene is at the end of “blocking plus” and is ready for polish in the arcs. Play a few times through and see if you can pick out the problems.

2 We're going to focus on the chest in the frame range 90–102. In these twelve frames, there is a lot of popping and movement. Select his chest control and in the Animation menu set (F2) go to Animate > Create Editable Motion Trail.

3 By default our trail shows no tangents nor influences on the keys; we'll show those later when it's time to refine. Select one of the keys in the panel and move it to test it.

4 Things are easier to follow if you can see all of the frame markers and not just frames with keys on them. Turn them on by checking Show Frame Marker Frames in the attribute panel with the motion trail selected.

07 - cartoony_Arcs_start.ma
07 - cartoony_Arcs_finish.ma

Remember that an Editable Motion Trail is most useful on controllers that have translation keys on them. You get much less predictable results if you add a motion trail to a controller that is in an FK Chain.

5 Move the key that is labeled “95” down to bring it into more of an arc shape. You'll notice the Editable Motion Trail stays kind of ragged no matter how you move this key. Time to play with the tangents.

6 In the attribute editor check Show In Tangent and Show Out Tangent. This enables influence editing in panel on the entire Motion Trail, not just the selected key.

7 Click again on the key labeled “95”. The tangents will be selected and you can middle mouse drag them around in the panel and see their influence. Adjust the keyframe's position and tangents’ influence until the arc looks smoother.

8 Now do the same adjustment to the position and the tangents on the other frames between frame 90 and 102. Don't stop until you have a nice clean arc in this chest movement.

Our final check of any arc is looking through the main camera. An arc may look great in perspective but until you see what it looks like to camera, you are not finished finessing.

Final Texture

THE VERY LAST THING YOU SHOULD HAVE in your workflow is adding final details like little bits of texture to your scene. This is called non-performance texture: these little details aren't contributing to the performance choices you've made. Instead they are making the scene feel full of detail and real.

With Maya 2013's animation layers, adding texture to your polished scene means that you can non-destructively experiment with ideas. It is crucial that you understand the importance of workflow at this point; animation layers need to be planned for very carefully. If, halfway through working on your shot, you suddenly decide to do some of the animation on a layer, chances are you will get horribly off track. Instead, you must either plan on your animation being done in layers (a walk cycle on the legs on one layer, for example, and adding torso movement on a new layer), or you must wait to add very fine details at the end.

By adhering to our strict workflow, we are safeguarding our scene against unforeseen problems later on. Animation layers give us an immense amount of control over the polished scene, without any destructive effects on the keys we already have.

1 Open 08 - cartoony_Texture_start.ma. We are going to add a little breath at the beginning of the scene. Turn off all the selection masks except curves and then drag a selection box around Groggy. You will select all of his controls.

2 In the Channel Box or Layer Editor, click on the Create Layer From Selected button, and rename the new layer “Breath”.

3 Click on the Breath animation layer to make it the active layer. Nothing you do now will affect keys on the BaseAnimation layer. Select all of Groggy's controls. On frame 1 hit to set a key for the beginning of the breath.

4 Set another key on frame 30.

5 On frame 15, create a pose with Groggy's spine bent backwards slightly, like he's taking a breath. Don't forget to adjust his arms back into position. Include the pelvis, belly, chest, and head controls when you are making this pose.

6 Now you have a breath in the animation. You can adjust the amount that this animation is added to the BaseAnimation layer by adjusting the weight value in the Layer Editor. You may even want to offset the keys of the spine to have the pelvis move first and the head last.

08 - cartoony_Texture_start.ma

08 - cartoony_Texture_finish.ma

You want to create all of your textural “moments” on different animation layers, just in case you want to adjust the weight of each separately.

Spotlight - Özgür Aydodu

OZGUR AYDOGDU IS A 3D GENERALIST at 1000 VOLT Post Production, Istanbul, where he has worked on a variety of commercials for Coca Cola, Vodafone, Turkish Airlines, Danone and feature films The Ottoman Cowboys and The Breath.

TELL US A LITTLE ABOUT YOUR CENK RIG. WHERE DID YOUR INSPIRATION COME FROM?

As you could imagine, the daily work in a studio might easily fall into a routine, especially when the works are mostly commercials. At this point, I believe in the importance of personal projects as a tool to try different things and develop yourself. I was looking for a challenging task to improve my rigging and character animation skills; where I would carry out each step by myself, starting from design, model, texture to rig and animation. I was already sketching some characters; and what I had in my mind for my project was kind of a fat character instead of a stereotypical cute one. I imagined him as a goofy character who would get into a series of funny situations due to his physical appearance. My aim was to try some new techniques and I experienced a lot more than I imagined throughout the project.

