Rodney

Great start Robert! This'll seem nitpicky as I'm about to nitpick on everything. I'm throwing my 2 cents plus a couple thousand words because I think designing flyers (for A:M or even for local products near you) is something we can all do here. I'd replace every instance of v16 with "2011" where possible. The one may change at any time while the other is an inevitable moving forward. In theory we could have access to v15,v16 and v17 in 2011. Versions and years aren't the same and (in theory) anything other than a v1 is no longer ideal. (This is why companies use years and Xs in their marketing) At any rate, the most important reason is that it would keep the flyer from becoming prematurely outdated. That whole period space thing is awkward for me. It's hard to teach old dogs new tricks! Whether using one or two spaces after a period, the key is to remain consistent throughout. If you use two spaces after a period stick with that scheme. It's the changes/errors that draw attention to themselves. I believe the secret to a useful flyer is to remove anything that could be considered excess. (In theory this could mean no words at all if the image(s) sufficiently represent) If more words are ideal, put in a link to someplace here in the forum with more text. (text that can easily be updated and kept current versus the flyer which may be outdated the day it is printed) Again, you are trying to delay the inevitable day the flyer will become obsolete or at least extend that date. Next up... more detailed nitpicking.

You may want to grab these while you can. I'm a little surprised to see them still online. Several sites have received requests from the new Famous Artist School (operating under new hands as authorized by the estates of former FAS owners) to remove these files. Daniel Caylor (who had uploaded almost all of the FAS lessons in PDF format) posted the following notice on his site 'On Animation': 'On Animation' is a great site. Highly recommended. Here's the link for those interested in learning more about the official FAS courses: http://www.famous-artists-school.com/ I may be mistaken but my memory says Will Sutton attended/graduated the FAS course.

This seems somewhat like Qt which I thought I read Steffen Gross has been using for some development with A:M. Qt is open source development framework from Nokia: http://qt.nokia.com/ I really should lean forward and learn this stuff. I appreciate your work here Holmes. I hadn't even heard of Titanium Developer yet. I'd love to work out some basic apps to compliment workflow with A:M files outside of A:M; organizing/reorganizing project assets and altering rendering cues via a smart phone without even entering A:M for instance. I'd love to return to the idea of using low-rez 'Lendering' to quickly prototype and plan. A:M can do the job easily, I just need to be more productive with my time and effectively utilize the imagery A:M produces for me. The ability to build my own custom applications to meet specific one-off needs is ideal. I may not have that max-capacity need at present but know I will some day. Thanks for the heads up on Titanium. I'll investigate.

Very interesting Holmes!

Yes indeed! Off to a great start. As Chris states, I think you can do a Copy/Flip/Attach and then move everything into place but you may find it easier to model the other side outright. He's got an interesting face. Looking good!

That's quite a cast of characters you have there! I like your use of Sub Surface Scattering and musculature. I can only assume there is a wrestling theme in here somewhere... or is it straight up superheroes?

That's looking nice! Looks lived in too. For the skylight showing through at the top you may be able to get away with patches with a high percentage set on their ambiance setting and color=light blue. Turning up the reflectivity on some of the metal up there next to those lights might then largely complete the illusion of light shining in from the roof. Added: I notice in your screen capture that you don't have a picture assigned to your IBL (under the Environment Map setting it indicates "None"). I'm not sure what to think of that but it appears you aren't using the image for your lighting therefore... no IBL. Without the image specified you aren't getting the IBL effect into your scene.

Looking good and nice use of displacement! Don't be afraid to cheat the perspective of the vehicle a little to get the front of the vehicle into a more straight on view. This will be essential if you intend to keep the A:M logo. I haven't thought too much about it but my instinct tells me the squinted eye and open eye could be reversed to get at a more appropriate facial pose. Just telling you want strikes my fancy... it's your show!

I'm going to guess you refer to Matt' Bradbury's old 'A:M Features' wiki (the one remembered for it's excellent graphical representation of A:M)? Gone the way of the Dodo I fear. As Matt was it's creator perhaps he still has those and is willing to share. P.S. Reportedly, the A.R.M. site was hacked and because most of the links were broken anyway Vern didn't see a good reason to bring it back from the dead.

It's great to see him moving! He's starting to live and breathe. In the walk cycle, if you can move the hips up and down a little more that will add another layer of weight to him.

Sure can. Right click in the Chor and Save as Model. ***BEFORE doing this you should save what you've got now so if you ever what to go back to it you can.*** Then just work with the new Model. You are already on the right track but in reading back I want to make sure everyone is aware of this option: I would try to use that image (or a blurred variation of it) to light the scene via Image Based Lighting. You can find the Image Based Lighting settings by right clicking on the Choreography name in the PWS and opening Properties. Select Global Ambiance and then choose Image Based Lighting from the drop down menu. (It'll help to find your image if you've already added it in A:M) You can adjust the Exposure level and then tweak the lights in your scene after that to taste. As Rob suggests you are getting close! Keep in mind that there is light emitting from each of the cells and once you add that it'll really brighten up the scene. You may want to use a few strategically placed white lights set to negative settings to darken and pull the light out of those areas. This will allow the individual lights to control their own space. Note: I may have to back off of this suggestion to use negative lighting extensively because what is seen in preview can be a lot different than what appears in final render. When using negative lights check to make sure you've set your render settings to use the camera in your scene.

