Bringing Principles to Rigging for Animation : Teaching rigging within game development education

Sammanfattning: The subject of digital animation witnessed the indispensable role of rigging in enabling movement and functionality, particularly within the context of game development. While animation principles (Thomas & Johnston, 1995) form the foundation of this discipline, rigging principles remain somewhat elusive, lacking the same fundamental status even to this day. As a highly technical subject, rigging can pose challenges to students who may not be aware of its intricate logic, yet still have to contend with it. This study presents an epistemic solution designed to elucidate the logic of rigging by emphasizing fundamental concepts over ready-made solutions. A full list of concepts was defined. To evaluate the effectiveness of this pedagogical approach, a workshop was held, focusing on experiential (Kolb, 2014), concept-based, teaching. It was compared with a control group whose workshop inherited the traditional pedagogical methodology. Afterwards, both groups were handed a convergent and a divergent test assignment (Guilford, 1968). Qualitative data was gathered through interviews, capturing student’s reflections and opinions on the respective workshops and test assignments. Results show a positive attitude towards both teaching methods. However, there was a particular alacrity among the students in the concept workshop, and they appreciated its pedagogical differences. Some students appeared to pick up on the epistemology and even expressed a realization of "why", and in doing so, stated the epistemic goal verbatim. Moreover, the traditional methodology entails less engagement in the convergent test assignment, further proving the potential for creative thinking (Runco, 2014) in the procedural test assignment. This demonstrated the potential benefit of this approach to education. This study is meant to start a discourse on effective pedagogical strategies in the context of rigging for digital animation, shedding light on the benefits of concept-based teaching. With more resources, it would have also focused on how the concepts affect game development directly.