I was really interested in building an Osipa style rig and decided that my character for my Sheridan Short Film was a great way to test it. ‘Osipa style’ basically means a 4 quadrant square that contains a controller. A blend shape is weighted to each point of the square.
As the controller moves around in the square, it dials up, and more importantly, dials down, opposing shapes. This reduces a lot of grunt work for the animator, and allows the modeller (in this case also me) to more predictably create morph target shapes. I can, to a certain extent, control what shapes will blend with, and this makes it easier to create more appealing, specific shapes.
Anyways, I modelled, rigged, skinned and animated this facial test. I used it for my short film and it was a huge success. The ‘stop staring’ book that contains the concepts I described above was a huge help.