I knew from the beginning of this module that I wanted to experiment with rigging a 2D character. Over the summer while I was on work placement at Paper Owl Films, I was introduced to DUIK, an After Effects Plugin which aids in the creation of character rigs in 2D animation. Rigging is a fairly versatile method of animation which is used in everything from children's television animation, including many CBeebies shows such as Sarah and Duck and Hey Duggee, to Academy Award Nominated Independent Israeli Animated War Documentaries such as Waltz with Bashir, and DUIK aids this process by providing the animator a set of tools to construct a sort of easily manipulatable and posable wireframe.
It is important when using DUIK to design your characters around the tools you are given. Most characters animated in DUIK are simple in their design, often with long, pipe-like arms and legs to allow for straightforward manipulation without deforming the mesh. The tools in DUIK are also better served, at least in my opinion, by a vector based art-style, such as the one seen in Studio AKA's Hey Duggee. By using a vector-based aesthetic, deformations in the mesh are less noticeable than with an art-style emphasising line-work, and as a result the final product is a lot cleaner, with the tools used being less apparent to the audience. There are exceptions (see Sarah and Duck) but for the most part, rigged animation generally looks better when it applies a vector based aesthetic. This is why DUIK is primarily viewed in the creative industries as a motion graphics tool, as it is best suited to a specific style of Graphic Design.
With my animation I was hoping to apply DUIK to a more complex rig and character design, which admittedly wielded mixed results. My main influence when creating the rig for my character for this animation was Waltz with Bashir. The characters in the film are made up of an incredibly large amount of moving assets, particularly around the face area, lending an aura of the uncanny to the animation. My whole approach with my rig has been to create as many variations of facial assets such as eyes and mouths, in order to replicate some of this aura but in a more stylised manner. Looking at the character models and overall design of Waltz with Bashir, the characters seem designed to be visually appealing in stills and screenshots, but in the final film, for all the animators' merit, there is something bordering on the uncanny and I think this has to do with the tools the filmmakers use.
In a behind the scenes documentary, it is apparent that the filmmakers are using Flash to animate their characters, and not the DUIK rigging tool as I had originally suspected. While I would still classify the animation in the film as 'rigged animation' the animator's approach has more in line with limited and more traditional forms of 2D animation. While characters are constructed into sort of rigs, there are an extraordinary number of individual and unique assets, vastly more so than is usually the case with rigged animation. One of the reasons for using DUIK and rigging tools in the first place is to cut down on the amount of assets the animator needs to create in order to streamline the animation process, it's an economic decision used to cut costs and produce work quickly and efficiently. This design philosophy stands in stark contrast to the philosophy of the filmmakers of Waltz with Bashir, who you have to keep in mind are producing a very personal, war documentary, purely on artistic merit over a period of years.
This was the first time I used DUIK for an animation, and in hindsight I do feel I should have simplified my design somewhat to better accommodate the tools I would be using to animate, however I also feel that there are elements of my rig that do work and are enhanced by being animated in DUIK, such as the hair and arms. In the future however, I will probably think about what tools I use for my animation a bit differently and design accordingly. I look forward to using DUIK in the future, in particular in relation to Motion Graphics.
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