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Been working on this little guy since AM 98 !! haven't had much time t work on it with workload and life stuff .. . 10 versions later in AM 19 . . some things screwed up but fixed now, new version of Momentum / Perry Animations Rig in place, love this rig, very simple and does the job ! we've got a local animation gathering weekly I think called loopdloop where you send a little loop animation, got invited to submit something by Perry Animation so doing a little 30sec one, more to come soon, need to work on the animation routine those skills have become super rusty

Your last comment is exactly my sentiment.... ( " there must be some reason we don't want to do this " ) Trusting Microsoft is a big leap of faith...

[Mod note: Don't miss the many excellent WIP images above this post!] Okay, it took me a while...I think I worked the kinks out. Here is a test render that I'll probably watch a thousand times and second guess most of what I did (1920x1080 MP4 H.264). It's a quick pan around the room....it looked correct on a few players like VLC and Windows Media Player, but one it was washed out (I'm assuming it was the color correction in that one...it's more geared to viewing EXR sequences). If it looks washed out to anyone, let me know. BreakRoomFlyThrough_04_10_2025.mp4

test animation for World Industries TVC for Globe Skate comp over here, they originally started to do this in 3DS Max until they realised AM was the best for this type of work, dont know where these models are though that was a while ago, most of the work was left on the company servers as I only worked there freelance

thats mad ! you got me digging the crates for old work lol , TVC for Doritoes

Thanks fellas, its been a long time coming ha ha true about the animation thing Michael, finally getting there and def about to have some fun David ! Happy UFO Day ! ( didn't know this was a thing lol ! )

Please load the PRJ and tell me if "Happy New Year.wav" show its waveform in the Chor. Can you hear it if you scrub the chor timeline? Then import "slurp2.wav" and drag it into the Chor. Does it show? What version of A:M are you on, including the version letter? SoundTest001.zip

My thoughts: 1) If you don't try, you'll never know. If trying isn't going to financially ruin you, then there's no reason not to try. 2) There seems to be an insatiable demand for actual quality children's content. I don't think you can go wrong going after that market. 3) AI throws a wrinkle into things, but the things that I've seen done with AI all seem to have a very similar look. Either they have that hyper-realistic look (think of those alternate imaginings of movies set in different time periods that you see on YouTube, like a 1950s Star Wars on Cinemascope, that kind of thing) or they have a more cartoon-like Pixar sort of look. But I don't think you'll ever see anything *truly* unique out of AI, since it can only produce things that look like what it has been trained on. My gut instinct is that outside of certain narrow use-cases, it won't be the panacea everyone is making it out to be. That said, I could easily be wrong, the type of stuff that AI was producing just 3 years ago was fairly laughable, compared to what you're seeing now. But I still don't think it will be able to come up with anything truly unique. 4) As far as publishing your work, YouTube might be the best way to go as there is a pretty big kid's market there. However, in order to get promoted by the algorithm you'll need to produce shorts on a weekly basis, which is a pretty tall order.

@gazzamataz It's always great to see you. From time to time over the years I've seen projects here in the A:M Forum that really capture my curiosity and not just from a general perspective but from one that I guess I would call 'commericial'. In most of these I think... this is a really intriguing concept. Where things get a bit more fluid is where I think, "is this commercial enough?" and "How could this be simplified/polished". I should say that your project reminds me of some of the classics like "HR Puff n' Stuff" which really capture the imagination (and definitely did when I saw the show as a kid. Music has it's songs that are 'ear worms' that we find ourselves humming or thinking of frequently. When thinking of HR Puff 'n Stuff some of the design elements are like this. I think of Cling and Clang as supporting characters but almost all of the characters have an odd appeal that captures the attention. Your 'Bella the Bear' has some of this 'odd intrique' and you've put a lot of effort into the concept over the years. As you've suggested the look and feel is definitely vintage early 2000 CGI which in its own way has some appeal but for most probably lends its self more to curiosity than commericial viability. So to the question at hand which is: ```should I revisit my project once more to see if I get anywhere with it or is the market for children’s characters and stories so saturated I should just tinker with my project for the fun of it?``` I do think you should revisit the project but I would suggest for the moment tinkering with a 'for the fun of it' focus. You already know Bella and Friends could use a refresh in order to test if the concept can be made more viably commercial. While you don't care 'Bella' to be something you don't want it to be it would be a good exercise to consider what a commercial marketing house that took on the project might do to make the concept more marketable. I don't know how familiar you are with Eastman and Laird's experience with 'Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles' but their story is something of a legend. There comic book characters and concepts where purchased and adapted to 'kid friendly' animation and the world took that and ran with it. Some of that success was rather problematic... and lots of changes to characters and concepts happened. All of this to suggest that you firstly and foremostly need to make yourself happy. (While still having enough money to eat and have a roof over your head of course!) You might need to let go of your characters a little (but not to the point where you can't always do your own take as you see fit... in other words: reserve some rights to personal use). If tomorrow someone offered you a truckload of money to license 'Bella the Bear' and they ran with it... where would they take the concept? While having fun... within your limits of production capability... and while waiting for lightning to strike, insert yourself as that someone with the truckload of money and... run with it. I would start with the title concept "Bella the Bear". Bella is a bear. There's where I would start.

Hello All, For about a mount plus I my real job has been taking over all of my time and I had some personal stuff too. I have fell behind on Animation Master stuff. I'm at work now and have a 4 hour drive back to my office. But I'm going to work through email and PM backlog tonight and tomorrow. I'm really sorry about not being around and I'm back at it

In 2001, I was commissioned by a designer friend to create a book illustration for a novel called Angry Young Spaceman. A few years earlier, I had done the back cover illustration for Flyboy Action Figure Comes with Gasmask by Jim Munroe. For this next novel, I got to illustrate the front and back cover and even created a short looping animation, which we made available as a screensaver. It's always so fun to work on book illustrations and then go into bookstores and see your work on the shelves. Proudly all made in A:M

Back when I was finishing college, a friend from high school started his own web design company. He pitched the idea of creating an online poker game and came to me to create some graphics for it. The game was going to have a top-down view of the poker table, but I still wanted to create everything in 3D. I had just started modeling some of the players before the project got canceled but I was still able to reuse some assets for later projects.

I was nearing the end of my third and final year in Illustration when my teacher approached me with a volunteer assignment outside the usual class projects. In Oakville, there was a summer festival that took place in the 1990s and early 2000s called the Oakville Waterfront Festival. It was a major event at the time, featuring live music, games, food, and craft shows. The previous year, my teacher’s studio had illustrated the festival poster, which featured a 3D rendering of an ice cream cone. Having seen what I was capable of modeling in A:M, he asked for my help in creating a 3D version of the festival’s beloved mascot, "Jake from the Lake." Over the next few weeks, I modeled Jake and his buddy, Fishy, and the rest is history. Below, you can see a screenshot of the final poster, along with the Photoshop revisions my teacher made, including the addition of the ice cream cone from the previous year. It was such an exciting time I had never seen my work in print like that before. The poster was displayed all over the city, featured in newspaper articles, and even printed large scale for bus shelter ads.

Stalled Trek: The City on the Edge of Foreclosure is on YouTube now! The last of the film festivals I submitted to is over, so I've finally set the movie free. 😀 You can see it on my YouTube channel here: Stalled Trek: The City on the Edge of Foreclosure