Fish out of Water is a short film from the UW Animation Capstone that tells the story of Roy, an office worker, who doesn't fit into his environment. He dreams of being out in nature, fishing on his boat with his dog. This is a story of letting go of a situation that doesn't work and finding one that does.
This film had challenges that came in many shapes and sizes, but the one the challenge that I had to address were the two dog rigs in the film. Roy sees his puppy in his day dreams, on the boat fishing with him, and is later reunited with the same puppy, now fully grown, as they go on another fishing adventure. Though these rigs only show up in a few shots, they were a challenge because the UW Animation Capstone had never done any type of quadruped rig in the past. Working alongside one of my rigging co-leads who developed a quadruped leg component, I was tasked with testing it and implementing it in our automated rigging scripts. It also proved difficult because, while the back legs were set up with the perfect amount of joints for a quadruped leg, the front ones were not, so we had to do some mitigation there as well, adjusting the joints in the way that would effect the students' animation the least.