Rigging a Wheelchair

[arnetiaf62341334]

I'm pretty new to CA so forgive me if I get some of the terms confused. We're developing a puppet that gets around in a motorized wheelchair. He's created with 3/4 moving views both right and left and the moving chair cycle, I assume, will be a trigger. The puppet is not yet complete, but I was wondering if anyone knew of a similar puppet that I could use as a learning tool for rigging? 

[Candance26512369wvjq]

It sounds like you are trying to figure out how best to animate the motion of a power wheelchair. 

• If so, it might be helpful to ask someone who either repairs chairs for a living or better still someone who USES a chair (like me! 🙂 ). I have been a wheelchair user for 20 years.  

First, you might want to ask several people as you branch out since everyone's experience is different. Let's others tell you what variations to do

Here's what I can tell you.  As to chair seats, a Captain's chair (the one that looks like a car seat) might be the easiest to draw since it's rounded. A Rehab seat is basically two rectangles. Either seat would be on top of a 3D rectangle or square. A chair has a footrest or rests to keep a users feet off the ground...this can be one half-round or 2 squares divided by a small gap. A chair can have 4 or 6 wheels. The wheels all move but on a 6-wheeled/heavy duty chair...most the motion come from the big tires/drive tires and the rear casters/ small back tires(those help steer the chair).

Also, an actual chair can go as fast as 6mph...so you don't have to make your chair user faster than your walking characters(unless you want to). 

If overwhelming you or insulting you by watering things down, I apologize. I don't know what experience you have with chairs, so that makes it difficult to gage how much detail to give. 

If I had to take a power wheelchair chair out of disability context for a second: it's a one-seater Prius (especially when the chair is new) run by an Atari joystick with hover board experience (the more you have, the smoother the ride). Anytime, I have had a bad time with a chair...it was either that I had the speed up too high or the chair was old. Sorry for the rambling...I hope there's something useful in here to help.

[k_oshiro]

With the sample puppet Frankie, you can see the rigging of the wheelchair.
https://pages.adobe.com/character/en/puppet-maker

I also explain the movement of the wheelchair using a layer picker in my YouTube video. (Japanese)
https://youtu.be/sRlBEgwZDCI

Thanks

[Cherie2450573608fr]

I did a few videos on rigging a wheel chair on my channel (not motorized though!) Not sure if they would be helpful to you?
https://youtu.be/obOe_W3UssY

https://youtu.be/ITHxq_n9hCs
https://youtu.be/MaKk0EPL28w

Good luck!