Rodney

@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.

It's all 'math' to me... My question as it relates to 3D modeling is: How does this contribute to continuity of adacent (relatively) planar surfaces? There is another element of this video suggests 0-0=0. But is this more 'pulling rabbit from hat'* in considering that an x - y = z where none of the variables are (invariably) equal? How equal are they and when are they equal? *To use a phrase from the video. This underlying schemes concerns polygons. Useful for math but historically an obstacle for splines and patches. Terms to consider regarding continuity: Triagons, non intersecting diagonals Potentially useful: The Hexagon is a useful construct in that it can be divided into quadrilaterals. Going deeper down the rabbit hole: In the second video we are introduced to the idea of a null subdigon which is the equivalent of a two point line. This is also referred to as the 'roof' of the shape under consideration.

As a workaround until that gets fixed you might try applying the video/reference to a single patch (as a patch image). Decals also work when timing is animated so that is another option. Layers... do NOT appear to work so they are likely effected by the same bug as Rotoscopes.

Robert, Roger and I were discussing various topics and some of Walter Lantz's drawing and animation resources were shared and discussed. Here's one that we didn't discuss on creating characters that includes a storyboarding session. Several currrent day legends in the animation business such as Eric Goldberg claim that watching Walter Lantz's shows delving into the process of animation were early inspirations to them. What got me thinking in the direction of Walter Lantz was his book 'The Easy Way to Draw' which I had never heard of but have recently added to my library.

Change: Along with processing the different values of coins we add some error checking in this one.

Attempt at Scrabble: Note for the curious: A key element of the program is changing inputs to uppercase.

Guest speaker for the CS50 course in 2005... some guy named Mark: As is the case these days... not a lot of people in attendance in the class.

I seriously have issues... JUST DO THE ASSIGNMENT. Is that so hard? Me: I think I'll change the assignment to make a pyramid instead. Gah! J U S T... D O... T H E... A S S I G N M E N T !

Wow! Outstanding. That's a lot of characters. I hadn't realized just how many characters you've created.

In Week 0 the Harvard CS50 course demos programming using the learning tool called 'Scratch'. The first intro course I took in programming used 'Alice'. I liked Alice because it could load OBJ models and Animation:Master could output OBJ models! Scratch is more popular and used more often and its likely if you are younger than 30 you've been exposed to it if you had any computer related classes in school. In Week 1 the course move on to using the C language. This being quite useful as C++ derives much of its standard usage from C. And C++ is what drives programs like Animation:Master.

Here's your chance to master the art of programming and computer science. The course is starting today (officially) but has been ran continuously for the past few years. The course is self paced. Link: https://www.edx.org/learn/computer-science/harvard-university-cs50-s-introduction-to-computer-science Take the plunge. You know you want to. You know you need to.

My current take on this gap between bipartite grids and four color theory is that at the moment we join 'areas' (grid squares) we need to establish a new 'color'. According to the science we don't need more than 4 colors but we can have as many colors as we want. So... Underlying the whole gamut of shape and group assignments our algoritm can chug away at reducing to 4 colors. We then dictate in some fashion the shapes and extents of those areas and build upon and extrapolate from that. To the observant this might appear to place us at the intersection between raster and vector graphics. Attached is this 'nonbipartite' grid project: nonbipartite.prj

Here's an example of a non-bipartite grid, meaning that no two grid squares of the same color touch (even at the corners). If they could touch at the corners they could be termed 'bipartite'. In A:M we can work around this by having multiple groups of the same color. In effect, masking or hiding what is actually happening. In other words, presenting a grid that appears bipartite when in fact it is not. Something worth observing here might be that initial choice of what grid squares were white (given that underneath it all all the grid squares are black). In the first row our white group has started with the second patch. In the second row we shift and choose the patch to the left. We could have just as easily chose to shift right and add that to our group instead. There is something of significance in this choice as it sets the stage for what other grid squares can be selected and included in our group and what grid squares must be left out. But we must make a choice... so is one choice more correct than the other? Should we turn left or turn right? As with continuity it would at least intially appear that consistency is key. Our decision being made we must proceed and deal with the consequences.

If A:M were autogrouping I'm curious how it would color these areas of continuity. Especially as A:M's named groups can consist of areas also covered by other named groups. Four color theory would suggest we need a minimum of 4 colors to assign a unique color to every patch and have no two patches adjacent to each other be the same color. If the surface is a grid... we can get away with only 2 colors (ala checkerboard). But our models rarerly fit into a perfect grid. And discontinuity leads to many problems... In fact, I'd say it runs smack dab into the 4 color theory problem but in this particular case (that of grids (read: patches) thinking we can eternally steer clear of being represented with a less than 4 control points/colors. Added: Here we likely need to look into 'strongly colored grids' or 'king's grids' where no two grid squares of the same color can touch each other. If they do touch then that creates a cascading effect where other grid squares also must change color/grouping. In A:M we see this when we attempt to group patches and inadvertently have other patches join our group becuase they share those other area's control points

One of the (many) plusses of spline continuity is how we can use processes such as 'splitpatch' and autobeveling to increase or potentially decrease the density of our meshes. We do have to watch out for those extraordinary vertexes... er... patches. We don't control all the processes so we have to consider closely how those processes deal with discontinuity (whether preceived or actual).