Created animation and simulation rig for Mohawk and a handful of minor transformers. Simulation rigs were built in ILM’s proprietary software, zeno. Simulation rigs consisted of of hard body sims on chains. In addition all internal gears and pistons moved appropriately.

Created animation and simulation rig for the 3 headed transforming dragon. Original model consisted of over 70,000 unique pieces of geom that all need to remain rigid. Combining and editing got us down to less than 2000. With the exception of one inner skin, each piece remains completely rigid.

Created parasaurolophus animation and simulation rig using Maya and Zeno, ILM’s proprietary software. Simulation rig consisted of several layered sims…muscles, fascia and outer skin. In addition, I supported several other sim rigs after TD’s were reassigned to other show, mostly triceratops and stegosaurus based rigs.

Performed muscle and skin sims and anim finaling on many shots.

Built a few minor rigs and simmed over 30 shots. Simulation consisted of full muscle/fascia/skin on bodies, cloth and rigid body simulation on clothing and weapons.

At the time of LWW, Rhythm and Hues was primarily known for cartoony characters like Scooby Doo and Garfield. Becasue of this there was tremendous pressure around the character of Aslan. Rigging him required a lot of R&D, creation of new tools and random experimentation to come up with a solution that made everyone happy.

LWW saw R&H’s rigging staff more than double in size. Before this, most films had 1 or 2 major characters and were built entirely for scratch with 2 experienced  riggers – 1 for body, 1 for face. However, LWW had over 70 hero characters. This required a complete over haul of procedures and tools. These were developed during the making of the film. As rigging supervisor, working with a new crew who was learning our custom software at the same time we developed all new rigging tools and procedures was one of the most stressful and  rewarding experiences of my career..

Although our rigging techniques and tools were heavily tested by the time I got around to rigging the Troll, he still managed to come with his own challenges. The body and face were cover with “rocks” which needed to remain undeforming even as they slide around with the skin and collided with each other.

As rigging supervisor, I managed a small team of riggers (3 or 4) that managed to rig dozens of characters, remap motion capture data and populate a forest of magical plants and animals. We developed a new painting tool that allowed TDs to paint large grouping of plants in to a scene. These could then be animated as groups, with offsets, using other proprietary voodoo tools

Rigging supervisor for the show.

In this shot I built the bird, cat rigs as well as their transitional rig which allowed to transform between models of different animals with different vert counts. Also built the fly spy (insect) rigs.

Rigging Supervisor

Lead small team rigging 6 chimpmunks with countless costume changes and prop rigs

The slinky rig is probably the most complex and versatile rig I have made to date. It was a fully animateable ( no sims ) that was 100 % art directable. It had 6 freely positional hand hold with accurate compression/stretching/comprehensibility through out it length.

Co-Rigging Supervisor – this production went thru many stops and starts on the Studio side.

Rigged body and face of Sparks, shown here.