DuIK and After Effects

DuIK.

It sounds like a funny word, or something you may find in a home cleaning isle, but it's actually a very handy plug-in developed by Duduf, a french programmer (http://duduf.net/?page_id=151) for After Effects.

It's sole purpose is to rig assets / puppets incredibly easily! This blog post is just a taste of  regarding DuIK, rigging, After Effects and more!  Later I will be posting tutorials, my methods as well as how to extend the capability of DuIK and After Effects with some great programming!

The above image is from an animated film titled 'Airship Dracula', which I was a technical director & technical animator for.  It was created solely in After Effects using DuIK.  To me, DuIK one of the most important (and commonly used) After Effects tools I have in my tool set.

I use After Effects very heavily for many of the animated productions I have worked on.  I'll construct, composite, code and rig using After Effects, so it's no wonder that DuDuf's DuIK would come in handy!

So Wizard, what the heck is DuIK? It sounds like some kind of holy grail or something right? Well it kind of is!

In the image above you can see some solids that form hind legs of various animals.  These solids were constructed in After Effects, and the nulls you see in the image are considered controllers. These solids and controllers work together with various sliders you can add with DuIK.  DuIK connects these solids together with some Inverse Kinematic mathematics to create a realistic limb, and thus give the ability to rig your character or asset a little more easily, turning After Effects into an animation suite instead of an effects and composite software.

Anyone who has used After Effects before can find it somewhat daunting. Some consider it like a Photoshop (with its layering) for video and compositing.  Others just find it as a nightmare and their eyes glaze over, but that's okay! It isn't exactly the easiest program to use.  

With Airship Dracula, one of the responsibilities I was in charge of was taking in drawn assets and rigging them with DuIK within After Effects and extending DuIK's capability to make the rigged characters a little more capable and easier to use for animators, such as giving the animators visual tokens as 'handles' to grab the rigged puppet with for movement. These handles were not renderable and could be turned off to see the asset work underneath, as seen below:

If this is something that peaks your interest and you use After Effects, I highly suggest taking a stroll over to DuDuf's site (link above) and checking out DuIK ver 14.22 (the latest release).

Animate hard!  Keep on the lookout, I'll be posting some goodies regarding DuIK and extending the power of After Effects soon!

Song of the Sea

After seeing that Song of the Sea was recognized for over seven Annie Awards, my girlfriend and I absolutely had to go see it. So over the weekend her and I headed over to Pasadena's Laemmle Playhouse 7 to see just how amazing this film was, and let me tell you, we were totally floored.

From the character designs, background painting, story and final composite, the film was like that of a beautiful orchestra, each section was in complete harmony with the other, I could totally see why it would sweep house at the Annie Awards.

I wish I could go into a brief summary to tell you all what the story is about, but just by doing so, I could totally ruin the film for you, that's just how tight this story was, every frame on that screen was well delivered and there was no filler, no time wasted, no lulls in the story. Tomm Moore really delivers with this film, just as he and the studio did with Secret of Kells.

The art direction of Adrien Merigeau, along with Tomm really painted a tapestry of beautiful Celtic heritage and lore, from beautifully painted backgrounds such as these scenes:

To simple yet extremely well designed and effective characters that really stitched together the world that they created:

So what are you doing there sitting reading this blog post? Go out and check out Song of the Sea! It's definitely a must watch for all.

Can you spot the Easter Egg in this scene?