WEIGHTING CHARACTERS

Jade and I had a Skype call tonight to discuss some things to do with the project. While we were talking, Jade was busy weighting one of the animated characters and the conversation subject changed from talking about general project chatter to that of weighting. Before I carry on, weighting is something that you do to a 3D character after you attach a rig or skeleton to your modelled character so that when you move your character it doesn't make your character deform weird or warped. 

Jade has discovered that weighting female characters is much more difficult than weighting male characters because male characters are fatter than females. (Fatter is the term that Jade used.) She explained that Kahu was way simpler and quicker to weight compared to all the female characters because all the parts of his body are larger and further away from each other. 

It's kind of a hard concept to grasp if you don't know anything about animation but I just found it interesting from an animator's prospective and a little bit amusing considering that there is only one male in this series. This project has been a huge learning curve and at times we seem to have done things the hard way usually finding an easier solution when the job has almost been completed. In saying that, it has been a great learning experience and I can't wait until we can share the finished product with everyone!