Playground, chapter 9 - children edits

children, old & new versions

In the original version of the kids, their hands were mitts with conjoined fingers. This was partly an economic decision and partly a design decision. Conjoined fingers are easier to rig and might look cute if modeled well. However, the hand is the most expressive part of the body, next to the face. If fingers can't move, characterization becomes limited, so I gave the kids new hands with adjustable fingers.

new kid rigs

The previous FK skeletal system has been replaced with a new IK system. With FK (forward kinematics), each bone must be rotated separately in order to move a character into position. With IK (inverse kinematics), moving one bone will influence the position of neighboring bones. This makes it much easier to pose characters, so most of these new poses are a little more nuanced.

Besides changes to the rigs and poses, there were also the usual adjustments to children colors and textures.

Next in this project, we'll be adding or fixing various foreground elements.