Armature

The building of the armature seemed to be the most daunting task, initially. After all, you know how the bones in a body are supposed to move. So, build a normal one and you are done. Right?

Wrong!! It was difficult to build the armature so that it would suit all actions. I had to modify the armature nearly 8-10 times to suit postures. In midst of this, I lost a couple of armature configurations, and could never get the pose back in time.

The one thing I tried to dodifferent here, is give gus a brow..that moves. This was by parenting between armatures.

I had a couple of close-up shots in mind.Which can really add to the action happening.

I made an armature of the brows, which I parented to the brows. There was a single master bone, by pulling down/up on which, Gus can be made to show a few poses, with the eyes remaining unchanged.For moving the brow with the head, I had to parent this armature to the head bone of the body armature.
(Of course, one may argue that the brow movement can be done by simple animation too.)

I have a screenshot of the armature here below. There is also a video link for the short brow action (1 second).

Body Armature

Brow Armature

Merging poses

Smooth is the keyword here.

Making actions was not too tough, once you got the appropriate armature. The heyframes could be moved around easy to slow down or haste the action. IPO curves gvae a fine tuned control. However, breaking an action to halt/starting an action / merging of actions, seemed to be hell more of trouble than I had thought.Learning the NLA editor is a must as it removes some of the hassles of merging independent actions. In cases of dependant actions, there is a lot of manual labour required.

I tried out the following new poses on my character:-

a) Peeking around a corner, with only half the body out of line.

b) Bending down on all four

c) Jumping into the air

d) Lifting a heavy thing

An example is given on the right side.

Gus bending on all four

One of the toughest things for me to understand and execute was the stride bone. I still have not got it!!