Rodney

That was awesome Nancy. Great fun!

With the various posts on modeling vehicles popping up lately I've had vehicles on my mind as well. Of course it's of a slightly more cartoony version (My favorite vehicles are usually the ones seen in the old black and white animated films) but still... With additional emphasis being placed on Tintin pending release of the Spielberg/Jackson movie this has renewed interest in the world the character lives in. For instance, I found this collection of all the vintage vehicles used in the Tintin comic of particular interest: http://dardel.info/tintin/tout.html While these aren't blueprints or schematics it does represent a pretty nice collection of cartoon conveyances. They try to match the view of the vehicle in the comic strip with a similar view with the real vehicle. The image below... a sampling of references/drawings used in the comic strip:

Okay... that should be very useful to me. Of course, don't forget that in order for A:M to save the Pivot settings they need to be part of a Named Group. Thanks for the heads up on this... and for the original Tutorial Jason!

Looks like the judges swayed the vote in the other direction. Where 'Party' was favored x2 by fans the judges' vote dropped the lead to just a few percentage points out of the win. It's not a full win but it was a great showing guys. Congrats for taking it all the way to the final competition.

Kittychan!

She looks great. Very festive! Careful now... remember Wolverine had many of years of fans guessing at his mysterious past before they messed everything up and revealed his 'real' origin.

Charles even acknowledged a relationship with that fella. When I think of the name I cannot help but conjure up images of underwater caustics instead of ancient computing machinery. Oooo look.... so pretty. Happy Birthday Charles!

Outstanding. I particularly like how you emphasize at the end the use of Named Groups! Thanks for a great tutorial.

Awesome! I'm ginning from ear to ear. Suggestion: If you could give them a cute little backpack that the strings attach to so it won't look like the kids are having fun hanging themselves. People are sensitive to such themes and susceptible to applying such interpretations. Edit: And you get extra cool points for posting it as an animated gif.

I didn't know there were other episodes of Dr. Zu! It's like seeing old friends again. Wonderful! Thanks Serg.

Very nice. All my favorite artists are caricaturists and you Sir are a caricaturist.

Serg's Dr. Zu commercial is now playing at the top of the forum. Cartoon character animation at it's very best... in only 25 seconds.

Yes. Plugins compiled for v15 should run fine in 32bit v16. It is my understanding that they need to be ported/recompiled for 64bit.

Rock the Vote! or if you prefer... Country Music the Vote! (and Jubal1 is in your court!) Saw in your earlier post how the judges vote in the three areas of Visual Design, Direction and Originality. Exploring those themes would make for a fun study. Those are pretty broad and interpretive themes though. Let's hear it for the Judges: Danny Walker Singer / Songwriter / Guitarist www.dannywalker.net PJ Palmer Writer, Director, Producer www.imdb.me/pjpalmer Scott Ferguson Composer, Producer, Singer and Guitarist Keely Hawkes Singer, Songwriter George Allen Producer, Songwriter http://www.mtaprod.se Stevie Mack Actor / Comedian http://www.steviemack.com/ Jonathan Solomon Comedian / Writer http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jonathan-solomon John O' Day Promoter, Program Director Rich Ferguson Spoken Word Artist Kristia Bonita Professional Dancer Fahtiem Fahtiem Multi-award-winning, internationally renowned, master instructor, performer and choreographer www.Fahtiem.com Shawn Harris Comedian www.myspace.com/shawnharrisbetcomicview Gianni Tiru A&R, Management & Operations Iman Foroutan MakeaStar.com Founder, Chairman & CEO http://www.MakeAStar.com Ned Raggett Music Critic Chris Gonda Heavy Metal Website & Magazine Owner http://www.PureGrainAudio.com Ben Yater Writer Travis Miller Director, Editor

Hey, here in Japan it's Rasikrodri's Birthday! Hope you have a great day. Enjoy!

After all these years he's still the freshest ever (yeah, I had to go there). Happy Birthday Sebastian!

