The robotic ant is a project I did to help market my university's artificial life program. I got to work on the concept art, modeling, texturing, rigging, and got to learn quite a bit about lighting and rendering as well. Trent Kollodge worked on all the awesome animation and Abe Stopani did all the compositing and editing. This first animation is using an ant to show some of the principles behind a robotic insect learning to walk. I'm quite pleased with how the project came together. I managed to put together some nice control schemes for the rig of the ant: some advanced spine-like controls for the antenna; an adapted group-based reverse foot setup; an ik control setup over multiple articulating joints; and a control scheme that would be difficult for an animator to break. This is also the first rigging job I did that was used solely by another animator, so I got to experience the feedback process of having to make changes to the rig after I thought it was complete.