New Character: "Chance"

Hey everyone!

I'm super excited to introduce my new character who'll be playing a BIG role in my upcoming animation! Meet Chance, a bunny with a rare size instability issue that's going to bring a lot of growing fun to my next project! ❤️

Designing and modeling Chance has been such a fun and challenging experience, and I can't wait for you to see him in action. He's not entirely done yet, there are still some tweaks needed for his rig and appearance, but I'm pretty happy with how he's turning out and wanted to show you all how he looks! 😊

I also wanted to ask what you all think about the "furred" look. I've tried to make him appear soft without losing too much muscle definition. Are you into it?

A little behind-the-scenes info: my character Jay from the last animation couldn't move around at all because his rig was so limited. 😅 So, I had to completely rework the rig and decided to use a new system called APEX that allows me to create a single rig for both characters, and all new characters in the future! It's taken a lot of trial and error to figure out how this system works, but I'm finally at a point where it makes sense and can help speed up production going forward.

Here's a little video of how his new legs work! It's hard to convey how happy I am with it now. It has taken a lot of trial and error to get the double-IK chain digitigrade leg to work without having to tweak the movement of his knee and ankle joints manually.

Video of leg rig: https://file.furryanimation.com/development/005-alleygrow/Leg-Rig.mp4

Even though it's a bit daunting, I'm going to try to make a small video about APEX for the higher tiers to give some deeper insights into how it works. It's going to be a bit technical but hopefully still interesting.

I also really want to try adding cloth to him! The effect of cloth tearing and ripping off his body as he grows would be soooo much fun! I tried to create a quick t-shirt for him for this update, but I'm still figuring out how the fur interacts with the cloth. So that's a challenge for future me! XD

Here's a quick video of how I started playing around with the fur! It's a fun, interactive process, slowly sculpting the fur using a few strands that then interpolate to a more dense coat later :)

Video of fur grooming: file.furryanimation.com/development/005-alleygrow/Fur-Groom.mp4

As always, thank you so much for your support! I'm really excited to show you how he looks in action soon.