Catball

In the game Animal Crossing, the characters faces are very clearly 2D drawings, but they animate and change expressions. I did some research for how exactly they did that, having a face over the eyes and mouth that link to a specific UV map that contains all possible expressions for that character. It’s then animated by moving the UV around. I decided to try it myself, and made this cute lil guy.

I also hooked the UV face plates to armature bones, those two triangles on the face. Rotating them changes the expression on the face, and those two ear bones have wiggle physics on them to react dynamically with the head’s movements. Its a relatively simple rig, but its for a cute character, and I learned something from it.