Rigging the hand

Another important part of rigging the swamp monster was putting joints in his hands.  This will be essential for certain parts within the production that involve the monster grabbing and throwing things within the environment, such as dustbins.

This proved to be a tricky task, largely because the arms were modelled at an angle, rather than horizontally or vertically.  This meant that I had to rely a lot on putting joints in the hand through the perspective view and then dragging the joints in place, rather than the conventional method of putting joints in using the top/side views.

When I had sorted out the order of the joints in the fingers, I parented them to a joint in the hand, which in turn, I parented to the wrist.

I also began creating a controller with curves that will allow the animator to create a grabbing movement in the hand quite efficiently.