For the upcoming melvika animation, I decided to model and rig Sevika's arm instead of 2D animating it. Even though hand-drawn objects often have their own visual appeal over CG elements, I decided to go with a rig instead since rigging mechanical objects is relatively easy (not much finesse required for weight painting/deformations) and it will save animation time (drawing and cleaning up frames is a huge time sink in the 2D animation process, but 3D rendering sidesteps that completely)!
I used Maya to make the rig. Once the 3D animation is done, I'll export to Blender to render out a nice non-photorealistic render (NPR) that will hopefully integrate well with the 2D character animation.
Initially I didn't think to involve Sevika's mechanical arm much in the animation, but my friend gave me ideas for some creative mods that Sevika could add, so now it's very integral to the animation lol... In the nsfw version of the rig, the wires coming from her fingers are cut off because I don't want to deal with rigging/simulating wires so I'll 2D animate them instead (the attached concept drawing shows what it'll look like)! The thumb attachment will have suction and/or vibration, whatever reads best for the final animation hehe
Although I plan to have the animation take place sometime vaguely after Sevika becomes a councilor, my friend really sold me on her mechanical arm's potential in the bedroom, so maybe she's using a recreation of her old arm idk lol. Also, I imagine Sevika would no longer be using shimmer, so instead of glowing purple I opted for blue (maybe it's powered by hextech, idk)!