Introducing Belinda, the stock character

As part of planning for a possible upcoming “Fortnight Challenge” animation contest series, similar to the Weekend Challenge, I wanted to make a stock rigged character that people could use to do animations without have to bother, time and again, to build their own meshes, rig 'em, etc. So I’ve made “Belinda”. Let me know what you think so far:

http://workingweek.org/anim/belinda_boring.mpg
No sound, but she’s intended to be saying “boring,” which seems appropriate.

She has:

  • fully rigged fingers, arms, legs, head, and hair dealies
  • a separate armature to handle eye moves and blinking
  • a few RVKs that handle the mouth: narrow, wide, open, closed
  • a somewhat bratty disposition

She only took about a day to do, which surprised me, but there’s bound to be plenty of improvements in the future. If you’re interested in playing with this, I’d really like to know how easy she is to control for someone who isn’t me. It’s my intention to make this available to contestants at the start of each challenge, so hopefully it will save people time and get them right into the fun of posing, lip-syncing, and movie making:
http://workingweek.org/anim/belinda30.blend

There’s a thread on this possible contest here:
https://blenderartists.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=30380

The clip and the model are available under the Creative Commons Attribution/ShareAlike license, so feel free to take it and run with it.

Cool model mikejedw,it works good over here and nice RVK’s.so is the animation contest thingy really gonna happen?i’d like to donate some models but someone needs to host them.

I’d say it’s on, since the response has been positive to the idea, but the timeframe is still up in the air. I need to figure out how to get the forum started up. Plus, I want to let the thread in the animation forum run for a bit in case any new suggestions come up. But I’m pretty psyched to go with it.

If you (or anybody else) needs hosting to post stock models, just message me, and we’ll work something out. I’ve got loads of server space.

Also, if anybody else has been reading Stop Staring, which is a really great book on face modeling and lip syncing, and if you’ve got the inclination, please feel free to extend Belinda’s RVKs to cover more of the “visemes” the author discusses. I went for the quick and dirty open/closed, wide/narrow range, but a lot more can be done while still keep the keys simple and flexible.

Cheers!