Pug Rocketeer variant with rocket pack and accessories

So with that in mind I had some clear divides of how the character was going to be broken up, each accessory became their own separated object whilst modelling which was eventually merged down to larger chunks. I tend to always have things like eyes and tongue un-combined from all else, again mainly for ease of isolation up until the point I’m exporting for engine use.

Ultimately this character was very simplistic when compared to other things I have created personally or in production, in fact it’s one of the reasons as to why I decided to make this character in the first place. I sometimes find that if you tackle something really complicated as a personal project, something that can span a decent amount of time to create, you can risk burnout or running out of motivation, so with this character I thought it would be pretty quick and fun to put together but also simple enough for me to experiment with things usually outside of my remit, like rigging and animations.

Rigging

I’m not a rigger, in the past I’ve typically posed my characters with either ZBrush or very simplistic rigs. However I do like to broaden my knowledge a little bit with every new project so I thought it was time to dive a bit deeper into the world of rigging. I used what skills I already had and then went online and to friends to do some research.

I had a good chunk of help from a colleague called Rufus Flack at Climax Studios, he helped me decipher/fix the small issues that seem to appear when implementing something new, things that only someone with experience in the subject can give you good answers to.

Like the model, the rig is modular, so I can detach all accessories and replace them with another rigged set of assets which is what I eventually did with the Pug Rocketeer model.

Like rigging, I’m no expert when it comes to animation and I had a couple of animations I wanted to try and make. I went in with a specific camera angle/distance in mind, it’s good to impose these types of limits at times as they can insure you don’t over detail something to the point it will never be seen. Using the Walk/Run animation as an example, again which is divided into steps, the main walk cycle on the Corgi and then secondary motions on objects like the bacon rasher and bone keychain.