More animation stuff:

So here is my original rough sketch for my favourite robot arm design which I have now decided to make and rig in 3D studio max:

I have re-followed Andy's tutorial where I needed to to produce the arm and rig it all very similarly to my first example. However, a lot of my design uses longer and thinner parts (arm/fingers) at different angles, due to my test version having trouble reaching past the first 2 rows on my chess board.

This is a render from the middle of the modelling and rigging process.

Due to this new design, I had to put in more precision when rotating for the the finger attributes, considering how it would effectively hold a pawn or other pieces.

Here is a quick render showing how I have managed this: