Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/589428
s e p t e m b e r . o c t o b e r 2 0 1 5 c g w 2 9 nimation students are always eager to learn the fine points of their craft. However, finding interesting (and free) rigs to use for animating original con- tent for their portfolios can be quite a challenge. A challenge for students in the Digital Art & Animation program at Cogswell College in Sunnyvale, California, as well as countless students around the world. And, a challenge for instruc- tors needing rigs to teach their students. Recognizing this issue, students at Cogswell have created 3D animatable rigs for 12 original digital charac- ters through the Digital Art & Animation program's in-house character project called Ava- tarah. Cogswell students will use the rigs, and while some will remain exclusive to those students, a number will be released to the general public through open source. "There has always been a constant demand for new and exciting 3D animation rigs that can be accessed online," says Jonali Bhattacharyya, assistant professor at Cogswell's Digital Art & Animation program who is spearheading the student- developed 3D animatable rigs project in concert with Sergio Sykes, adjunct faculty member at Cogswell who was formerly with Massive Black, a production artwork and asset outsourcing studio. As Bhattacharyya explains, Avatarah is a cross-disciplinary project for creating high-quality 3D character rigs. The characters are designed, modeled, textured, and rigged in-house by students from various disciplines at the school who are selected for the tasks based on their expertise. Some of the work was done during an elective class, though the majority of it was accom- plished aer hours. V A L U A B L E T E A C H I N G T O O L Until now, the school did not own any original 3D characters, and to teach rigging and anima- tion classes, the instructors had to borrow rigs from other out- lets. Although there is a growing number of solid bipedal rigs available, it's still difficult to find good creatures and quadrupeds on which to practice animation techniques, says Bhattacharyya. As a result, Bhattacharyya proposed the project to help bring consistency to the anima- tion courses, with the plan to have all the instructors at Cogs- well teaching with the same rigs, following a consistent art design, and having an internal support team. The idea for the project was first discussed in mid-2013, and aer some initial attempts, the school began full production last February and completed the models at the end of 2014. "We're currently gauging interest among the campus community and those at large to consider restarting the project with fresh ideas, new characters, and tools to help with rigging and animation," says Bhattacha- ryya. "We plan to involve more departments in our project going forward and really show what Cogswell has to offer." According to Bhattacharyya, there is always a demand for high-quality rigs, prompting the school to publicly offer some of the Avatarah characters. "With the amount of effort that went into making rigs that are robust enough for the needs of our col- lege, we decided to release the rigs to the community at large, and are excited to see how the community makes use of our characters in their own creative projects," she says. The rigs are available for Mac, PC, and Linux. As for the students, they have an opportunity to impact the school's program and to create something for public usage, which is more tangible than tra- ditional animation assignments, Bhattacharyya notes. "And, we'd like to have our students graduate with work that has its own identity." B E A U T Y I S S K I N D E E P The first round of content included 12 sets of rigs covering the needs of the school's animation and rigging classes: quadrupeds, bipeds, and prim- itives, all designed to fulfill the needs of the curriculum. This past spring, Cogswell the Dragon became the first Avatarah character to be avail- able without restriction from the initial group, available under a Creative Commons license, including all the source assets. Thus, users can go beyond just animating the rigs – they can rig the characters themselves or make their own textures and accessories. (Cogswell the Drag- on can be downloaded from www.cogswell.edu.) Among the 11 other characters created are Toothy the saber-toothed tiger, Snowy the dog, Thunder the horse, Chippy the squirrel, Chubby the rabbit, Flappy the bird, and others. Some will be widely available, while others will remain exclusive to Cogswell. The character designs were driven by the need to have a wide range of animators using the rigs for various projects. Sykes and Bhattacharyya, both of whom are well versed in production cycles within the game industry, created a pipe- line not unlike that of a studio STUDENTS AND FACULTY AT COGSWELL COLLEGE'S ART & ANIMATION PROGRAM HAVE CREATED 3D ANIMATABLE CHARACTERS, INCLUDING TOOTHY ABOVE, THROUGH ITS PROJECT AVATARAH. A