Model Rig Finished

The following photos show the completed rig of my character. 

Nurbs circles around the arms control the FK

The square indicates that you are on Ik mode for the arms, you can see the R and L letters behind the elbows for the vector controls

I have uploaded them twice to show the IK/FK controls for the arms (by selecting the wrist controller you can select further select the Ik or FK for the arms, I did that by adding an attribute and setting up set driven keys). 

The circles on the top of the head are to control the joints on the eye_brows. The Eyes are controled by locators that have been parent constrained and orient constrained with the eyes, as for the eyelids I added an attribute on the neck controller (R/L Eyeblink) and then set a driven key with the start Sweep of the NurbSphere (Eyelid),by a factor from 0 to 10 I can control the eyes being completely shut (0) and open (10).

The crosses are the locators and the cirlcles on top of the eyebrows control their movement

For a mouth because all decisions were of the last minute I chose to make a blendshape to emphasize the characters surprise, initially James and Jamie told me not to work on the mouth area because I had fallen behind schedule and to focus on my animation, but as I struggled to get everything done I realized my animation needed a blendshape (even a simple lame one) and did everything in my power to add one.

Mouth Closed

Mouth Open  - I  know it seems lame but there was little time to do any sophisticated blendshapes

 

The (S) on top of the shoulders control the clavical, I have 3 controllers (nurbcircles) for the FK of the arms one for the shoulder, one for the elbow and one for the wrist. The actual Ik handle for the arm goes from the shoulder to the forearm but I extended the end effector of the IK handle (selected it from the hypergraph) to the wrist, I did that because I can extend the control of the IK handle to the wrist and rotate the forearm independently, later on I add an expression for the forearm that was controlled by the wrist, because when you rotate your wrist your forearm rotates with it by a 3rd,  so when the wrist rotates on the X axis the forearm rotates /3, that way you get a more natural look of your character when moving.

Here the forearm is selected, notice the purple colour on the control panel that indicates an expression

I also made an IK controller for the arms with a  pole vector to control the elbows (I did the same with the knees) the letters L and R are to control them, I did that to avoid the elbows (and knees) being twisted when the arms and legs are being moved in extreme angles.

For the legs I have 2 IK handles that control the foot roll, again here an attribute and set driven keys were added to the R/L Foot controls. 

Although it is not quite visible the toes still stay in their position when the ankle is in this position (they lift when the foot rolls higher)

The joints that control the foot roll

The Wrists have set driven keys on them for various poses (the left hand has a fist shape, and the right wrist has a fist, Coin hold shape and a press button shape).

In the control panel you can see the various poses for the R wrist (the L wrist has only got a fist pose)

Button shape pose

Coin hold shape

The spine is contolled by an IK spline, I then selected the vertices of that spine and made a cluster deformers out of them and used the controllers for the abs and chest to control those clusters.

As for the textures, I did not use the texture editor to texture my character because I was't going to be graded on it so I had to do choose a fast way of doing it, instead of cutting and sewing UV's then exporting them to photoshop and painting them (then importing them back)  I did eveything by selecting the corresponding faces on the topology of my character, then assigned a different material to them, so I have Shoe_M, skin_M, shirt_M hair_M etc..., this saved time and I focused more on my animation.