Rodney

Thanks Nancy! Behind the Scenes Note: The spline contraption the gnome is pulling across the banner is inspired by Largento's comic book tutorials where he showed each Control Point somewhat like a six-sided cubic lego with six access points. You can see where I extended the original drawing by where the CPs transition from having that detail versus where they are simply of a red color. I recall that cubic lego as being somewhat controversial in nature but it stuck with me long enough to make this cameo. One of the reasons I've wanted to model the tinkering gnome in 3D is because I've long wanted to model his (mysterious) workshop.

In an effort to keep up with the animation education venues currently available (Animation Mentor, iAnimate, Animschool, Animation Collaborative, etc.) I submit the following news of possible interest: The folks over at Animation Collaborative (located just across the street from PIXAR) recently announced that Andrew Gordon, one of their co-founders, is moving on to other endeavors. Andrew made his own announcement via his own collaborative website (SplineDoctors) where he says, "I will no longer be affiliated with (Animation Collaborative) and wish the best to the students and teachers. I look forward to letting you know what I plan to do next which will be revolutionary for the animation education world." In the commentary he briefly responds to questions about why he is leaving, motivation and talks of his passion for teaching. As such, one could assume that (at least for Californians?) there may soon be another animation venue available. Animation Collaborative offers a variety of animation related course from storyboarding to gesture drawing which are all taught onsite at their Emery California location. To date no online or downloadable courses have been made available. Note: At this point I am making no attempt to keep up with animation schools in Europe, Asia, Australia, India or elsewhere of which there are many. I will point out that all schools tend to offer free resources related to animation on a fairly regular basis.

Not sure about what happened but I'll go with Robert's guess... musta been a blip. Perhaps it was related to the recent server change/upgrade? I see the Film members group no longer had access so that has been updated. For what it's worth: I believe the real problem here is that the Film group technically should not have access but rather members of the Film Group that are also Fellows should be members of both Film and Fellows. I suppose in theory they would be primarily 'Film' (that way that title would show up in their profile and secondarily 'Fellows' which would ensure they have proper access. At any rate, everyone in the Film Group at this point is also a Fellow so you should once again be able to see the Fellows forum. Now as far as that banner thing... A while back I was doodling and drew a few drawings of everyone's favorite Tinkering Gnome and recently I went back and digitally ink it. The plan being to eventually build that gnome in 3D and animate the fellow. Yesterday I was messing around and felt like updating something so I changed John's banner. The quality of the banner is too low but perhaps it'll work until we can get something proper there. Here's a larger view of the banner: (no, i do not know why john is wearing a dress)

Impressive work! No crits here. Edit: Okay, I do have one suggestion. (I'm sure you are already working on and/or considered such detail) Adding some additional bump/displacement to areas that should be sticking out just a little might go a long way toward lending a feeling of his costume being real. Some critical areas look almost painted on (no doubt a carry over from the animation look and feel). In particular I'm thinking the chest "S" symbol but also his belt/belt loops. Getting those two areas to pop out a little will make the "S" look as if it was added to the suit and the belt/belt loops will seem to be separate parts of his costume as well. I do note that you already have some detail that does this to an extent. Perhaps you can just exaggerate that a little?

I'm going to have to go back and view that first one again.. my computer keeps buffering and won't let me view it all. (Time to clean up my harddrive as it appear to be full!) I really like the second animation... the one with the Robot. Very nice! I would make that one #1 on your demo reel. Or reserve it for last and change the 'Animation for show' title to your name and contact info. In that way you'd end your demo on a very high note. I think I like this one mostly because it tells a story very directly and to the point. There are moments when we get to see this robot thinking, reacting to his environment, adapting even, and his decisions drive the story forward. It has a clear ending... a punch-line... very satisfying. Nice work!

