KJ'd Beast

Roger makes an excellent point Rich. Your daughter should either try a double major or a major and minor. Like business administration and or finance. Working at a studio, or any company frankly, is all about operations and finance. Again not something that teens can really grasp as sexy, glamorous or fun but absolutely necessary. All the best to you and your family, Keith

I highly recommend she get a traditional degree, AA, AS, BA, BS in fine art. Teens don't want to hear that but in all honestly drawing, painting and sculpting are core concepts that carry over to every other branch of design including concept, character, and game design. She should go to a local junior college and get all her core classes out of the way and major in fine art with a heavy emphasis on drawing especially if she has never picked up a pencil before. It will save her a lot of time and aggravation and money. She should then look at industrial design. I also recommend she watch every ZFD Feng Zhu Design Cinema. He is a very successful designer for AAA games titles and film (you might be familiar with Star Wars episodes 1-3.) That being said here are some schools with excellent reputations with degrees in design. In no specific order. SCAD, Savanah College of Art and Design. RISD, Rhode Island School of Design. FZD Feng Zhu Shcool of Design. (Over seas) Gnomon Workshop. Art Center of Pasadena.

Here is a list from upcomingcons.com. I filtered out all shows not in the continental USA. Perhaps A:M users in these states can give specific details as to the types of shows. I will look into the ones specifically for Florida and get back with you. Midwest Media Expo Detroit, MI April 10-12, 2015 East Coast Comicon Meadowlands Exposition Center, NJ April 11-12, 2015 AMAZICON Essington, PA April 17-19, 2015 Big Wow! ComicFest San Jose, CA April 18-19, 2015 Chicago Comic and Entertainment Expo Chicago, IL April 24-26, 2015 Bangor Comic & Toy Con! Bangor, ME April 24-26, 2015 Bangor Comic & Toy Con! Bangor, ME April 24-26, 2015 Retro Mega Comic Con Savannah, GA April 24-26, 2015 ChaseCon Expo Saratoga Springs, NY 25-Apr-15 Tanoshiicon West Chester, PA April 25-26, 2015 Marble City Comicon Knoxville, TN April 25-26, 2015 Pittsburgh Comic & Collectibles Show Tarentum, PA 25-Apr-15 Reaper Mini Denton, TX April 30-May 3, 2015 Arkansas Art Pop Comic Expo Jonesboro, AR May 2-3, 2015 AniMinneapolis Minneapolis, MN May 8-10, 2015 Ratha Con Athens, OH May 8-9, 2015 Collective Con Jacksonville, FL May 8-10, 2015 AC Boardwalk Con Atlantic City, NJ May 14-17, 2015 Xcon World Myrtle Beach, SC May 15-17, 2015 MSP Comicon St. Paul, MN May 16-17, 2015 Tidewater Comicon Virginia Beach, VA May 16-17, 2015 Omni Expo (Large venue, 10x10 vendor space good one for other Animation Company vendors attending) Orlando, FL May 22-24, 2015 Mobicon Mobile, AL May 22-24, 2015 Wizard World St. Louis St. Louis, MO May 22-24, 2015 ComicPalooza Houston, TX May 22-25, 2015 Spectrum Fantastic Art Kansas City, MO May 22-24, 2015 Space Coast Nerd Fest (Venue is too small) Melbourne, FL May 23-24, 2015 Phoenix Comicon Phoenix, AZ May 28-31, 2015 Phoenix ComiCon Phoenix, AZ May 28-31, 2015 Dallas ComicCon Dallas, TX May 29-31, 2015 Awesome Con Washington, DC May 29-31, 2015 Midwest Toy Fest Indianapolis, IN June 6-7, 2015 Memphis Comic Expo Memphis, TN June 6-7, 2015 MetroCon (Small Venue does have Short Film/Anime Contest) Tampa, FL June 11-14, 2015 HeroesCon Charlotte, NC June 19-21, 2015 Derby City Comic Con Louisville, KY June 20-21, 2015 Florida Supercon (Large Venue 10x10 Vendor areas could be good for ) Miami, FL June 25-28, 2015 Daisuki Anime Con Chattanooga, TN June 26-28, 2015 SOPOCU Con Jackson, MS June 27-28, 2015 Anime Midwest Rosemont, IL July 3-5, 2015 MetroCon (Not sure if this is a duplicate or prior date is wrong) Tampa, FL July 4-5, 2015 San Diego Comic-Con San Diego, CA July 9-12, 2015 Garden State Comic Fest Morristown, NJ July 25-26, 2015 Galacticon Seattle, WA July 31-August 2, 2015 Rob-Con Bristol, TN August 1-2, 2015 Orlando Nerd Fest (NO VENUE SELECTED) Orlando, FL August 6-10, 2015 Texas ComiCon San Antonio, TX August 7-9, 2015 Dover Comic Con Dover, DE 8-Aug-15 Gateway Geek Fest St Louis, MO August 28-30, 2015 Meta Con Minneapolis, MN September 4-6, 2015 FandomVerse Expo Lancaster, CA September 4-6, 2015 Long Beach Comic Con Long Beach, CA September 12-13, 2015 Long Beach Comic Con Long Beach, CA September 12-13, 2015 Cincinnati Comic Expo 18-Sep-15 Bakkencon Williston, ND September 18-19, 2015 Baltimore Comic-Con Baltimore, MD September 25-27, 2015 CONtraflow/DeepSouthCon New Orleans October 2-4, 2015 Omega Expo The Woodlands, TX October 2-4, 2015 Pittsburgh Comic & Collectibles Show West Mifflin, PA 24-Oct-15 Wizard World Louisville Louisville, KY November 6-8, 2015 Campbell Con Campbell, CA 7-Nov-15 Amelia Con (Beautiful "Pearl" in North East Florida great for vacationing not sure about Cons) Amelia Island, FL February 5-7, 2016 Emerald City Comicon Seattle, WA April 8-10, 2016 AniMinneapolis Minneapolis, MN May 6-8, 2016 Meta Con Minneapolis, MN September 2-4, 2016 AniMinneapolis Minneapolis, MN May 26-28, 2017

