The Character (A Self-Surrogate):

Asset Source — CGTarian’s ‘Ray Rig’, a famous and widely used rig created through a collaboration between DreamWorks Animation and CGTarian to be used in non-commercial student projects and animations. The Ray Rig comes with standard lambert materials, completely unanimated, yet the rig is incredibly dynamic (visually and kinetically), which is why I chose it as the basis for my main character.

Texturing The Character:

The first step in the character design process (before beginning the animation process) was applying the proper shaders to the mesh. In texturing the character, I decided to use Arnold’s stylistic Ai Toon Shader, instead of the physically-realistic and energy-conserving Standard Surface model, as the Ai Toon Shader is more light-weight (—especially in comparison to typical PBR workflows for skin shading in Arnold which require subsurface-scattering, roughness maps, normal maps, etc.—) and offers greater flexibility in creating the cartoony and stylized aesthetic I was aiming for.

Adding The Toon Shaders:

After adding the basic Toon Shaders to the mesh, I next added a more realistic textures to the eyes, using a Standard Surface Shader with subsurface-scattering (for closeups on the character’s face)

ANIMATING THE CHARACTER:

After creating the first walk cycle, the next step was to import the character into the first scene in the story which is documented on the following ‘Scene Breakdown’ Page (link below)!