Meet Mr Buttons - the Cartoon Cat

Mr Buttons

Meet Mr Buttons, the cartoon cat created by veteran animator and rigger Keith Osborn, who has made his cute orange cat available for free download.

Mr Buttons is a fun, quirky rig, suitable for broad cartoony character animation.  Mr Buttons is the star of Osborn's book "Cartoony Character Animation with Maya", which we recommend for all our students.

We also have a series of tutorials with Mr Buttons (see below) on how to plan cartoony animation.

Blocking animation

One of the biggest challenges encountered by student animators is how to block out a shot from scratch, starting off with nothing but a blank screen and a character rig.  In animation you get nothing for free. You start off with a digital puppet, usually in a stiff "T-pose", and you have to figure out the rest yourself.  In a new series of videos, we show how to take a reaction shot - a cartoony "take" - from zero to hero.

How to Plan Animation

In the series of videos, we show how to go about blocking out an animated scene, this case a reaction shot, or "take", with a cartoony cat rig.

The series of short videos shows an approach to building and blocking the shot, how to imagine the scene, so that you start by making positive choices about the character's state of mind, carefully planning what is going to happen.

Animators are actors, and we need to create a memorable performance, but we also need a workflow that we can depend upon.

Mr Buttons Rig
The tutorial uses the excellent free character rig Mr Buttons. created by Keith Osborn, and available for free download. There are six short videos to watch:

1. Setting Your Scene Up
2. Setting Your Character Up
3. Blocking Keys
4. Blocking Breakdowns
5. Blocking Anticipation, Ease-In, Overshoot 
6. Splining and Offsetting Keys
7. Extra Finessing
8. Adding a Prop Asset

Vimeo Channel

You can see some animation with Mr Buttons at our Vimeo channel, in our "take" tutorial by animation director Simone Giampaolo.  Like all our videos, this one is password-protected, meaning it is only available for our current students and graduates.

The Escape Studios Animation Blog offers a personal view on the art of animation and visual effects. To apply for our BA/MArt in 3D Animation, follow this link. To apply for our storyboarding evening class, visit this page here. For the next 12 week animation course, click here.