Looking very good! It'd be nice if you could maintain the look of a puppet versus CG... I know that seems like quite a task but I'm thinking you could probably get it accomplished with one decal (a full solution would take a few more Decals but for a quick fix I'm thinking of a Decal applied just from the camera view. That's really all that needs to be seen). The idea would be to take a picture of Tech's clothing and fur (the puppet that is) and then arrange that is such a way as to apply it as a Decal from Camera View. This Decal is primarily a texturing overlay. You'd adjust the percentage of the Decal to let the underlying colors/textures show through. Got any good photos of Tech... I'll look back through the videos.

Dude... I was just reading back. You are out-muppeting the Muppets! (Is that possible?) You had me laughing out loud. When it comes to humor... I need some of whatever you have.

Now that is just too cool! I think you are on to something here. Edit: My only suggestion would be to tone down the specularity over all so that the entire character doesn't look of plastic. Of course if something is suppose to be plastic... specularize the heck out of it! The words 'matte finish' come to mind but I'm not sure if that's what I mean. Anyway... Press on... press on! Disregard all of this... you are doing great. Scoot on down to the next post for more praise...

There is a site out there that has a whole lot of animation made in the early days of computer games. Some of those little animations are especially cool because they use only a few pixels only four (4) frames! (I believe the site in question included a historical look at the game 'Lemmings' because the artist responsible won a bet that he could animate them successfully in those four frames)

Hope I'm not spending too much time in your topic David... if I am let me know and I'll post this stuff over in the "Drawn to CG" WIP. While considering the Bouncing Ball I was surfing through sites looking for good timing charts when I happened upon a university site with a pretty decent animation curriculum. One little graphic grabbed my attention but I felt it could be expanded on to encompass more animation principles. Every time I thought I was finished with the graph I discovered something else missing... and it still could use a lot of tweaking. I then got distracted for entirely too long adding some uselessly strange weathering effects to the image. Pending feedback, I've settled on this chart as something of an introductory for setting the stage to the whole idea of ball bouncing with the added element of Squash and Stretch. Looking at it now I really am tempted to change each of the arrows so they are pointing outward on both ends but for now let's settle for that indicating the direction of where the object came from or the source of forces causing a change in shape. I'm also a little bothered by the fact that I didn't get all the terminology I wanted into the graph. For instance, there are many words that should be incorporated along with their opposites; expand/contract, compression/extension, push/pull, etc. Of course trying to incorporate too much will just make a mess. Please let me know if it makes sense!

We need to find you guys a flash mob to park on that site for a few days. Voted.

There is now a forum area for the Technical Reference if anyone feels the need to use it. I plan to post/move technical subjects there that specifically apply to the Tech Ref as they occur. In theory there could be at least one topic for every page of the updated book where the experts all weigh in heavily on each subject for the updated reference. For more specific information and the background behind Robert's Group Project proposal to update the Tech Ref recommend reading his pinned post at the top of the Tech Ref forum: http://www.hash.com/forums/index.php?showforum=19 For a subject such as Fluid that wasn't yet added to A:M when the Tech Ref was last updated a new page/topic can be inserted.

This'll seem silly... I just used the green jumping ball emoticon [ ] in another post and a question immediately popped into my head, "Why is this bouncing ball animation so successful?" It's got Clarity. (it conveys the theme of 'excitement', hence it's filename 'yay.gif') It's got Squash (on contact). It's got Stretch (both to and from contact). It's got Eyes (so we recognize it as a sentient Character). It's got Secondary Action, Overlapping Action and Follow Through (in both the Eyes and Hands). It's got Symmetry (which works to augment the character's movement physically and emotionally. Note: Usually our goal is Asymmetry). It makes use of Negative and Positive Space/Changing Shapes (Negative space is further enhanced by the layering of transparency). It's upward Progression works as an Anticipation and conveyor of a sense of propelling Energy It does this all in only eight (8) frames (because they are cycling frames we can easily focus until the message is received without a chance of missing anything). Note: There is not enough time for (effectively) blinking. All of this proof positive that it takes so very little to entertain me.

Very impressive. That represents a whole lot of modeling and animation. ...and you made your deadline too! Color me impressed. Congratulations!