Final Movie insert
In 2026, I worked on the Ringling short film “Escape from the Vault” my thesis partner Meghan Bossert, on the film I functioned as head of animation and technical lead on the project.
Rigging Scrappy / Scrappy Rig Demo video
Scrappy’s rig is a mix between advanced skeleton and a custom face rig mixed with joints and blendshapes. She has custom-made muzzle controls and a custom eye rig to move her eyes around the face. The pupils can move separately from the eye and squash and stretch through a joint system. The eyes are made with spheres that are then latticed and parented to the head joint. The eyes can also be placed anywhere on the character and seperated/reparented if needed. Her outlines are achieved through a separate duplicate blendshape geo with two inputs: the outline geo (which is just a reverse normal of Scrappy’s model) and Scrappy’s rigged model. Combined the outlines follow Scrappy giving the illusion of a 2D outline behind her.
Her teeth geo have a custom ctrl to switch between different forms of geometry for her teeth, they also have controls to move parts of the teeth around using a wire deformer.
Blendshapes are used for Scrappy’s lip movement alongside cluster controls for her mouth
Rigging Princess / Princess Rig Demo video
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Rigging Pencil / Pencil Rig Demo video
Custom eye rig video
Gif of Scrappy’s different mouth poses
Nuke Tree for Princess’s Lines
Run cycles for all characters