CGWorkshops - Character Facial Rigging With Judd Simantov

For seven years, Judd Simantov was the Lead Character Technical Director at Naughty Dog, working on gaming classics like the Uncharted series. Now he's here to share the secrets of succesfully rigging stylized faces and caricatures with you.

In this 8 week online workshop, work with Judd as you learn the differences between rigging realistic and stylized faces, discover the best areas to place joints so you get muscle control and good animation control, look at different skin binds and discuss workflow methodologies for painting weights.

Judd will show you different shapes and ways of controlling different parts of the face like eyes, ears, mouth and eyebrows (to name a few), adding head and neck controls and talk about how animators can use the elements you rig to create a sense of squash and stretch within the facial expressions.

Finally, you'll learn to use corrective blend-shapes to handle areas that are harder to get right with joints, and discover how to test your rig before it begins the animation process.

You can bring your own face model (subject to Judd's assessment for suitability) or use one that is supplied with the course.

"By far the best rigging class I have ever taken. Judd knows his stuff, both technically and artistically" - Brian Rogers, student, February 2012

"The small workflow tips are little gold mines by themselves" - Alexander Samouridis, student, February 2012

"A totally different perspective to facial rigging. Judd reminded us that this is an art form after all." - Marty Hon, student, February 2012