This past Wednesday I was able to speak with Stephen Gressak, another rigger that worked on The Peanuts Movie. He spoke a lot about his experience with surface based facial rigging, and how it goes all the way back to his work on Ice Age 2. It wasn’t until The Peanuts Movie that there was a proprietary tool for it, with the help of Adam Burr. In the technical demo reel that he shared with me, he also talked about the AnimCurveSampler, a tool that he developed alongside Michael Comet and Scotty Sharp. It allows TDs to interactively edit the poses on rigs. This goes all the way back to Robots, and was further developed during Ice Age 2.
For his facial rigs on Ice Age 2, he used surface volumes (3D geometry that resembled the character’s head shape). The example on his demo reel was Sid’s face rig, and how his mouth would follow along the surface of that volume. An early version of what ended up being developed for The Peanuts Movie you could say.
I told him about how I was following along with Jonah Reinhart’s blog, and he mentioned that a planar projection method would lead to a very poo control interface. This is due to the controls being aligned with the flat surface, and not with the character’s head, so there is a significant visual disconnect, making it difficult for animators to tell which controls affect which part of the character. I also told him about my conversation with Ignacio and Adam, and he also encouraged rig switching. We also spoke about “locking” lines to the camera. This is in regards to the additional lines Billy has when he squints his eyes, similar to the “strip eyes” on the Peanits characters.
In addition to my thesis, he also informed me about the importance of being well versed in AI. He shared a few links with me to look into regarding the future of AI in art.
Runway Customers | Behind the scenes of “Migration” with director Jeremy Higgins
AI has never really been on my radar, especially as a rigging artist, but it is definitely something I will be looking into more.
3D Rigging & Look Development 
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