This past month I took a Character Rigging class.  Rigging to me had always been this mysteriously complicated process, where a set up artist took in geometry and spit out a "ready to be living" character.  Turns out that it isn't very far from the actual process.  Sure there is a lot more technical mumbo-jumbo in between but it really is quite magical.

We were given the Señor Yeti and from there we had to create the entire rig.  I started by connecting up the head and adding blendshapes to the character.  It instantly gave the mesh life and from there on I simply unlocked the rest of his body to be living as well.

As part of the final turn-in we also had to create a tool to be used inside Maya.  Since I spent a lot of my time setting up the control curves for the rig, I figured that I could make a "Curve Master" GUI tool to ease the process.  It was coded in python and is booted up through Maya.

Anyways, here is a video showcasing the rig: