Jinx Tickles Akali Breakdown

  Jinx Tickles Akali was the first “female on female” tickling project I've done, and I'm very happy with how it turned out! I'm gonna go over a couple key points of interest and challenges I had taking this project on. 

  For the foot tickling scene, I really wanted to sell the contact. In a scene like this, there isn't much overall movement (especially when the character is all bound up...) so you want to do all you can to sell the minor details.

  I created some custom “foot wrinkle” normal maps in Substance Painter, and then used shapekeys to add a subtle “stretch” on the feet. Along with some minor animation on the foot bones (general shaking and pressing when the hand/scrubber makes contact) I think the effect was sold well. 

  Moving forward I want to do some experiments with sculpted wrinkles! There's always a way to take it to the next level...

  Shapekeys are incredibly versatile, and I use them extensively (by the end of this project the Akali rig had over a hundred shapekeys, some for effect, some for deformation fixes). I use shapekeys for breathing, and with this project I really focused on syncing the voice acting along with the shapekeys, making sure the tummy inhaled and exhaled along with the voice, and adding in some trembling when appropriate. 

  When combined with good facial animation, I think this creates a realistic effect. To note, when animating the breath, the "exhalation" is usually going to be shorter than the inhalation. You also want to divide up your breath shapekeys into "upper" and "lower", so that you can offset the "upper" breath by approximately 2 frames. 

  Here's the general faces I select to create these shapekeys (using the "proportional editing" to create a smooth transition). 

  Shapekeys can of course be used on any object, and I often use them to "tidy up" my animations where I have intersections. For example, when Jinx picks up the brush, her fingers clipped through the bristles. Rather than re-do the animation, I took the "lazy" (or smart, depending on how you look at it) route and added a shapekey on the brush itself, to press down on the bristles. 

   I also added a little animation on the second brush as it gets "bumped." It's these little touches I get the most joy out of; a lot of people may not notice it but hey, it's there!

  In the below gif. you can get a general sense of how I keep the hands in contact with the body throughout the animation; basically, I use empties and then Child-Of constraints to parent selected bones to said empties (Akali's torso and Jinx's hands, in this case) and then instead of animating the bones, I animate the empties, which moves both the torso and hands at the same time, in the same place. 

 
 This can get rather complex, so feel free to ask me any specific questions about the process in the comments or on my Discord and I'll be happy to expound on it, but the basic idea is rather simple. 

  In the above gif you can also see Akali's straps in action; these needed to stay attached to her body throughout the animation, stretching and moving along with her it. Rather than weight-painting them, I used a shrinkwrap modifier with Akali as the target. To avoid the straps wrapping around and under her, I created a vertex group to define the vertices to be effected. 

  It's hard to get the perfect shot, with both the character as the centerpiece and the background props you want included properly in frame. I'll often "cheat" a little bit, moving props around to get them in frame when needed. 

  In the below example I had Jinx framed as needed, but I also wanted the background camera prop to be in frame. Instead of adjusting the shot (which I was already happy with), I simply moved the camera over a bit (making sure to add keyframes on the first/last frame in order to move it back when the shot was complete). You obviously don't want to abuse this technique as keeping the set consistent is important, but as long as you're subtle about it, it's a good way to get the framing you want. 

  For the next female-on-female tickle video, I want to explore the idea of having "tickle bones" as opposed to shapekeys. Basically I want to develop a technique for having the hands of the "tickler" capable of moving around the body rapidly, rather than being locked in one place. Where there's a will there's a way... 

 Let me know if you have any questions about any part of the process and I'll do my best to answer!

  Got some new stuff going up soon! Hope everyone is safe and well!