Rodney

Nancy, I started to respond but realized that a full explanation was getting a little out of hand. I'm trying to put together something concise (and useful?) at the moment. To briefly answer your questions so you don't have to wait... I used Camtasia to capture the sequence. While it is expensive I highly recommend the program because you can use it for a whole lot more than just capturing image sequences. I'll do you one better than that. I've attached a Composite file that you can open in a text editor or A:M. Opening the file in A:M will be problematic from two angles however in our classic 'turn a problem into a feature' approach read on and you'll quickly be post effecting your own imagery. The first problem you are likely to run into when trying to import the Composite file is that there is no clear place to import the file from in A:M. I swear it was there a moment ago but... it's missing now. No problem. From the folder where you save the composite file Drag and Drop the composite into A:M. Note: You don't have to drag and drop to the location where Composite files/images normally are located in the PWS. You should be able to drag the file anywhere the cursor indicates that drag and drop is an option. Try it. It's fun. Important: Since you don't have the image resource at the location the Composite file references, it will ask you for it. If you cancel out of this you'll likely crash out of A:M so... do not do that. Select an image even if it's not the image you ultimately want. Unwanted images need love and affection too. Then change the image inside A:M later to the correct image as desired. I would be interested in hearing how the attached opens for you. Composite002BlueTinted.cmp

Here's an example of how A:M can be used to clean up drawings for use as rotoscopes as well as with more traditional animation. Some folks don't have a decent line tester to view their animated drawings with and A:M is more than up to that task. Using Post Effects the line color can be tinted a different color too... faded out... inverted... It might be easier to list what you can't do. Dropping the quality setting from High Quality to Medium in A:M's 'Save Animation As' dialog shaved off about 6MB without adversely impacting the line quality. A change in size would likely cut the file size in half again. cycleofsleep_blue2.mov

This one has me excited. (It's the little things like this that keep me going) Jamaal Bradley (animator at Dreamworks and instructor at iAnimate) posted this animation from Lady and the Tramp (animated by Milt Kahl) a few months ago: http://vimeo.com/26587301 Note the use of the cycle there at the beginning. Six or seven cycles of Tramp snoring away... slightly modified on the sixth and seventh iteration. Awesome. I need to track down the finished scene to see how much of that cycle survived in the final film.

I ended up watching a few more of your episodes along with this last one. Gaming (even if you don't game!) sure can be addicting. ...and here you have yet another impressive model. I can tell already that episode is going to be good!

Andreas Deja recently returned from vacation and posted a pretty cool set of animated crowd sequences by Milt Kahl. These were cut from Disney's 'The Rescuers' but luckily are still available to us. In only seven seconds Milt conveys so much material I simply had to study them. Amazing stuff. But... I also wanted to dig deeper into some areas of A:M as well... 2D analysis tools/rotoscoping being two of those things... and so this oddity is the result. This analysis consisted mostly of quickly placed five point patches (the circles) and a few four pointers (picture frames, nose and bench) with the whole sequence re-lit in post via the Merge and Mix Post Effects in A:M Composite. I just wanted to play with A:M Composite... There is a whole lot more I want to study from Milt's animation but my curiosity is satisfied for now. I can better appreciate how he pushed and pulled and turned things around. I do expect to return to this one. If you haven't visited Andreas's blog recently you should check it out. Believe it or not... this was also something of an investigation into a possible idea for use with the Rear View community project. 7SecondsWithMiltKahl.mov

Ernest says he might be swapping this one out so... Scarecrow of Oz Trailer No. 4 is now playing at the top of the forum.

Hey... it's Norbert's Birthday! (At least it is here in Japan) Hope you have a happy one.

Sorry, John. I was referring to the idea of an imaginary character's desire to have a legendary character's legacy live on. It was me imagining I was Thom... which I am not... and having a lighter... which I don't... and was at a John Lennon concert... which even if he were alive today would likely not happen. But still, in my own way, it represents something of a tribute from me... to your tribute to John Lennon... and his legacy. Although, now that you've mentioned it... in a perfect world someone would pay you handsomely to tinker all the day long. So regardless of being in the here and now or in the imaginary world, you'd still have no free time. You'd just spend more of it splinin'.

