Soon I have to begin animating again to meet the deadlines required for the Echoes project but I feel I can leave the rig as it is for now and come back to it later if time permits. So far though I have managed to create an eye rig and cotroller as well as a control setup for all the existing joints.

The eye rig is simple and efficient enough for an animator to use and has a couple of handy features. The animator can rotate either the upper or lower eyelid or both at the same time to create open or closed eyes but the most interesting feature is the fleshy eye setup. Using a simple deformer, when the eye moves in any direction the skin around the eye also moves and deforms with it. Making this feature appear noticeable without being exaggerated was certainly a challenge and there was a lot of trial and error to get it right but in the end I feel I got there and perhaps with a little more tweaking I could clean it up a little bit extra to make it that bit more effective.