Harmony Rigs
Character Rigs
For "A Little Light" my fourth year project at the Digital Animation Production Course at LIT Clonmel my characters were designed and rigged in Toon Boom Harmony.
This process allowed the characters to be saved in a folder in the software’s network. The rigging process included the following:
First was drawing in the separate body parts of the character and colouring them in, on separate layers. The software has a drawing and camera mode that allowed line art and coloured art to be done on separate layers.
Below are a few screenshots of the Characters Rigging System in Harmony.
Neil's entire rig in Toon Boom Harmony above
The highlighted area is his Head composite that contains all his facial features such as his mouth, ears etc.
Each section of the Network above contains a composite of drawings of the characters body parts.
The characters eyes were grouped in there own composite as the eyes needed cutters for the pupil's in preventing the pupils drawing going over the eye shape's drawing. It also made it easier to locate the separate parts
Each separate body part has there own peg the green box above that give each separate drawing the ability to rotate, scale, move and skew for animation purposes.
Highlighted Area of Neils Ftont Arm, which is composed of His upper, lower arm and his hand.
Attached to these drawings are a glue and auto patch tool to fill in the empty space if the arm gets rotated were the elbo should be.
Attached to these drawings are a glue and auto patch tool to fill in the empty space if the arm gets rotated were the elbow should be.
Here is the scene set up with the character background on the upper left, the Node network on the upper right and the timeline at the bottom.
It is key framed and animated using the Rigging system in harmony.
This is the bone tool that allows the character to move back and fouth like to a certain degree such as for bending over etc.
This is Neil's separate parts as transparent parts.
At the right hand side is Neil’s colour palette where it is saved in the network.
This is Cara's character rigs side, front and 3/4 view
Each of Here views have there own composite of seperate drawings, which cud be substituted for animation
You can save each Character Rig in the Harmony Liberary and drag them into the Network
This is the charactres Network on the Upper Left
Each Composite contains the seperate drawing parts.
Unlike Neil this character's arms and legs are bone tooled for movement, which I felt worked for her character as she floats.
This is Cara's Float Cycle Animated by using the Bone Tool for her arms and Legs and using the pegging system for the rest.
Her hair was 2D animated in her rig by going into the back hair drawing and animating her hair.
This is the same process as for the Dialogue for Ryan’s character.
The highlighted area is Ryan’s separate mouth drawing on the timeline.
On the mouth drawing (Blue Box) is were the new drawing go and the peg (Green box) reposition, scales. skews, rotates the drawing
Other LIT Students worked on this Clip
Paul Carey and Bilal Waraich Compositing Lighting and Shadowing
Ursula Cassells animated playground background characters
Liberary that contain the the seperate drawing which is great for reusing previous drawings
Pencil test of Neils Run Cycle then animated using the peging system in Harmony
This is what the auto-path and glue tool do together for the character in preventing there seperate parts showing