WE SEE ON YOUR INTRO VIDEO FOR CENK THAT YOU INITIALLY SKETCHED HIM OUT BEFORE PROCEEDING WITH THE MODELING AND RIGGING. DO YOU FEEL THIS IS IMPORTANT FOR CREATING ANY GOOD RIG?

I think it's an essential step, not only for creating a good rig but also for modeling and animation as well. It provides a quick end vision in your mind before you actually sit in front of the computer. It helps you better explore the character, its volume and expressions so that you can easily see the limits of the design or any other pitfalls beforehand. So, you start playing with the character to see how much you can push the design. But, apart from all these benefits I should admit that I enjoy sketching itself. I also enjoy looking at other people's drawings. Most of the time, I like the character exploration sketches in the Art of books more than the final 3D versions of the characters on the film.

DID YOU GO TO SCHOOL TO RECEIVE YOUR ANIMATION AND RIGGING EDUCATION, OR DID YOU TEACH YOURSELF THOSE ASPECTS OF THE PIPELINE?

I received my bachelors degree in computer science and did not receive an animation or rigging education. However, I was growing up in a family where I was very much exposed to various art disciplines – mostly due to my father's being a painter – since my childhood. I always had an interest in drawing and technology as long as I can remember. When I was a child, I used to fill my school notebooks with drawings and flip book animations like many other animators. Later, I started to try basic scripts with my first computer, a Commodore 64. Then I met 3D with early versions of 3D Studio on PC and started modeling any stuff that I see around. Throughout my university years, I pursued my interest in 3D modeling via various freelance projects. Upon graduation, I started to work in a company developing simulation software. But soon I understood that the work was not really for me and started to work on some personal projects mostly on modeling and rigging, at home. With one of these projects I applied to a post production company and since then I have been working as a 3D generalist where I mostly do character rigging and animation.

But, apart from these, I am kind of obsessed to find solutions when I come across something which I do not have much clue about. That's why I read, watch and search a lot. Whenever I see a fascinating piece of character animation, I dig into it and watch over and over again to understand timing, acting and the deformations of the character. And I enjoy trying new things that would be challenging for me. Maybe these contributed to me developing my animation and rigging skills and teaching myself throughout the pipeline.

WHAT ARE THREE QUALITIES YOU FEEL ARE NECESSARY FOR A GOOD CHARACTER ANIMATION RIG?

The first thing that comes to my mind is stability. The rig must be robust enough in terms of its technical structure. The IF/FK and dynamic calculations, transferring animation keys, caches, reference updates, new features, and component additions during the production should all work properly and as expected so that the animators could focus on their animation without having to deal with technical problems which they are not responsible for. A robust rig would maximize the efficiency.

Flexibility is another important quality. The rig should be flexible enough so that the animators would work freely and reach poses that they have in their mind easily. Even, the flexibility of the rig might give them an opportunity to try a different pose that they did not imagine at first. By this way, the animators would not be limited to the rig but the rig itself would push the animator. For instance, the flat and soulless look of CG characters due to their symmetric structure seems to be a problem for me so I tend to solve it by adding secondary deformation points on the face which let animators make finer tweaks on the pose and get more natural expressions. Besides, the ability to squash and stretch adds a lot. There would always be some other things to try.

To me simplicity is another important aspect of a good rig. It should not take a lot of time for an animator to achieve a nice pose after digging into numerous controllers. In fact, putting too many controllers may sometimes freak the animators out, and it can even become cumbersome to animate. The rigger should take the story and concept drawings into account and should not define controllers more than needed. I also prefer making my controllers visually appealing and colorful, which make them shout like “come play with me!”

AS AN ANIMATOR, YOU ARE ALWAYS THINKING OF THE MOTION YOU WILL GET OUT OF A RIG. HOW DID YOU DECIDE ON THE CONTROLS YOU PUT INTO CENK REGARDING ANIMATION YOU WANTED TO DO WITH HIM?

As he does not have a body, he had to give out his mood and feelings via using his head only. I was looking for a way to be able to easily define line of action on the head, that's where the IK controls come in. The free deformations like he has in the eyes and nose also adds to the candid expressions I guess. The shape of his head when he bounces was also important as he would move from somewhere to another by bouncing up and down, so I thought to keep this motion as realistic as it can be. Since the character has a very round design, I added the ground collision feature, making his bottom flat and bulge when he sits on the ground, which makes the audience feel his weight.

