I worked as a rigging artist and animator on both micro-series/episodes of Chromosphere's "Yuki 7", and the "Yuki's Daydream" experimental short. Check out more Yuki 7 goodness, including an in-depth case study of the entire project, at www.yuki-7.com!
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Micro-Series I

In Micro-Series I, I was responsible for rigging of the characters Rocket Turtle, Goldpaws, costume variants of Yuki, sharks, raptors, and Tiger Lady (the villian in ep. 3). I also rigged a helicopter and various prop objects.

For the first two episodes, all 3D elements were animated and rendered out of Maya. I loved working with the low-poly character models - skinning was a breeze! Which was great because every character required a lot of different and custom rig elements, especially in their faces and costumes.

The animation and overall look of the show is very 2D-inspired. To hit this style as best as I could, I learned a lot from watching the work of our anim director Tommy Rodricks and animator Natan Moura, both of whom have excellent 2D skills and loads more experience than me in this style. Seeing their instincts for posing, timing and spacing was endlessly helpful.

Here is a fight scene I animated from ep. 2. [timestamps 5:04 to 5:38]

For the third episode we began using Unreal Engine for layout, partial animation, and lighting/rendering. This was my first time working in any game engine, so I had to learn the do's and don'ts of rigging for games. With the help of tech art director Theresa Latzko, we worked to convert the existing rigs for seamless compatibility.

I mentioned partial animation in Unreal - for this episode, the boats were rigged by Theresa using Control Rig, and a first pass of their animation was completed as part of layout. During animation we were able to go back and forth between Maya and UE to customize that boat motion as needed.

In this brief sequence, I started by polishing the boats' performances, then animated the characters in Maya. Finally, I returned to UE to match the boat steering wheels to the characters' hands. [timestamps 6:23 to 6:32]

Micro-Series II

For Micro-Series II, we shifted further into an Unreal Engine pipeline: this time, everything from rigging to rendering would happen in UE! I was responsible for the rigging of all characters in this series (thankfully I received help with skinning of many background characters by 3D artist Andrew Wilson). In order to bring the cast to life, I was tasked with learning UE's new Control Rig system, testing and troubleshooting the implementation of the rigs in Sequencer, and as a bonus endeavor, experimenting with LiveLink motion capture.

It was a really exciting challenge, firstly seeing how closely I could at least match the Unreal rigs to what we were used to in Maya, and secondly, exploring areas where we could get even more capabilities out of the rigs. At the conclusion of this project, I was invited to speak as part of Chromosphere's talk at Unreal Fest 2023.

Here's one example of a sequence where I think the rigs really shine. The majority of the fighting sequences in this series were animated by Natan and Tommy; they knocked these shots out of the park! [timestamps 1:06 to 1:49]

The animation style of this series was even more limited than in the previous one, with an emphasis on long holds and strong, graphic poses. It definitely took me a bit to get a hang of the spacing! Here's a sequence I was really pleased to work on at the end of the series, where Yuki has a tender moment with her teammates. The animation is more quiet here but still in the spirit of the desired style. [timestamps 2:09 to 2:46]