Character and Narrative: Creating Controls

Another session, another hand full of video tutorials. This time we were shown how to create the controls for our character, which was a relatively easy process once I had learnt how to do it. All I had to do was click Create - NURBS Primitives - Circle, and line up each created circle with the joint I was wanting to be able to control with it. I could also use the CV Curve tool to create different shapes to be used as controls, which is what I did for the eyebrows, eyes, clavicle, shoulders, feet and the "master control". Once I had done this I colour coordinated my controls so that they would be easier to use by going into the attributes for each component and going to drawing override.

Completed Controls

List of Controls and Creating IK Handles

This task didn't take long at all, it was simply a matter of creating the central controls and ones on the right hand side (or left hand side) and mirroring them. The most time consuming part was actually colouring the controls as I had to do this individually and it was rather tedious. I did however learn that it was important to snap the anchor point to the joint that I was wanting to control (which was also easiest to do once all of the controls had been created) and that it was also important to freeze transformations once I was finished, as this would make it easier to return to this 'T' pose if need be and to keep track of my transformations when it comes to animating.