Matcaps are a form of Shader that uses an image to surface and light a model. I believe they arrived circa v13. There are quite a few topics discussing Matcaps as well as some collections of images to use with it in: the Shaders Forum

Hi Chris, I'm not sure what type of job you are seeking but often companies will hire based on what they see in your demo reel or portfolio. Most companies will see the quality of your work and help you transition to 'their' software. For example, PIXAR uses their own proprietary software which no one has access to. They recently developed new software they call Presto for their latest film 'Brave' and they aren't sharing it with anyone outside their hallowed halls. The good news is that a skilled animator can translate the principles of animation to any animation platform. Getting a job therefore mostly requires persistence and (especially in a field with skilled competition) a lot of hard work. Basically, it is a lot like getting any other job in this world. So without knowing more of your specific goals or seeing your work I can only answer the question in this way: Target the job you want. Develop your demo reel and portfolio to hit that target. Doggedly (consistently) pursue that goal. Get the job you want and continually set new goals. Glad to see Chinese representation here in the A:M Forum!

Sounds like you are on the right track here. Perhaps someone (Stian! Marcos!) could assist with getting that light reflection that looks so perfect by adding a white card (one patch) just out of camera view. This would go a long way toward capturing billiard room overhead lighting/reflections.

Roger, It'd be good to also know more of the look you are going for. My thought is that Black Specular on Black at best could only give you the original black (i.e. no specular at all) The equivalent would be to Right Click and set the color to 'Not Set'. Knowing more about your end goal will help direct us to that goal. My thought with what is currently known is to reduce the intensity setting of the Specular Light. But that will likely be effective only if you are after a duller leather or fairly non reflective surface. I think of intensity with specularity as being a dial that allows the surface to absorb available light; a lower setting will allow the surface to absorb more whereas a higher setting will deflect/reflect more.

Ah, I thought you had recreated that Chor to get this shot. Sorry to hear that. I was playing with your sequence in A:M to 'rezoom' the shot and met with a little success so if you aren't wanting to spend the time recreating the Chor it might be worth the effort to work the continuing zoom in post (it might be a real quick edit if you've got After Effects). I'd hate to see you rebuild the Chor just for that zoom so I'll also offer this: If you do rebuild... something that would add a nice touch at the very end would be to push the dragon a little lower to the platform and then pull her/him back up again. this and just a little anticipation of the landing displayed in the legs/feet would give the landing (which is the main point of the shot) a sense of completeness. Follow Through and settling in of that main action should really give the landing a nice sense of weight. My gut feel is that you're going to want to have that Chor at some point in the future (additional renderings etc etc) so as painful as it might be I'll suggest recreating it.

I see some really great tests going on here. This effect (as you've currently got it) reminds me a lot of Rapunzel's 'painting the camera' effect in the recent Disney movie. In that respect it does have an extra thickness to it that seems to imply more than just water. If compositing/overlaying that thickness could be reduced considerably via transparency and/or blur. Keep up the great work!

Sorry to hear of your computer troubles Kat. Looks like you are right back on track though! Nice shot. The design of the house is very cool. I'd like to recommend that the camera continue to Zoom in throughout this shot so that there isn't an abrupt stopping just prior to the dragon entering view. It looks like this is all one continuous shot and if so that would make the continuation of the zoom easier. If you've got these set up as two chors (one for zooming in and across the witch's house to the window/landing and one for the dragon landing) then you might just be able to just hook up the shots by having a very slow zooming in as the dragon lands. I would suggest that the zooming slow down considerably at the end of course in comparison to how fast the camera is moving over the house. Looking very good!

You packed a lot of material into this one. I love how you weave astory into the song and the rendering hit a new level of quality. Nicely done Gene!

Nicely done. Between the motion blur and the particles it really sells the drilling effect.

Straight to the point. I like!

Here's a couple digital doodles I did last night. (I must still be on U.S. time because I keep waking up in the middle of the night)

