danf

That's a good point. I'll think of it as more of the acting experience, I guess once I've storyboarded a bit I'll know just what moments I'm posing for. Thanks for the quick reply! I can see how regular participation here could feel like a mentor over shoulder. Here's a more interesting question for you: I want to have an LCD-watch style screen in an animation. How would you do that? Would you map a movie of the digital readout ticking, or is there a cool way to do that within A:M? Oh hell, I'll pitch my idea (although I should figure out where pitches really go in this forum): A guy stopped at a red light (traffic light model pending) notices the gas station next to him (thanks DVD!) has a new digital gas-price sign (like I just asked about). He initially sighs at the current gas price, but then the numbers begin to change- for the best! So, despite his half tank of gas, he pulls into the station, and just as he pulls the nozzle up to the engine, the price ticks up twenty cents, then down five, then down another five, he lingers in supsense. Suddenly the price rapidly increases. He concedes his loss, gets in his car, and begins to drive off. As we see his POV driving away, the sign begins to tick down again. (I think you can see the game here, involving some kind of lapse of driving out and back in. It's going to require some precise timing and storyboarding, but the animation could be relatively simple, like face shifting expressions, driving, maybe a hand grabbing the stick-shift, and of course the gas price board). The short would culminate in a western-style showdown, with the guy holding the gas pump, staring down the price board, determined to wait its high price out. Day turns to night, night turns to day. Haggard and distressed, he pouts, gets frustrated, and angrily begins to drive off, only to run out of gas. Fin. So I asked the question I foresaw, and I'll naturally welcome any further insights into how I might make this experience occur, easily, and for the final product to be best. Thanks a ton for reading.

Hi, my name's Daniel Finlay. I've been into improv comedy for years and have felt like exploring animation lately. I've read most of "Animator's Survival Guide," and have begun "The Illusion of Life." I've been pretty lazy about posting so far, so although I've tried my hand at all of the Tao:AM tutorials, I haven't posted my results on any of them... Anyway, I want to be less of a lurker because I see how much other users are learning by posting about where they are in the learning process. I just received the AM DVD library in the mail, because I have some animation ideas, but my interest really lies in animating, not so much in modeling. I had a blast doing the "Stuck Door" tutorial: http://gallery.me.com/somniac#100220 Anyways, I'll hopefully start working on this idea during the next few weeks, and I should have questions along then. One question, kindof a plea: Does anyone have actor models to share that already have facial-poses? So far I was thinking of using the "Jason" cartoon actor off the DVD, but I'm on the fence between making his facial poses from scratch or just using one of the stock characters. Any help would be awesome, although I suppose rigging my own faces would be a good experience anyways.

While in tutorial 7: "Can you say that?" I have a recurring problem involving the "S"-type phonemes. I should note that when I first selected "create new dope sheet", it told me there was some problem I didn't understand, a file missing, maybe a dictionary? But it said it would build anyway so I proceeded. Everything seems to be working fine, except when I get to where an S should be in a word, I don't see it: And when I scroll all the way to the left, I finally find the missing phoneme, but I can't click it: Any tips on how to work with this? I've also found I can accidentally create phonemes like this at times by pressing Command-Z (which I thought was undo, but now I don't know what it is, since Command-U is undo in Hash).