The two keys I use here are the Delete key and K key. Delete will remove the end of a spline that terminates at a Control Point (CP). (It will remove the last segment taking the spline back to the last available CP) The K key (think 'Kill') will separate splines that run continuously through multiple CPs. (effectively separating them) Sometimes (i.e. if you use the K key when you meant to use the Delete key or vice versa) a combination of these two keys one right after the other will be ideal.

Fun character! My one concern deals with the silhouette/clarity of the current setup. It's not easy to tell what is going on in the scene at a glance. Something like that is important to draw the attention of the viewer in and then the detail can keep them there. Sometimes it can be useful to state an action or theme, "Driving to the Market" or "Dangerous Curves Ahead". Perhaps something overstated, "Sunday Morning Driver" and then work into and out of ideas from that. I don't know what the underlying idea of your image is going to be so that is why I'm asking... grasping. Also, right along with that theme try to add some variety to the image. Can you tilt the vehicle to make the scene more dynamic/dramatic? Horizontal lines tend to have a calming effect while intensity increases with angles and diagonals. Looking great thus far.

Thanks for the background and preview of the future. I think you've got something great going here. You may already have some of these skills but if you can take a class on lighting and texturing (or make it an area of focus) that'll catapult you into the major league of animated shorts. You've got the momentum going. Keep up the pace.

Amazing as always Will. Your old design was great but this new character design looks a lot more fun!

Four months with A:M... need I say... outstanding. Please tell us more about this project and it's genesis. Can you reveal any plans for your follow up to that?

Bravo. That was great. IMO a little more polish texure and lighting-wise and that would be award winning material. Already may be depending on where you'd submit it. From start to finish you put in a lot of great details and the music selection fits wonderfully. (Not sure about issues with the music rights if you plan to push it further) ***SPOILERS!!! Select text below to reveal*** My only crit would be that the fluid inside the aliens helmet should be fairly transparent. Okay... that an a suggestion... If you could hide every clue about the fish (except the fish showing up in the aliens eye at the beginning) it'll heighten the payoff at the end. (i.e. don't mention a fish in the introductory credits. Perhaps... "and introducing Sam... as himself( i.e. fishes name here)" Absolutely control the timing of your most important reveals. I think I'll go watch that again.

Sweet looking character. Very cool. Since others are making suggestions I'll throw my hat in the ring. He's got a pretty blank expression on his face. Is he enjoying this? If he is then perhaps a really big smile on his face. A mad face would work too but I'm a little more hesitant to suggest that for the contest. Still if the following question can be answered in the affirmative... Do you want to scare all the kiddies every time A:M starts up? Hehe... a can see a bunch of kids opening/closing/reopening A:M to see him again. "Did I just see his face change?" Who ever sees your image will spend quite a bit of time looking at his face.

Looking good Gene! In order to emphasize the size of the monument and the flying of the helicopter consider bringing the camera down and having the Point of View shoot upward. Right now the viewer must be standing on top of a building while viewing the scene. If we are seeing the top of the helicopter we must be pretty far off the ground. The other option would be to place the camera farther up but then you'd have to model everything that will be seen on the ground. Hope that makes sense. A sense of exaggerated scale is what I'm talking about.

That would take a lot of doing. I think you are on track. I believe that 80% of your budgeted time spent on a project should be spent in the planning. Of course during that planning you are looking for ways to keep the other 20% of the production on budget, on schedule and fully focused on executing the plan. (Deviations from the plan are expensive in money and manhours but not as expensive as just wandering around) IMO the more planning the better. Note: Nothing says you cannot execute some parts of the plan prior to going into full (final) production if those particulars are sufficiently locked down. Usually these classify as tests of your plan.

Great commerical Matt! A suggestion: I do think you could make the satellite view progressively get more brown as you get farther away from Michigan... The underlying idea being that there is good reason to invest in Lush Lawn and not everyone has currently got it. All the smart people are doing it... better get Lush Lawn for your yard! As always, thanks for sharing these gems in advertisement.

Matt, Not all forum areas are HTML enabled by default. That has to be turned on. Where in the forum are you trying to embed your video? In this topic?

Due to incompatibilities between Windows and Mac versions (Macs didn't support the Windows interface programming required) the capability as described in the Tech Ref went the way of the dodo with v12. Sorry. Menus still should be dockable... just not with the Windows specific feature set.

Oh yeah! Rock on Spleengene! I tried to do something along this line with A:M's Dopesheet recently but apparently I've forgotten how to use dopesheets. My thought was to automate the motion by driving on/off poses via the dopesheet but maybe I imagined that capability. At any rate it's appears easier to do this without the dopesheet.

When I first read this I thought... "Uhuh... right... jello... I'll believe it when I see it." Nope. John, you really nailed it! Great job.