Nico graduated in 2006 from the Institute of Animation and Visual Effects at the Filmakademie Baden­Wuerttemberg, Germany and began his professional rigging career at Chris Creatures in Berlin where he worked on his first feature film “Rudi ­ the racing pig”.

Later that year he joined Framestore in London to work on the animated feature “The Tale of Despereaux.

In the summer of 2008 Nico left Europe to join Dreamworks PDI in Northern California, where he worked for 6 years on animated blockbusters such as Megamind, Madagascar 3, Kungfu Panda 2 and 3, Peabody and Sherman and The Penguins of Madagascar.

Nico returned to Europe last summer to create rigs for Disneys Jungle Book at MPC in London.

Besides working as a Character Rigger on feature films for more than 9 years, Nico has also been teaching Rigging at various schools such as TD­College, The Animation Workshop in Denmark and Animschool.

His experience with Maya goes back 16 years to version 1.5 and he is proficient in MEL and python scripting.

Rigging the face is the ultimate rigging challenge. There are so many layers of complexity in building a face and this forces you to have a process thatyou can use over and over, especially for prouction-redy rigs. 

This workshop allows you to learn the process of one of the best riggers out there and to take a look at facial rigging with animated feature films in mind. Students will lean how to create a fully functioning face rig, looking at one element at a time so that anyone can follow along.

Here are some example of things you will learn.

Edgeloops in a model are super important, especially when it comes to the face. This workshop will teach you how to do a proper Mesh study in order to ask for a model that deforms well.

Learn how you can automate the upper lids so they are pushed up by the bottom lids. 

This is an example of the things you will learn in this Facial Rigging Workshop.

Learn the proper techniques to create a sophisticated squash and stretch head rig. If you are not adding a squash and stretch to your face rig, it means you are not creating a production-ready rig. 

Learn from an instructor who has done this kinds of rigs in many times in major animated and feature film production