Hey there, and welcome to the latest edition of Toontown's Backstage column, where we get a look at everything that goes on behind-the-scenes here on the Toontown Team. Today, we're going to take a look at our new pipeline for Toon animation.My name is Andrew (but you can call me Ziggy), and I've been a 3D Artist and Technical Artist for Toontown Rewritten since 2014. My job is to bridge the gap between art and programming. Heads up: This post may be more technical than our typical Backstage columns. The Character Rig RigmaroleA couple years ago, we started working on a project that’d give animators the wonderful ability to create new Toon animation for Toontown Rewritten. What made this an even bigger challenge, however, is that we needed it to work with the existing animation as well! We called this project: Toontown Rerigged!This original pipeline update, which you can read about in my previous Backstage post, was achieved by setting the Toon’s character rig to function exactly as Toontown Online’s would have. .backstage__gif--right, .backstage__gif--left, .backstage__gif--center { margin: 1rem 2rem; box-shadow: 3px 3px 1px rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.25); border-radius: 10px; } .backstage__gif--left { float: left; transform: translateZ(0) rotateZ(-3deg); } .backstage__gif--right { float: right; transform: translateZ(0) rotateZ(3deg); } .backstage__gif--center { margin: 1rem auto; display: block; } "What’s a character rig?" Good question! It’s kind of like a puppet. A puppet's strings allow the puppeteer to control its movement. Similarly, a character rig gives animators to control a character's movement. As Toons come in many shapes and sizes, we built six of these character rigs to cover our bases. Seven, if you include our ToonFest mascot, Riggy Marole. Speaking of which, have you spotted Riggy Marole recently? Congratulations! You caught a glimpse of what Toontown Rerigged could do for you. (Boy, the strings that we gave him!)However,