Woody Rig

The rig has a custom attribute which allows the animator to switch between the IK/FK. Two join chains, IK and FK, are orient constrained to the main rig joint chain and thus drive the motion of the arm. The IK join chain was constructed using the IK handle tool and the direction in which the elbow points was accomplished using the pole vector constraint.  

The rig features a reverse foot lock with toe twist, heel twist, foot roll, and  foot bank.  This system was achieved through a hierarchy of controls (foot -> heel -> toe -> ball -> ankle). The ankle locator is constrained to the IK handle for the foot. The ball control manages the rotation of the ankle joint, and the toe control manages the rotation of the ball of the foot. 

Woody's facial rig has different blend shapes. Each blend shape is keyed to the movement of the red nurbs curve circles. The animator can transform them to manipulate the geometry and the facial interface. The red nurbs circles control the clusters that contain selected vertices of the decorative black facial interface such that, e. g, one red control moves only the upper vertices of a lower eyelid nurbs curve as pictured.  The red controls also have limits set in the attribute editor. They can  move only a certain distance up and down so that the interface does not become disorganized and confusing for the animator.

On problem that I run into as I was rigging Woody was unnatural eye behavior. Whenever I moved the global control for the character or titled his head, the eyes would pop out of the head. To solved this issue, I tried to point constrain the eye geometry to the head joint, but that did not work. I came up with a different solution which involved binding each eye to a new joint, parenting those two joints under the head joint in the hierarchy, and aim constraining the eye controls to the eye joints. All of this worked except the aim constrain, as the eyes did not have the same rotation as the head when the head was titled. To solve this last issue, I changed the world up setting in the aim constraint to be directed at a pair of locators  placed above the eyes instead. I then put those locators in the same group which contained all my eye controls and fell under the head control in the hierarchy.