[yosefk]

I've read Williams' book, and I've studied animation and done some, though I wouldn't call myself an animator yet.

I hope to avoid building rigs because they're, well, rigs. Much nicer and more flexible to control things though drawing than a rig which has a bunch of limitations and then there are issues with hair/cloth/water/etc. What can be done without a rig is another question but the methods I reviewed in this post are not the most that can be done for sure.

[commieneko]

Rig can mean a lot of things. Hand drawn animators often use a rig, it’s just the rig is made of graphite lines on paper driven by a meat based neural network.

I'm not just being cute when I say that. The problems the AI in the examples was having have distinct analogs with the problems human animators have. Arcs are a problem, as is the notion that in-betweens are mostly about interpolation.

As I said, timing and articulation are at the heart of most kinds of animation. Even very stylized animation must be aware of this, if not being a slave to it. Imagination and expression are important, but first the audience has to _believe_.