RIT project increases representation in animated films
Jackson Burns Bulmer '27
Deanna Moorehead '25 MFA, Senior Lecturer Kevin Bauer, and Maggie Slaughter '26 spent the summer expanding the Character Mosaic Project, an initiative that will positively affect students and the stories they are able to tell.
When making a 3D-animated film during a 15-week semester, there is a lot of ground for students to cover.
A group of RIT students, recent alumni, and faculty in the School of Film and Animation are making that landscape easier to navigate by offering more avenues for creative storytelling.
Senior Lecturer Kevin Bauer is heading the recently revived Character Mosaic Project, an initiative started in 2017 by Associate Professors Atia Newman and Mark Reisch. The project aims to build a library of 3D characters — diverse in their ethnicities and backgrounds — that are open source for animators to seamlessly use as a broader range of subjects in their films.
Bauer resurrected the project after receiving new funding to place the finishing touches on the original two characters, Emerald and Omar. And over the summer, the Character Mosaic Project team made significant progress on two additional character rigs.
It’s all in service of increasing representation in films created by RIT students.
“We’re not making these rigs that are overly advanced,” said Bauer, graduate director of RIT’s film and animation MFA program. “We want them to fit quickly and smoothly into the production pipeline. That will hopefully expand the stories our students are telling because they’ll have a wider range of characters to pick and choose from that offer more variety.”
Jackson Burns Bulmer '27
Deanna Moorehead, left, and Maggie Slaughter work on the Character Mosaic Project over the summer in MAGIC Spell Studios.
Reagan Christie ’25 MFA (film and animation), Deanna Moorehead ’25 MFA (film and animation), and Maggie Slaughter ’26 (film and animation BFA - animation option) worked under the direction of Bauer to develop the latest two characters over the summer. Moorehead and Slaughter were on co-op through MAGIC Spell Studios while Christie’s role was funded by an RIT Provost’s Learning Innovation Grant.
The project’s portfolio is now up to three characters, with a fourth on the way, that are available for animators to download for free from the project’s website.
"Having free and easy-to-use characters available, beyond the handful of white characters that always get used, lets you focus on things like animation, lighting, rendering, and storytelling,” Moorehead said. “In 3D, there is this limiting factor of how complicated other parts of the process are. This opens people up to tell the stories they want.”
Observing 3D animation students face bandwidth barriers drew Bauer to the project.
He said finding time to build custom characters is often at odds with producing other required elements for a film during a semester. In those situations, Bauer said, students rely on the internet’s limited selection of free character rigs — which typically have a narrow demographic scope.
“We get similar-type stories because they are always told through the same few characters,” Bauer said.
“It’s tough when you need to write a story around the one guy you can find,” Slaughter said.
The holdover characters from project’s early days are Emerald, a quiet, mixed-race teenage girl from the inner-city of Pittsburgh, Pa., and Omar, a middle-aged man representing Central America’s working class. Alyssa Minko ’19 (film and animation) and Marcel Saleta ’17 (film and animation) were the original designers of Emerald and Omar, respectively.
After securing a Provost’s Learning Innovation Grant, Bauer hired Moorehead to finish rigging those models.
Moorehead also built the rig (a digital skeleton allowing animators to control a character’s movement) for the team’s newest character, Bashir, an energetic pre-teen from Somalia who uses a wheelchair. Bashir’s wheelchair was also made as a separate asset that can be applied to other characters. Another character, Dee, a cool, creative woman in her mid-60s from India, will also be available soon.
Character Mosaic Project
From left, the project's three fully completed character rigs: Bashiir, Omar, and Emerald.
Christie worked remotely as the character designer over the summer, drawing initial 2D sketch options for Bashir and Dee. Slaughter, as the project’s modeler, translated the designs to 3D and passed it along to Moorehead for rigging.
Along the way, surveys were sent to School of Film and Animation students and other departments for voting on character options and overall input.
“It’s been a good learning process,” Slaughter said. “I’ve been looking at a lot of anatomy books and images and other people’s work as a reference to get everything working from all angles.”
Jackson Burns Bulmer '27
The Character Mosaic Project team spent the summer working out of MAGIC Spell Studios.
To Moorehead, having a workspace in MAGIC Spell Studios in the summer allowed the team to share invaluable, real-time feedback.
“I’ve made a lot of rigs, in a lot of contexts,” she said. “But I think the ones I made as part of this project are the best because of the access I have to Maggie and Kevin.”
Moving forward, Bauer is seeking additional funding opportunities to build more characters. He also hopes college art students outside of RIT can take advantage of the library of options.
“There is an endless number of characters we can create to offer more representation,” Bauer said. “The longer-term goal is to keep that alive.”