Rigging an alien

I have still struggled to figure out why the left arm of the rig I was constructing was causing so much issue when it came to binding the model to the rig.  I attempted to reconstruct the left arm but when I moved it, the elbow joint started moving very erratically.   Furthermore, I was unable to parent the joint in between the elbow and the wrist.

I have decided to start the tutorial again, and I will just do anything that I remember or feel confident with doing, by myself and anything that I do not remember, I will look at the tutorial videos.

Rather than simply rigging the model that came with the tutorial from scratch, I have decided that it will be a better use of my time if I attempted to rig a different character model; a model that would still be humanoid, but would be challenging enough for me to apply my knowledge and learn what I did wrong and what I did correctly before.

Through browsing the web site, SimplyMaya.com, I came across this alien character, which was modelled by a user called Pizzicat.

This character is fairly simple and not too different in shape from the model that I began rigging previously.  However, there are some quite good opportunities here to apply my rigging skills in quite creative ways, namely his hands and feet, which comprise of three long fingers and long toes respectively.  This will allow me to be quite inventive about the placement of joints in these parts, particularly the toes, as the previous model only consisted of a foot without the toes modelled.

Furthermore, I will get the opportunity to experiment with some blend shaping in the face of this character.

The first thing that I will do before rigging this alien is to select the Geometry and then delete the history.  This is because a lot of modellers that I have worked with have often forgotten to do this, despite the fact that it is a fundamental rule of modelling.  I have done this, just to avoid any major issues later on in the process.

Over the next few posts, I shall document the progress that I make with applying a rig to this model.