Rigging Characters | Roll to the Beat DevLog 5

In DevLog #5 for my animated musical short film Roll to the Beat, I break down the character rigging process in Blender, from setting up armatures and bone constraints for the Beetle to sculpting facial shape keys for smooth expressions.

The eyes can be controlled individually or together. The wings each have their own bone, and every segment of the antennas has a bone. The arms, legs and body use automatic weights for now and still need cleanup. For the face, I sculpted shape keys for the eyelids and mouth, and I'll drive them with bones later. The characters have very similar body proportions, so I can reuse the armature for the ladybug and then the roly-poly.

I also share my production goals. I want to be animating individual shots by the end of the month, and I'm aiming to submit the short to the Phoenix Film Festival before its December submission deadline. Rendering with Eevee should make that much more realistic than my first, unfinished short film.

Watch the fifth devlog of my short film Roll to the Beat on YouTube.