(started a response entitled 'encore' but this as far as I got.... a couple hundred Thoms wishing the show would go on)

Wow. Impressive!

Poor Thom! He has been taking it easy lately though. Glad to see he's back earning his pay.

Wow is right. That's an amazing ride Rodger.

Awesome scene. Makes me want to jump back into creating robots again. You've captured my imagination and I want to see more. Edit: One of the benefits of animated scenes is that each time you view it you see something different. For instance, I was only vaguely aware of the guy walking up there on the right of the robot. On second viewing he had my undivided attention. By way of feedback: It would be nice to have some sense of depth between the foreground, middleground and background that isn't quite clear in the current rendering. On first viewing I thought the mountain peaks were something that had cloth draped over them and I don't recall even seeing the planet. They could all be props hanging from the ceiling in a warehouse or perhaps toys in a scale facimile. The cast shadows of the lamps may be adding to this sense of near-distance scale. I think that the fact that the planet and mountains move through space as far and as quickly as they do also lends itself to the idea that these are closer to the viewer. None of this detracts from my enjoyment of the scene but I offer it for your consideration. Before making any other suggestion besides adding some depth cues I would simply ask you this: Where in the image do you want the viewer to focus their attention? (I assume the robot first and then perhaps the robot's face?)

Here's a Thing... now playing at the top of the forum.

I should have linked to Holmes Bryant's AI Wizard Tutorial! So, here it is: The AI Wizard (Fundamentals) by Holmes Bryant

Very realistic Rodger! That door dent looks like the real deal. Up here in northern Japan we see a lot of those dents in vehicles... you could say it's the bane of our existence... especially in the winter which is just about to hit us. On the plus side, it does give the young troops practice with accident paperwork. I would think that on the rear fender you might also see one or more paint transfers/scrapes. Admittedly a little harder to see than a dent and if touched up in any way with paint would be of a slightly different color. I'm not sure how prevalent patchwork was back in those days. You might be able to get more of a scrape by scaling the width? From what can be seen... great taxi model!

I'm sympathetic to the brick and mortar comic shops but they need to embrace digital comics also. Comics need to... and will get into the hands of those who want to read them. With or without the brick and mortar. As for digital comic books... if I had my way they'd start again at 25 cents a pop. Comic creators need to get back to their roots and one way to do that is to bring the cost of reading comics way down (but not all the way to 'free' comics). Use 'Free comics day' for that. I'll look into the possibility that Ka-blam lost my order. Usually the error is on my end though.

I'm really liking this approach Mark. Very nice. I'm very tempted to support you through Oxicomics if for no other reason than I want to see more of the same... more of your comic books but also more comic books from independent artists at reasonable prices; 99 cents may not generate the artist a lot of money per purchase but it's perfectly priced to sell to the masses. Hopefully people will see 'The Wanna Be Pirates' in that venue and give it a chance. In other news: I'm still waiting for your second (hardcopy) issue to arrive in the mail. I'm starting to suspect someone stole it and is hoarding it away. I thought perhaps my family picked it up in the mail and it's just buried somewhere. Other thoughts: I don't know if there is a market for the production work you put into your comic books but from my perspective that is exactly what I've always wanted to see made available in animation, comic books, films, etc. Behind the Scenes stuff has always been of interest to me. It also gives fans something more to enjoy beyond the characters and stories themselves. I understand the focus is the actual comic book... I get that... but consider Walt Disney and early animation cels... many were just tossed in the trash or given away. These aspects are an important part of your art's heritage and I hope you save them and can present them later. There isn't enough of that behind the scenes stuff out there because frankly and unfortunately, no one seems to care about heritage until its too late. Odd A:M related thought: We lost a great resource when development on HAMR halted because that gave us a 'read only' format that we could use to share A:M resources and yet not actually give the actual A:M resources away.

