Hello and welcome to my Polybook....or maybe its an "Animbook"? Animation is what I love and enjoy. I love taking what was once a lifeless static model and breathing character and emotion into it. I want to one day do this for a living so its time to roll up the sleeves and practice practice practice. My hope is to use this to post some of my current works and stay motivated to keep moving forward. Please feel free to provide any feedback or ask questions. No feedback is bad and no question is dumb, so let me have it. :)
Alright lets do this....
@drgnclw ssmurfmier1985 thank you. I had a lot of fun with them. An acting shot will definitely need to be on my list for this year to finish.
phoenix4690 Hi Phil, I was wondering, as an iAnimate alumni you've got lifetime acces to iAnimate right? Like using all the rigs they have, and probably a forum. But does this also include watching recorded lessons and such, including new ones? And if so, can you also watch the ones from other learning disciplines (creature, feature), or only of game animation? 'Cause that would be a great learning source that's why I'm curious :)
ssmurfmier1985 Yes, I get lifetime access because I took all the workshops of a specific course. In my case it was the games course. I have access to rigs and forum as you said. I also have access to what they call the "Vault". In the vault are thousands of hours of recorded classes and training on the full spectrum of workshops they offer. Just to give you an idea on how much is there, its over 2500 recordings for feature animation, 2300 for games, almost 700 on creatures and a like 600 in other topics. I can also pop into any games instructors profile and watch the recordings of their current term. (every term their recordings get purged)
ssmurfmier1985 Yeah for sure, I'm going to have to take some time and sift through it. Would be nice to learn some creature animation.
Its been a long time since I've updated this thing. I figure its about time to share what I've been working on.
Its been a crazy busy year that gave me very little time to work on personal works. However, I had time for e-mails and I didn't want to just put my learning on hold. I decided to direct a project. I've always wanted more character rigs for Blender, so I figure I would try to have one made that I would really enjoy animating with. Battle Royal type games (PUBG, Fortnite, Apex Legends....) are really popular now, and I thought it would be fun to create a character inspired by those worlds. I got in contact with a concept artist and a character modeler and together we worked out, what I think, is a pretty fun character.
I learned quite a bit from that experience. Like what works and what doesn't when generating ideas and how to properly convey those ideas to other people. It also taught me to rely on the expertise of the people I'm working with, and not get hung up on "my vision" as it brought the design in areas I had never thought and I think brought a lot more appeal to the character then my original character would.
With the model finished, and my life finally slowing down a bit. I've finally had time in the last few months to learn about rigging and dissect and study other rigs to see how they work. I'm slowly building up her skeleton and getting to a point where things are starting to make sense.
She still needs a face rig, some hair bones place, and a ton of polish on the weight painting. Having to spend a lot of time around the arm pits and the way the foot rolls. Once I get these things sorted out animation tests will begin, and then to figure out how to release her to the Blender community. 
So that's where I'm at....sorry for being such a hermit lately. I'll try to update again when the face rig is done.
After a bunch of study and time, I finally dove into the face rig. I'm pretty sure I have all the deformation bones plotted in. Just need to get the mechanisms working together with everything. What a complete brain tease this can be at times but I'm having a lot of fun with it.
I'm super excited that the rigging of this character is "done". I put quotes because now I get to finally test and animate the heck out of it! Will make improvements as required.
The rig has:
This is such a blast to work on, I can't wait to show off some animations.
