Rodney

I started animating a walk and then... the trouble began... I noticed some Normals were flipped inward (actually, the majority of them were inverted) Going in to flip the Normals I noticed some awkward splineage in the tail but tried to ignore them. Decided to see what I could do to fix them. Connected the tail splines together while trying to ignore the other odd splineage near the legs... Decided to fix the rear legs. Decided to fix the front legs. Am currently trying to ignore the odd splineage in the head/face. I wish I would have recorded this as that would have been useful to new modelers... Still to do: Repair the splines in the head. I know you can get away with animating the Goat 'as is' but my recommendation would be to download the attached, take the time to fix the head and then re-rig. I know it's important to keep the production going but it'll be worth the effort to fix this stubborn Goat in my opinion. I've attached a copy of where I've left off with a rather 5 point heavy approach to splineage but one that maximizes continuity of splines while decreasing the over all number of splines throughout the character. I don't claim it's the best spline layout but I think it's moving in the right direction. I also moved the center spline (and therefore the entire character) over to the center line as well so it can be assumed that the bones are now too far over to the side. I'd press on further but have to get ready for work. However you want to proceed... have fun with it! Added: While it's a bit hard to see I've attached an image to show some of the main problems with the model as it was (flipped normals, disconnected splines, bad spline continuity/terminations). Goat_WIP001.mdl

Very nice Mark! It's probably too early to make suggestions but you know me... I'm torn between suggesting whether or not to put a bend in her knees. I can envision both bend and straight working at different times of the action. I'd say for a still image having her knees bend with her foot back against the lower part of the horses ribcage will suggest a very solid connection/weight/balance between the horse and rider. It'd also push the supporting elements of the line of action forward in the direction of travel. Impressive scenery too! Dare I ask... how much of that is photograph? Love the over all composition.

You should be able to use the shortcut key Control S (and then hit Enter key) to save as well. (I assume here that you want to save your goldfish before resetting)

Happy Birthday Jeff! Hope you had a great one!

Oooo.... this is going to be good. Looking forward to the next update Ben!

After reading that you were studying the 40 Acres sets I googled that and spend some time wondering around the various resources (mostly on the early 40 Acres that no longer exists). I particularly like the site I went to that had markers for where various movies were shot. There is gold in that arena.

Very nice Mark. The time spent on this should pay off well for you. I'm taking notes because Lloyd is going to be needing a similar approach for 'Woke Up Dead'. The task there is going to be made a bit more difficult because the structures will need to have more of a 'cobbled together' feel to them. The jury is still out on what approaches will work best but modular structures such as you've got here are definitely the way to go for the 'hero' buildings.

I was wondering when Sintel might make the transition over this way. Looking very good!

Very nice! I'm enjoying every image you post. There is a 3D Viewmaster feel to this last one.

The second is a generic body type with minimal detail. I was thinking of using a basic character like this as a stand in for background characters... (superhero types) but that's as far as my thinker got in moving that direction. Note: No bones with this guy. Quick exercises in spline modeling like this are highly recommended to loosen up and get the head back into the modeling game. If nothing else they keep the splines flowing and who knows if someday they might not turn into something. TheGuyMesh.mdl

I'm posting a few spline doodles here because I don't think I'll do anything else with them at this point. The first is the start of a female body that didn't really go anywhere... BasicBodyFemale_v0_00__start_only_.mdl

For comparison... here's a basic color profile for PIXAR's 'Bugs Life': (Turned verticle for no particular reason)

I love the sketchy look! (although I'm inclined to call it 'painterly') Nice. The benefits of avoiding too much realism in animation are many aren't they?

That is rather unlike any animation style I've seen in A:M. (A good thing in my opinion) It might be good to slow down the audio/foley of the board hitting the railing a little to keep it feeling in sync with the slow down of the imagery. There was/is something about the imagery proceeding normally and then going into slo-mo that could use an echo of sorts in the audio. (Note: I'm not talking about slowing down the music... that's fine... just the sound effect of the board/rollers)

Nice one Matt. Reminds me of some video games that could be seen in almost every kids arcade in Japan a few years ago.

Where it comes to comic books... well, books in general... I prefer the physical product. I'm a fan of digital but there is something about having that book/magazine in your hand flipping back and forth between pages that is hard to beat. I regret that old bookstores are pretty much gone from the scene and comic book stores... are pale in comparison to what I wish they could be. It's a great time to be in the comic biz but interestingly enough its perhaps the worst time as well. I miss those old comic books on cheap newsprint paper that folks were more likely to throw away than keep.

