Using Joystick and sliders and Rubberhose

Let’s start with the Rig After Effects Tutorial: We here at Goldener Westen always start our rigs transforming  AI files to Shape Layers, for a more clean and lighter After Effects file.

Always keep her inicial pose for rigging as T-pose or Arms down. 

For this character, Paula, we decided to use Rubberhose Plugin for her Arms and legs, since they are simple shapes and Rubberhose is awesome for that.

We replaced the shapes and positioned the Rubberhoses at the right place and then parented the Hands and Shoes to the Controls.

Screenshot: We replaced the shapes and positioned the Rubberhoses at the right place and then parented the Hands and Shoes to the Controls.

Because of Paula‘s dress, we took advantage of After Effecs built-in script Create Null from Paths, to add keyframes to the Nulls and to have more control of her dress.

👉 Keyframed paths take longer to the plugin to calculate.

Because of Paula‘s dress, we took advantage of After Effecs built-in script Create Null from Paths, to add keyframes to the Nulls and to have more control of her dress.

We also created a COG (Center of Gravity) as a Null Object control in order to parent the Shoulders, Hips, Head and Dress to it for positioning and rotating her body.

After you have all the controls, you can start with Joystick and Sliders.

The plugin requires you to do 5 key poses, Front, Right, Left, Up and Down and once the joystick is set, it interpolates the inbetweens of these poses.

As a reference, we used the illustration thumbnails that we already had of Paula.

the illustration thumbnails

This process involves a lot of testing and going back and forward between setting up some animation and the inicial 5 poses. Once the Rig is created you can Unbind and Bind it again to go to the poses.

We usually do one Joystick Rig for the head and one for the body to make things easier when animating.

Joystick Rig

And that‘s it! Have fun and follow us on Instagram 😃!

Some Instagram post we did about the rig setup:

the illustration thumbnails

Author: Bianca Toloi – Motion Designer

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