Chris, I'm always fascinated by how filmmakers make the most of the resources they have. In viewing a movie I try not to be too analytical while watching the first time... I just try to enjoy the movie... but at the end I'm usually left with some ideas of how the cinematics worked and the artistic flowed. Knowing full well that modelers tend to model only that which will be shown we can find ourselves unconsciously surveying the extent of 'real property' in the movie. How much of this world appears real can heighten our perceptions and enjoyment considerably... and you obviously know this and your experience shows. Anticipation is such a wonderful thing... and as it relates to this area of concern with a viewer's impression of what is real and available to be explored in an imaginary world I find myself drawn to your idea of the magic of moving between these imaginary 'worlds'. This cinematography is an art of it's own. For the sake of discussion (and a moments reflection of the world of Star Trek: Red Squad) I find what you have in this walkthrough works really well. There is a moment or two while looking around the deck that my attention wanders for a moment... not sure why that was but I assume there may have been distractions in my physical environment (my home). I'm wondering right now if it'd be worth to look back at the walkthrough to take notes with an eye on where those distracted momements were. My thought is that in pushing the walkthrough further this might present areas to focus on for further enhancement as you proceed to work. Given a limited time to flesh out the reality of the world of ST:RS making a few quick notations of where animated blips or even areas in the background where there is more light or shade or more detail versus little detail helps to attract our attention to where you want us to look. My mind wanders to how this walkthrough makes for an excellent tool to help you visualize how the Actors will move into and out of scenes... so creating some storyboards from the image sequences and quickly drawing in the various Actors positions... overlaying their positions and basic poses would speed up subsequent work. Replacing those doodled drawings with renders of the characters in those same poses would make quick work of producing animatics, previz and promotional work. With the resources you've now got working for you, you seem to be right on the edge of producing high quality content with high quantity within a framework of minimal cost and effort without the need to compromise the vision you have for your story. I confess I'm fascinated with the aspect of one man making movies at this level of quality with an added emphasis on quantity. Quality is important but so is quantity I'll call this Rapid CG Visual Prototyping for lack of a better term. Less waste means more of the work done is can be used elsewhere in the production to further enhance levels quality and quantity. I'm rambling so I'll move on. I'm not really making any suggestions here, just verbally exploring the world of ST:RS. It's that inspiring.

Well, the old cloth should still work. Perhaps we should work out a demo that runs through both methods. The frustration is bound to be found in the middle gap where some folks refer to the old cloth... some to the new cloth... and both think they are staring at exactly the same thing. We are sure to see some folks working in the old cloth for many more years to come even if we get rid of the old stuff. As the old cloth presumably still has some benefit understanding how to set it up may not be an entirely bad thing.

Bravo! That's one of the best walkthroughs I've ever seen. Certainly one of the most entertaining. I must admit thought that as you put us in the elevator and the door closed I was really really hoping we'd get a glimpse at another level (I looked at the time scrubber at the bottom and thought for a moment you might go there... but that did make for a great buildup to the credits!

Looking very good Mike. The world just seems a little bit better with you splining again.

Looking very good. You make this stuff look easy.

One useful construct for proportioning is to sketch out (or modify meshes in A:M) several versions of the character that show a progression of the character's ages. I'd say optimally there are three stages: child (baby), young adult (teenage) and aged (adult). Inbetween those ages as necessary to target the age of your character and their storyline. These don't have to be detailed models/drawing but might also be useful later if the story ever dictates a look into the past or future of the character. Even if never used it gives the creator a better idea of who they are, were or will be in the character's story arc. The progression I have yet to do is to take a character from three heads high (a child) to 5, 6 or 7 (an adult). I did a set of drawings once that I thought I might pursue some day where a youthfully enthusiastic teenager is transformed into a overly cynical and frightened old guy. As stories are suppose to being already in progress and don't usually contain the death of a character in old age, the infant and the octogenarian usually won't fit into most onscreen storylines. The use of highly advanced age often conveys wisdom, experience but also degenerative frailty. That'd be quite a challenge but I know it'll be educational so it's on my list of things to do. Usually in 3D each stage of the character is a separate model but I can see some characters being one model morphed and remodeled. Also, some adaptation can be made almost exclusively with textures or animated personality traits (youthful exuberance or a slow methodical painfully unstable gait). Change... animation is all about change. The more change/contrast between otherwise similar thing we can direct at the viewer the better. But there does generally have to a rationale for that change... a grounding in reality. That's were relationships (and proportions) come into play.

Cute. Very cute. If you could create one those fluffy guys to ride in for the real world... and not kill the passengers inside the bouncy character in the process... you'd be rich. It'd be kind of bungy jumping without the rope...