Off the charts Marcos. Awesome work.

Yes, an example of the first two might be the basic lighting, furniture and or walls in Latimer's house... If this were the case then the sky outside might be a dull or light blue to offset the warm color. This combined with the lighting of the characters themselves then would push toward the emotional state of the sequence... which you've previously stated as isolation for Latimer. I'm extrapolating a little in thinking that fall colors might be nice because usually when someone is in the depth of depression the world around them is not dreery but in fact is the opposite. Latimer has the whole world ahead of him (from the vantage point of his Father and Mother)... but he can't see this. or... if set in the fall the leaves outside might be turning and warm... the season of harvest and opportunity just before the onset of a prolonged winter where nothing prospers and everything dies off... beckoning Latimer to go out into the world where there is more excitment but on the inside of the house it might be cooler shades of color that suggest his life isn't like that outside his window. Similarly, the last two images on the lower right indicate a brightness of light as the characters depart from the Land of the Dead into something better beyond. Of note: the third rectangle to the lower left should be probably be entirely black but that's easy enough to modify. The next stage in colorscripting would be to actually use these general color to depict the actual scenes of the movie. One method is to draw/render out a scene in black and white or grayscale and then paint/color over the top of it. Not looking for detail but for emotion. Right now these images aren't fully set (because they are only in your head) That's why they are (for me) still blurry.

Terry, There are several approaches to decaling but from what I can tell in your case... I would select the item you want to decal and then hit the H key to hide everything else. Then it will be a lot easier to decal any specific area or shape. When finished hit the H key again to unhide everything. Also, immediately after Decaling you can go into the Decal/UV Editor ( on the Decal or Decal Image header in the Project Workspace) and move the Control points around over the decal image to get them into their ideal (or more precise) locations. It can help here to have both a Modeling Window or Action window open along with the Decal window in order to quickly review the results of any changes. Edit: I think you could apply the initial decal with everything in place. Then add additional decals separately as necessary. My thought here is that in the real world these parts would be manufactured separately. So you might want to do the same as well. That is one fine looking plane.

Adjusted for bluer (Land of the Dead) hues... and then adjusted yet again with (Land of Dead) gray and for some known story points...

Because I haven't had much time to do anything else I've been thinking of color again. Here are some random color cards to evoke lighting/mood/focus: The reds in the upper left made me think that setting the 'real world' scenes at the beginning of the movie in the fall might be appropriate.* This would also provide a counter to the end of the movie which is more of a springtime/renewal. The majority of the movie itself taking place in a very long season of (snowless) winter. *I haven't compared this thought to the actual script... it's more of an emotional exploration.

Some good news and some so so news here regarding a workflow for quickly moving resources from SVN directories into A:M. Uploading to SVN is an easy process... Just Commit (A:M will ask if you want to save)... so Save, and A:M will update SVN. (Note: You don't have to save for the Commit to work but you might as well.) Long ago I attempted to get a workflow of dragging and dropping Models from SVN directories into A:M but A:M generally wants to open the Model or other resource rather than drop it into the Chor, Action or whatever. I did find a workaround and I have confirmed that it still works in current release. 1. Using the A:M Community window I set up a html page (using frames) that opens the SVN directory. 2. Navigating to the resource (the html windows can have multiple directors open simultaneously) you grab simply grab the resourcet and Drag and Drop -first- into a transitory folder set up in a Library 3. Immediately drag and drop that resource from Library into the Chor or Action. For lack of better terminology I'm calling this process Ping/Pong because you ping the resource into the Library and then immediately pong it into the target area. It takes a few seconds whereas before the process could take minutes using File Open or Importing depending on where the resource is. This process has the added benefit of documenting everything you've added from SVN by its presence in the Library (and that info can be useful and leveraged as well) Of course you can then organize the Libraries any way you wish. An alternate way to do this would be to drag and drop from the SVN folder itself (in the operating system) but then you'd have to have that window open along with A:M. By having the SVN directory open in the Community window the workflow is entirely accomplished within A:M. In other news... the use of SVN is awesome! We really should set up an A:M Extras to collect and distribute community resources via SVN.

Thanks, Jason. I'll investigate.

Gah! Wannabe Pirates issues #1, 2 and 3 are sold out on http://paunk.storenvy.com/!!! What's up with that?!?!? I missed issue #3.