Rodney

I would dearly love to see the A:M Community spitting out comic books regularly. And if it was some kind of anthology with a nice variety of different styles and characters... so much the better. Somebody write that down as a future project for the A:M Community to tackle!

I agree with Robert here. Unless you are going for one of those 'Wiley Coyote' acts of defying gravity just before plummeting down... in which case you really need to show a close up of his facial reaction. The recognition of the character of what is happening is so necessary to complete that type of delayed effect. It also helps establish that in this environment the laws of physics don't always work as expected.

I hear ya. It'll sound like procrastination but I've got a bit too many irons in the fire these days. I've been toying with the idea of printing-on-demand a personal sketchbook of previous doodles just to smell the ink on paper and turn the pages of the document in my hands. Then when I ran into someone with like interests I could hand them out like candy. In the meantime I'll live vicariously through you. If that's okay.

Living the dream Mark. Living the dream. What I wouldn't do to have some of my own comic books sitting on the table in front of me. Some day...

I thought this was an interesting breakdown of Lord of the Rings characters and their movement through time: http://xkcd.com/657/ Starwars, Jurassic Park, etc. included too. There are a lot of other visual breakdowns of time/space on the site. The reason this appealed to me was that I have at various times roughed out stories in a similar way via A:M splines.

Looks pretty straightforward to me. If you are looking for suggestions I would say that you could have a little progression in the character's fall; three primary poses: 1: Initialing falling 2: Fully falling 3: Anticipating the next scene (the result of which I assume to be 'landing') I would not make those poses overly obvious but you might have to exaggerate them somewhat in order for them to properly read. In looking again I see an opportunity to do the ol' 'go one way before you go the other' anticipation. And you wouldn't have to do much to convey this. The character could simply open his arms more fully outward before bringing them back in again. So: - Arms slightly out as you have them at the top of the fall - Arms fully extended (mid fall) - Arms brought back in as he nears the bottom of the screen You might be able to do something similar with the legs but I would hold back on this so as not to make the whole character look floaty. Perhaps you could linearly extend one leg out straight as his decent progresses. This would suggest some weight and drag. Think in terms of... squashing and stretching. Added: Note on the previous shot: If you don't follow the suggestion to increase the red/hot/foot-moving color to provide motivation for the dancing perhaps you could add a slight bit of smoke effect to suggest his feet are effected by the heat. Right now it's not reading as he is dancing because his feet are hot although I can see where that can be interpolated. Also, it seems a bit strange to have him so far over to the side near the beginning of the dance. I'd love to see him move that way -while- dancing. Hope that make sense. Edit: Okay, I've seen a shot where he does dance over to the edge of the cliff and another where he is already there. Perhaps this is more due to the camera angle than anything. It seems to me that he is consciously moving closer to the edge of the cliff which is an odd thing for him to do. Perhaps if he lifted his head upward as if to scream 'ouch. ouch. ouch.' then he wouldn't see where he was perilously dancing. As with most anticipatory moves he would likely look down at his feet just before lifting his head fully. This would provide a normal reaction to the delay of signals from feet to brain. i.e. "I feel somethings not right at my feet." "No wonder... my shoes are smoking!" "Yikes! It's really hot down there!"

Did these videos ever get placed somewhere where everyone can access them?

Nice set Dan! I almost hate to suggest this but... If you pushed the camera and aimed it further down so that it rendered a slightly more downward shot that logo would be a lot more readable. I know you have the logo elsewhere so I'm sure that won't be a huge deal. I'd guess the final scene will be animated anyway... so... press on.... press on.

If you haven't tried to reinstall do that. If the recovery simply put everything back in place as it was then the activation code should work by typing the code in. If your recovery is deeper (which reinstallation suggests it may be) you might have to request a new code from Jason at Hash Inc (Jason at symbol hash dot inc). As for what to install... just install the latest release.

Happy Birthday Elm! May all the best be headed your way and may all the best be yet to come.

You know... I think it did! You are very good at this. (I need to have those play side by side to see the differences... hang on a sec) Added: Yup! Yup! That is definitely reading 'steam' to me. Smoke_and_Steam.mov

Without having made the attempt to distill them all I'd say the core expressions for those should boil down to approx. five (5) expressions. I don't think it's accidental that on the outer extremities that's pretty much all there is. If all the characters can do these six expressions then the remainder are mostly just those blended together and exaggerated: ANGER FEAR SURPRISE SADNESS JOY DISGUST Reference: http://www.cs.unc.edu/~andrei/expressions/

I'm still a big fan of your 'Epic Gamin' Dan. In fact your show was the only way I kept up with what was going on in the gaming scene. For some reason (and it wasn't just because it was partially created with A:M!) yours was entertaining whereas others I've seen... blah... nothing of particular interest to me. In trying to understand what it is that I like about 'Epic Gamin' I'd have to say it was you... your enthusiasm... and the way you approached the show as if to say, "Look, some of this might look a bit silly... talking to imaginary characters and such... but we are allowed to have fun here so come along for the ride with me". It's too bad there isn't yet a good way fund programs such as yours (adequate distro channels, etc.) so that you can receive compensation for the effort you put into your unique brand of entertainment. From my perspective, it's almost 'gaming for non-gamers' as much as it is for gamers.

Whoa... very nice smoke Marcos! Edit: I think I mistakenly typed 'smoke' instead of 'steam because it does look a bit more like smoke than steam. Like there is something on fire inside the kettle and not just boiling liquid. It's a silly thing for me to say but that was the impression I felt. Sorry to say, I have absolutely no advice to give to push it more toward steam. More please!