Thanks for the well-wishes. To answer the question of what/how? (Not for the squeamish or those with vivid imagination) For the past three months I've been cutting down trees and burning brush to clean up my sisters place in Illinois. It's the place that I lived in before I joined the military and it's been a great little place to return. With one week left before heading back to Japan to collect my family and move them back to Illinois my sister and I dug into final work around the house; throwing away shingles left over from a replaced roof and cutting limbs back from nearby trees so they wouldn't fall on the new roof. With a fire set to the brush I was off to get rid of the last couple of loads of shingles and that's when I got stupid. I thought a little gasoline added to the back of the brush would (eventually) get the fire really going. It did. The fire had burned through further underneath the brush than I thought. At this point I can only guess what happened but... somehow the majority of fuel in the little bottle ended up on my shirt. (Interesting Note: To look at the shirt is one of life's ponderables because with the exception of one tiny dot, there is no evidence that it was ever burned. So my conjecture is that most of my injuries are from the fuel itself burning and not from me burning.) Fastforward to today and I'm well into my third week of recovery and my face now looks severely sunburned. I'll spare you further details and just say I'm thankful it wasn't worse. The Doc said no skin grafts required and the prognosis is for a full recovery. Notes to self: Learn not to burn. Stop/Drop/Roll works (Don't stay in the Stop faze too long though... in my case I really needed to get to the drop and roll stuff. Do not do stupid things with gasoline and fire especially near the very end of a days work. Do not ruin the evening wiener roast. Do not needlessly worry a lot of family and such. Etc. So, onward! Daisy Lou is blushing. She'll pass on the compliments to her younger sisters at the earliest opportunity. She assumes you weren't talking about Eda. Daisy Lou is the short grey haired um... lady. Her sisters: Cindy Lou is the brunette and Betty Lou is the blonde (I think). I was reworking Betty's body yesterday and frankenstein'd some quickly modeled hands onto her. I guess that'll do for now. In order to get the style I'm going for in Cindy and Betty's faces I'm playing with the idea of having several default faces that get swapped out. Here's a shot of Betty's reworked body (I expect the face to change a lot):

Sorry I've been off of the radar of late. A few weeks ago I decided to light myself aflame with gasoline. Note: I DO NOT RECOMMEND THIS. The burns are not nearly as painful as the process of treating the burns. I have a new found respect for those burn center doctors/nurses/assistants and my sympathy for burn victims is tremendous. I am now well on the way to recovery... and the good news (for me)... I've found time to sketch with splines again and have been really enjoying that. I need to find my mouse because splining with a finger on a laptop is a royal pain. Tuckertown is a project (of sorts) meant to be a drawn comic strip set in the late 1800s. The characters seemed to translate fairly well into CG so I may press further with modeling them. If nothing else it'd be good to build sets, props and characters for reference. The (partial) models here are proof of concepts to see how difficult it will be to actually model them with the goal of proper articulation. Not all of the characters are fully designed yet so I've been splining and experimenting all along the way. Characters attempted thus far: -Fudley -Eda -Daisy Lou -Betty Lou -Cindy Lou Main Characters to go: -P.T. Boombottom -Louis -the animals And of course, the complete set/stage for Tuckertown! Will I continue to explore Tuckertown... I dunno. Probably. But I've been sidetracked modeling robots and Kirby-krackle lately. One of the real challenges is to deal with tall and short characters within the same shot/camera viewing area. I may have to rethink that aspect. Having all characters look like they belong to the same universe is an important consideration as well.

Um... Wow. This one alone should be awesomelyawesome. If this means what I think it does then we should be able to collect few prime SSS settings for use/reuse. Thanks Steffen for digging deeper into SSS! One question regarding the SSS memory notification: If the computer doesn't have enough memory does A:M's render just skip SSS? I assume A:M won't render until the requirement is lowered?

(What Robert said!) Happy Birthday Willi!

Nice one Serg!

You had me at Gi-Normous. (Heck, if the powers that be can't do these characters right someone has to)

Quoted from another post: Josh, Your dad's personal Work In Progress (WIP) topic was considered the best in that category. Some forum members enjoyed having separate forum areas of their own that highlight their creativity but Paul always seemed to enjoy collecting and updating that WIP (Paul's Playground). We sure enjoyed catching up with him and his projects each time he updated that WIP. I don't know if you've had time to read his topic but if memory serves me correctly, he often spoke fondly of you (his family). We may not have known you personally but we did get brief glimpses of your accomplishments through your dad. Your family was very obviously important to him. If there is anything we can do to help collect Paul's resources posted here in the Animation:Master forum let us know and we'll do our best to assist your family.

Josh, My heart goes out to your family at this time. Paul was an important part of this community and words fail to express how much he will be missed. I'm saddened to think we won't be seeing his creativity here in the forum. He was not only extremely talented guy, he was a friend. He'll be greatly missed. Note: I'm moving this to the main Animation:Master forum as some may not see the notice otherwise.

Happy Birthday Stian!