[ANIM] YCH rig front test: Jiggly Jumping Jacks! (Patreon)

So, as you all know, much as I like animation, I reeeaaally hate animation cleanup. Do it wrong, and you can kill a lot of the charm of the original rough animation.

I also noticed that not only was I redrawing a lot of the same shapes (since I tend to simplify designs for repeated drawing), but I was slowly migrating to reusing drawings and assets to avoid redrawing lines inconsistently.  So I figured I might as well bite the bullet and make a puppet rig for Abby (and, by extension, Nabby, since she's identical, except in the eyes), so I could just slot that in and use that for cleanup.

The problem? 

This might have accounted for Abby, but it didn't account for anyone she might appear with. Not a big deal for small animations or rogue limbs:

But it doesn't account for larger figures, like, for example Phantom:

Who needs her own custom rig. There's a reason why the only major animation her is her fingers wiggling, and, in the next screen, she's not closer to Abby (aside from Abby's floof):

Getting in there and cuddling is just not something that rig can do. 

And Abby, by design, has a very atypical design; unless the other character is explicitly a shortstack or hobbit like her, I can't just adapt Abby's rig, like with Nabby.  It has to be a rig that matches that character's proportions.

The good news is that there's nothing stopping me from making a template rig that I can customize into other characters. So, that's my next project (aside from the strip game). 

Hence the jumping jacks with.... -I don't have a name, yet, and you guys are better at this than me, so if you wanna give her a name, drop it in the comments.

She has everything I need in a character (hence the bangs, ponytail, mane and sideburns) in the way that I tend to draw characters (hence the proportions). She just needs draw overs on each asset to match individual characters. For example, here's her, but nude:

Plus, once the rig is made of that character, I have access to it forever! yay!
So, expect to see a lot more of Abby's friends (or saunterfied version of other OCs) in future!