The Portfolio of Sam Hodge

I have about 4 years experience as a rigger.

Character Rigging to me is about two things

1. Creating controls for the puppet
2. Making the puppet shape its body and face

Obviously to be able to create a good control system you need to understand the animation process. I have enough experience at animating to understand the process. But working closely with the animator is always the best choice. Trying to find the right balance between automation and control is simple, control will always be what the animator wants

Deformation is always a tricky bit. It is tempting to create an advanced system that is very heavy to calculate and equally time consuming to setup. But its alway better to start simple and build it as on a needs basis, once again adhering to the brief is important.

I have rigged for feature film, Baboonlizards and Allosaurs on A Sound of Thunder in 3dsmax and Charlotte the Cavatecus spider played by Julia Roberts for Charlotte's Web, in XSI with a team of other riggers.

I enjoy the challenge of rigging. My scrripting and plugin abilities serve me well for coming up with custom designs that may not be possibel out of the box.

• Animaion Interfaces
• Version control of rigs
• Animation Asset Management
• Advanced defomration plugins
• Muscle systems
• Combination Sculting Blendshape systems
• Animator Support