I am trying to learn about rigging (Blender beginner, and have only done a couple of simple examples so far), and have the following model:
The effect I am looking to achieve is for the letter "t" to bend down and appear to pick up the ball. Then finally I would like it to jump away with the ball, with some squash and stretch effect on the whole body of the letter as it jumps.
So far I have created an armature with some bones and used this as an armature deform for the mesh:
Now I have two problems:
Due to the shape of the letter "t", I would like the arms to stretch out beyond their resting size, so that they can reach further to get the ball. Is there a way to add a stretch feature to the arms only?
I don't know how to add a global squash and stretch control to this armature, in order to achieve the effect of the whole body stretching as it jumps away. I guess I should add a large bone vertically somehow through the armature with a "Stretch To" constraint to a small bone at the top? The letter isn't symmetric, so I'm not sure of how to arrange the bottom part.
Is the right approach here to try to add more bones for stretching?