First Post, News about the 11 Second Club Rig!

So, if you're reading this you probably know about Animation Mentor, and if you know about Animation Mentor you know about their flagship character, Bishop, and if you know about Bishop, you know that a new version of Bishop, dubbed Bishop 2.0, is coming. This rig allows for tons and tons of customizations - according to AM, 71 tredicillion different possible combinations of characters - old, young, fat, short, tall skinny, male, female, skin color, props, the possibilities are essentially limitless (I like limitless, Tredicillion is too fancy a word for my liking). This concept is simply, in a word, awesome.

So it was discussed on the 11SecondClub forums, and I had the bright idea to try and make a similar free character, since only a lucky few people who go to AM get to have access to Bishop and all those wonderful possibilities. A separate thread and 10 pages later, we've nearly decided on a design for our 11SecondClub Rig. This thing has pretty much sky-rocketed since I made a simple suggestion not even a week ago, and now Keith Lango himself has even graced us with not only his presence, but some pretty awesome input as well.

So, this blog will essentially serve to track the progress of the rig. Any time a major update is reached, I will do my best to post about it. And I literally just had the bright idea to even have a "making of" video while it's being made. Now that could be fun. But maybe for another time, we're too early into the development. In any case we'll need some sort of teaser to show it off, so that's definitely a possibility.

As I'm not much of a modeler or rigger - I have tried rigging before but painting skin weights is such a pain - I have volunteered myself to make the GUI, since I know better than modeling or rigging. I'm already thinking about all the awesome features I want to add, it's gonna be epic!

And with that, I'll post some of the preliminary designs that were posted in the thread so far.

http://s756.photobucket.com/albums/xx203/11SCRig

More to come!