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The Lumberjack and The Woodpecker Short Film
2022 NATAS Student Production Award Winner – Fiction Short Form
Forrest, a lumberjack, brings his young son Woody with him on the job. When Forrest’s actions put the lives of a woodpecker family in danger, Woody must convince his father to spare the birds and save the day.
Directed by: Connor Bushoven
Produced by: Casey Karl
Responsible for Mrs. Pecky’s rig, hero tree, log, background tree modeling, and sequence 3 lighting.
Software: Maya, Substance Painter
Watch the film below
View more about the film at lumberjackandthewoodpecker.com
Mrs. Pecky Rig
Animation by David Penagos
Responsible for rigging, additional SDK refinement by Casey Karl
Mrs. Pecky is the first bird character I have rigged and an exciting project. The bird rig features an infinite twist spine, automatic folding wings, wing drag controls, facial rigging, and tail feather controls. Working closely with the animators on the rig resulted in a flexible rig capable of a wide range of expression and motion, including cartoonish stretching.
The wing rig uses blend color nodes to interpret each feather position between each control feather. Automatic wing folding (controlled through an attribute) utilizes a set-driven key setup. This setup allows for animating the wing’s folding and quickly positioning partially opened wings. Additionally, tweak controls enable the animators to adjust the wing folding position.
Tail channel controls provide spread control of tail feathers, with additional tweak controls on each feather.
Torso controls use a spline-based system to avoid normal flipping during twisting. In addition, toggleable subcontrols can adjust the spine shape further, allowing the animators to shape the body as needed by the shot.
Facial controls combine joint deformation, blend shapes, and ribbon rigs to meet the expressive needs of the film.
The character feet use an IK/FK switch setup with channel control for automatic closing and opening of the claws.