Target bones for this really flexible type of use?

[andersJohansson]

Some of you may have seen this animation demo by user "onionskin"... He did some interesting, very artistically convincing, work here (watch till end):



I am wondering if anyone knows what is going on with the limbs of the two character rigs shown --
How is he able to move them around with a stretchy effect like that (like around 0:38) while conserving width/shape so cleanly?

I've just begun learning target bones from the Smith Micro tutorials -- is that what is being used here at the knees? I'm not sure of the exact configuration of the bones as they seem to be hidden in that video, but this kind of rig technique seems so powerful. (It seems Selgin too did something like this with target bones on his worm rig: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PCwPVMEa-Gw)

Onionskin: If you too are reading this, any chance you can describe your technique or share an example project file to play around with?

[slowtiger]

Whoa, this is amazing. Not just for the rig (that's impressive too), but for the whole style of movement. Reminds me of the films of Priit Pärn.

[synthsin75]

No, that demo from Onionskin was before target bones. If memory servers, none of the bones are parented (so there's no IK/FK) and all animation is done by bone translation.

[PaperWaspNest]

This is blowing my mind. Though, it seems the downside it doesn't quite work with Inverse Kinematics? I wish I could try this out for myself... but no tutorial or sample files anywhere huh?

[synthsin75]

There's no IK at all. The ends of each part are point bound to the bone.

[dkwroot]

I believe I figured out how this was made. Check out the file below.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0Bwzk-f ... sp=sharing

[PaperWaspNest]

Thank you both! I hadn't even considered that the rigging was so "simple" but it does seem like you need a little bit of setup here for it to control the way it does with only a few bones.

I'd love to set up the wrist bone as a smartbone, so when rotated it causes the forearm to expand a bit. This way when you move the hand and wrist in front of the elbow, you can expand the drawing so it looks like it is foreshortening. Something fun to try out soon...

[neeters_guy]

I believe I figured out how this was made. Check out the file below.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0Bwzk-f ... sp=sharing

Wow, brilliant! I've trying to solve this myself. Thanks for sharing your solution.