ABSTRACT
We’ve touched on the topic that controls need to be visually appealing and not get in the way of the animation. We also have a rule that the controllers should make sense to the animator; they should be intuitive. I have never studied the art, but there are those that are very much into interface design. If you have the opportunity to read up on it, or even fi nd someone who has that predilection, take them to lunch; it will be time well spent. I can’t pull student examples or even random examples from Creative Crash to point out awful examples of how not to create control systems. I trust you can look on your own and fi nd the stinkers, the ones whose controls get in the way of seeing the pose of the character. When trying to push the concept of controllers further it comes down to making the controller more intuitive so that it is self-explanatory and functions in such a way as to keep the animator’s focus on the character’s pose. We can push this so far as to make the controllers invisible. Doesn’t that sound fun?