DID YOU ALWAYS PLAN ON MAKING HIM A FLOATING HEAD, OR WAS HE ORIGINALLY A FULL BIPED?

To tell the truth, I thought him a fully biped at the beginning. However, it seemed to me that it would take a lot of time for me to incorporate the level of details I imagined into the full body. So, at some point, the project kind of stopped for me. Then while I was watching Miyazaki's Spirited Away for the hundredth time, when I bumped into the three floating heads in the Yu-Baaba's room, I thought why can he not be a floating head at all? I would still be able to tell a short with a head and it might even be more interesting to watch. But I made some changes in the design, for instance he did not have a helmet when he was a full body but the sketches which I made with the head looked too neat for my taste so I added the helmet to corrupt the symmetry and tried to make the design more appealing.

I imagined a series of funny events that he would experience thanks to his physical shape. Like, he was trying to get rid of a fly on his head, but he cannot as he does not have hands. He bounces up down, gets eager and angry, his head falls down and the fly seems to be getting all the pleasure that it can out of this; or I imagined him while listening to an iPod, then one of the earphones falls out and he tries all his best to put it again into his ear. And he cannot actually. I'm looking forward to see him in these hilarious situations.

ANY ADVICE FOR COMPLETING A PERSONAL PROJECT OF THIS SIZE AND QUALITY?

For rigs, the quality of the result is directly proportional to how well you organize the project from start to end. I can recommend the philosophy of “divide and conquer” as a technique for handling a large, complex problem by breaking down it into smaller, solvable problems which in fact can be applied to any other issue in real life. In my case I layered all of the deformations, which helped me focus on each feature individually. I had my rig hierarchy and layers clearly sketched on a sheet of paper all the time, because the deeper you go into the details (which in fact make the difference) the more likely you get out of line and lose control on the project. This might also happen if you are too much focused on the project for long days. I find keeping my mind always busy with the project in daily course (in the bed, on the subway, etc.) useful but sometimes you would need to move away from the project for a couple of days to refresh your mind. This would help to see things differently and you might even spot a problem in a second which did not take your attention before. Eventually it's really a challenge to balance things as you don't actually have a deadline in personal projects. I tried to overcome this by setting deadlines to myself and trying hard not to be too self-critical.

Last but not the least, is that you should really enjoy what you are doing. It takes a lot of work and real passion to achieve in this field. The pace of development and change is incredible and new things to learn always fly around. One should be eager and passionate enough to keep up to date and then be able to make a difference. This could only happen if you really love it I guess.

HOW DID YOU DECIDE ON WHAT FEATURES TO PUT INTO CENK'S FINAL DESIGN? DID YOU LEAVE ANYTHING OUT?

Although Cenk has been taking attention mostly due to its rigging features, I always had the idea of animating him in a series of vignettes to tell different stories. That's why the features I had are the ones that I would like to use when I animate him by myself.

To fulfill the needs of an exaggerated style of animation, I added IK and FK controls with volume, preserving squash and stretch. Since there are a lot of dynamics going on around the face and on the helmet, I decided to add a geometry cache importer/exporter into the rig. For the mouth, I added a sticky lips feature as I had a couple of stories where he was supposed to be eating. It helped me get some nice smiling expressions, too. Other than these, I was planning to add a camera-based lattice deformer on the overall mesh, which would let me enhance the silhouette of a particular pose by moving the lattice points. I hope I can do it next time!

WHAT ARE SOME OF YOUR HOBBIES OUTSIDE OF ANIMATION AND RIGGING?

Photography is kind of a passion to me. I take photos of artworks and portraits of artists to be used in their exhibition catalogues and art books. But actually I love street photography and taking photos for myself, reflecting my confusions and documenting lives around me. I enjoy sharing them on my blog, which keeps growing as a visual diary of my personal life. I am interested in black-and-white film photography. Hanging out in the dark room developing and printing photos literally takes me out of this world. Besides, I believe that the art of photography is a very influential medium for anyone dealing with CG, in terms of cinematography and lighting.

Apart from that, I am interested in watching exhibitions and seeing what other artists are doing. I might say that cinema is another passion for me.

WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE FEATURE THAT YOU INCORPORATED INTO THE FINAL RIG?

I love the IK controls best. I think that the IK spline applied on a full mesh with a combination of convincing squash and stretch really adds value to the character. Think of a head shaped with a curve, when you make it concave towards the audience, the character has a timid expression who is not willing to communicate. And he turns out to be an extravert person when you make the curve convex. I can give an instant clue about the mood of the character very easily by using this feature.