I believe the true test of Cleo's look will be dictated by how well she can assume the facial expressions that are necessary for her character expressions to read correctly. For instance.... Sinister Laughing Condescending Distainful Frustrated Angry Very angry So very freakin' angry it hurts Mildly amused Confused Determined Gloating Impatient Distracted Happy (things are going according to my plan) Happy (I can't believe you believe/agree with what I said) Surprised Repulsed Scared Etc.

I'm liking that direction. I think you could push it even further but at this point I don't see a reason to mess with success. Let animation dictate additional changes (if any). Sorry for the delay in response... got called in to work yesterday. Rock on Lloyd! You've got a winner here. P.S. I'm really liking the effect you've got going on the dress. On it's face... rather spectacular. That default A:M background doesn't do it justice.

Wow. Looking very good! I'm always going to push you to be more perfect than perfect. You know me. As such I'm going to try to get you to purge the word 'final' from your vocabulary. I'd say she's a bit too baby-faced. If you slightly elongate her face by lowering her jaw but keeping her nose in about the same place and straightening her jaw line a bit (again think Maleficent) I think you'll have her. In other words... age her a little (or even a lot). She looks like she's about 16 or so whereas see needs to be about 39 years of age. Impressive work there. Added: Of course I'd save this girl as is to be used as a template for one or more of Cleo's chamber maids. Slightly shorter than Cleo. OR perhaps she's the short one and they are all tall... that would give off a nice constrast to the sense of the power she wields over them. With apologies for posting an incomplete image... I started to manipulate the image you posted last week before I went into my work-weekend. I didn't have the time to devote to it so didn't post it last week but here is a rough length. Note that this is the minimum I would extend/enlongate her face. I'd push for a slightly starved look... ala Angelina Jolie.

I'd be curious to see if in your Tools/Options/Render Tab the setting is on 'This dialogue' and you've got something other than the camera view set for viewing/rendering in the dialogue.

As I'm going into my weekend... it'll be better to leave Skype connectivity until Tuesday. It shouldn't take long to get connected but I've a feeling my desire for 'realtime' Skyping over the weekend is going to be minimal. Yes, but you reminded us of it here. Solutions like that make you a bit awesome in the feedback category.

The verdict at this stage is that A:M and SVN is a great way to go. There are several 'tricks' to making everything work optimally. One is that the files need to be saved at least once in order for SVN and A:M to carry out the workflow properly. Saving directly to the commit folder from A:M accomplishes this and TortoiseSVN recognizes the file for subsequent commit/upload. I ran a few tests linking in files and such and am really pleased with the workflow. Looking very good from this angle.

Mark, Since most of the entire movie will be dark, lighting will be something of a challenge but I think you are on to something here. I like the way you think. Edit: The problem with a gel or similar screen over the camera is that it will tint everything in front of the camera. I have a feeling the lighting will have to be more dynamic than that. Now, if we are compositing characters over that tinted level/background that might work to some extent but then we still have the issue of lighting the foreground. It'll definitely take some testing to get the right look without making the film too dark. There will likely need to be considerable contrast to have important elements of each scene stand out.

Update: SVN in A:M is working a whole lot better than I anticipated. In fact... this is great stuff. That's what I get for doubting the power of A:M. The trick seems to be to get the local commit location to remain persistent. Without that persistence, A:M can't tell what has changed locally in order to be committed. Regarding the login... once logged into SVN and the community window the time to execute a commit/update is pared down to seconds. There are aspects of using SVN with A:M that still appear to require use of the operating system and that is when individually moving/changing files outside of A:M. It'll be interesting to test a better workflow that is wholy owned and operated from inside A:M. Stay tuned...

The good news is that Update/Commit via the Community window still works. A:M is a little stubborn in keeping the path to the local commit folder in place. It took a few times opening and closing A:M to get it to stay. At any rate. It works.

Connection to SVN internally in A:M is a bit limited. As such, most opt to use SVN externally. The only way I can see A:M and SVN being effectively useful together at this point would be through a Library file maintained within the repository. (However, that Library file would have to be maintained manually unless someone wrote a utility to automate it... that'd be hot!) There was some functionality in an earlier version of A:M that attempted to allow Right Clicks to commit files to the repository from the main windows/PWS in A:M,but from what I can tell that functionality had issues and was removed long ago. About the only internal aspect of SVN still in A:M that may be useful then appears to be in the Community window (TWO Movie tab) where we can Commit and Update files to the repository (my recent test didn't work because no files had recently changed in the repository... so I'll test again later to be sure it is still working). For most people it'll be easier to Right Click on the file or folder in the operating system and Commit/Check Out via Tortoise SVN or other similar program. Having said all of this, when collaborating with others online, use of SVN (or similar versioning program) is highly recommended. It's a long way from perfectly optimized for filmaking (such as with programs like Shotgun) but it works. Added: Average time to access Update/Commit in A:M: 5 minutes (if it works... still haven't confirmed yet) Average time to execute Update/Commit in operating system: Less than 1 minute (a few seconds if you know exactly where the folder/file are) Perhaps the primary user interface hindrance in using SVN within A:M is that access to internal commits/updates via SVN is from the Community window which requires it's own separate login. The multiple logins can considerably slow down the process whereas one click commits not tied to the Community window would be optimal. This might be otherwise if there was increased functionality or views of SVN data (or some other compelling reason to login to the Community window but outside of perhaps community chat there currently isn't.

Very Nice! Would love to hear more about your project. Only four days to animate??? Nicely done.