Manny Rig - The origins / by Jose Espinosa

Manny Rig is a personal project ive been working for a while now in my free time. Eventually it will be a rig that will be sold online with a bunch of features. Right now, my free time consists on weekends and whenever i get home from my 9-6 day job and have enough energy to work on him. 

For me it has been a somewhat slow process. Also the passing of Hurricane Maria was a really tough blow on my professional and personal life here in the island. It was hard to work on a rig without having electricity for 6 months and just struggling to get basic necessities. But I managed to find ways to at least work on him a bit and nevertheless, have learned a whole bunch working him. 

The original idea and design of the character is from my friend Christian Berrios, who also modeled the character. Very talented fellow, glad to be able to work with him! He envisioned This muscular wrestler, a la old style with the handlebar mustache and i thought it was a really cool idea. We have some further ideas with the character in terms of additional outfits. 

One of our ideas is making him a super hero suit, and a hairstyle similar to a Clark Kent style. First sketches and sculpt tests of the idea look super cool! We still have some other ideas about outfits for him, like an army/soldier outfit and stuff around that area but nothing is set in stone yet. 

Later on i will be writing about my technical approach on how i did his hand posing system in maya. Right now, i need to keep preparing for my trip to Vancouver! Siggraph 2018!