Cartoon Humanoid Moose/Deer Rig
For our final year of art school at Brassart, our class go split into two groups, tasked with making a teaser for an animated movie. While I'm primarily in charge of the rigging & animation, I got the chance to design one of the of two characters that appear in our movie. This humanoid moose-deer hybrid happens to be the antagonist, hence his much more intimidating design.
This artwork will most likely be updated to include additional animations once I get to that stage in the project. Stay tuned!
(Character Modelling NOT by me. That would be Lauryne Vachelet, who can be found here: https://www.artstation.com/laurpheus)
These pages are taken from our group's presentation document. Here, we are introduced to the character with some basic information as well as a silhouette and handprint, to add some flair.
Right after is the moodboard I used to design the character. Since the character is meant to be a gardener, I took some refs of gardening equipment, scarecrows, etc.
Here were some very early silhouette tests, to determine the final shape of the character.
After the overall shape was chosen, I moved onto the clothing sketches. Since the idea of him being a gardener came later, the initial designs depicted him more as some forest mage/driad.
Afterwards were the antler & facial expressions test. Since the character is rather stoic, we decided that if he were to emote in the movie, we'd only do it via his eyes.
Finally, came the color tests. I initially made multiple palettes, before eventually mashing two together to create the final palette.
Since the character was now finalized, I moved onto making a quick model sheet for the modelers.
Some misc. art putting the character in action and to give an insight into his character.
Eventually, the character went through a soft redesign to better fit the overall aesthetic of the world he'd be in. This was namely changing his colors to be more vibrant, while also making him ever-so-slightly less intidimating.
After production started, I eventually got around to making the rig of the character once the model was finished. Like all my rigs, I first placed th armature/bones into place before anything else.
I first made the rig's basic controllers and proceeded to skin the naked model, before copying the weights unto the clothes and making some small adjustements.
After the basic controllers were done, I moved onto making the cloth controls, which included the apron, shovel, and the vines hanging from his antlers.
Orthographic views of the fully rigged model, all controllers visible. Since the character barely moves in the actual movie, I did not implement complex controllers such as a facial rig or arm bendy controls, to save on time. Work smarter, not harder.