Character Rigging
Welcome to my character rigging portfolio. Some characters are part of larger projects, which I have linked to below. All work shown has been created in Adobe Character Animator or Toon Boom Harmony.
Late Night Cartoons, Inc.
Stephen Colbert Presents: Tooning Out The News (Season 3) - Comedy Central
Responsible for rigging characters, props, and special animated sequences for weekly episodes.
Pipsqueak Animation
Secret Chef - Hulu
Responsible for rigging the animated “host” of the show, Cheffy. I also created several special animation sequences that could be triggered during live motion capture performances.
Barkster Kids Songs
Responsible for all rigging, animating and compositing
Victory Road Studios
Rabid Fans
Responsible for designing and rigging supporting characters such as the football player extras, Tua Tagovailoa, and the Boston Celtics Leprechaun.
Also responsible for rigging props, and additional costumes for the main cast, like Croach’s coach outfit or Lulu’s nurse uniform.
Talewise
Emiko rig created for Talewise. Emiko is one of the most complex rigs I’ve ever created, largely due to the team wanting this puppet to have as many pre-built animations as possible. I utilized the replay function to its fullest potential, creating every permutation of facial expression imaginable with replays. I also created some pre-made walk and run cycles, and a jump animation that could be modified to work with any arm gesture or orientation. Everything about the design, from the range of arm gestures to the inner head draggers to facilitate head turns, is designed to make this rig animate as smoothly as possible.
This horse rig is one of many I created for “Unicorns: Break The Cage,” a short film I animated for Talewise. The horse doesn’t speak, but I needed to make a rig that was flexible and expressive. Character Animator is not really designed to work with quadrupeds, but after some troubleshooting, I figured out I could separate the legs into two groups, which would allow each to be animated simultaneously. The puppet rig also features triggers for facial expressions, as well as draggable eyebrows and pupils for additional expressions. All head and neck movement is controlled via motion capture, but this puppet relies heavily on its triggers and draggers for its full potential. A full breakdown of the project is available here.
Personal Work
I created this snowman rig to use as a demonstration when I presented as a guest lecturer in my former high school animation class with Hunterdon County Polytech. There’s a lot packed into this puppet, with most of the range added from the rig, rather than the artwork. Each section of the snowman is its own puppet, with its own independent behaviors. This allows the user to toggle draggers on and off for each section, which makes for some really fun follow through and overlapping action. I used this feature to create the walk cycle replay, which is basically just made by squashing and stretching each ball slightly out of sync with one another to make the snowman bounce.
Cherry characters inspired by Max Fleischer-era animation. Rigged and animated in Adobe Character Animator, using the automated walk cycle behavior.