Dragon-Con Orlando Comic Expo Orlando Mega Con South Florida Super-Con

Really excellent work. My only suggestion, if you haven't given it any thought yet, would be to randomize the placement of the chairs and salt and pepper shakers as it looks too perfect.

Rob, I converted it to QuickTime. Tom, If you scrub through the QT file you can see it appears to be multiple copies of the same "smoke" image, layered and rotating and growing at different rates. It appears that you could do this with a particle emitted sprite that rotates, grows, and changes color over time. SmokeQuestion.mov

Rob, If you have time, shoot a video of yourself or someone in a bathtub and composite the "tub shark" into the scene. I'm cracking up thinking about the possibilities.

Robert, That actually looked better than the VFX for Sharknado. I think you can get yourself a gig with SYFY and upgrade their CGI.

John, That was really a nice candle animation all around. Very subtle. Is the dripping wax an animated texture map or actual geometry?

Rob, Very cool applications. Each has interesting properties. The bottom one almost passes for aluminum foil with some minor tweaks.

Jeff, thanks. Too bad for us your not comfortable(?) making videos. Not everyone has Rob(cat)'s knack for that. What program did you use to paint your textures.

Jeff, I really like this last render. The hair looks better than the previous render. Like she switched to Pantene for fuller body and healthier shine. Also, would you post another wireframe, and perhaps some wire/material composites with some close ups of the hands, boots, . I'm trying some modeling and I'm trying to get good reference for what to model versus what is a texture map. Further it would be terrific, time permitting, if you would do a 5 or 10 minute video on your process on this project. I believe this would be very inspirational, not only for myself as well as the community at large.

Since we're speaking in hypotheticals what about HA:M

Addressing the logo. I prefer the logo Jim created simply because it removed the colon. When Hash first started there were at least two different versions apprentice and master. The software was predominately referred to as Hash Animation and the colon delineated whether you had apprentice or master. It now appears that more people drop the proper name Hash and refer to the program simply as Animation Master. The colon is therefore rendered useless as it has the effect of bifurcation of the programs name. My opinion would be to drop it completely.

Tore, I dig your logo design. I have read and seen enough here and there to know A;M is like my friend who refuses to wear something that doesn't look like he pulled it out of a hamper or off the floor to go out. He's just not into fitting someone else's notion of who he should be and there's something charming about that.

Thank you Nancy.

Nancy, Is that rendering technique an all or nothing type approach? Meaning, all the characters in each render is exactly the same material wise, can you mix or do you have to render as completely separate passes if you want the characters to have individual properties? Thanks.

In case you can not see the object for some reason this is the first one.

Mark, sorry to hear about your financial situation, have you also thought about "Fiverr?" They have a whole section dedicated to caricatures.

Ludo, Did you mirror model one side ie: copy/flip/attach? Looks like something for the next season of SYFY's Faceoff. Anatomically speaking the creature needs a much larger abdomen as it appears to be too small on this version and makes it look disproportional. The sketch seems to be better balanced, but other wise very nicely modeled.

That would be really nice.

While that is obviously not the desired result it does have its charm. Did you use a scripting language to randomize the leaves placement or would you explain how you modeled the tree or point me to a tutorial? Also, couldn't you have made leaves from the hair emitter? Thanks, KJB

Mark, That is a really cool machine. I think it could actually work if you gave it a gyroscope to keep it's balance. Do you have a degree in mechanical engineering?

Great work. Unfortunately this video scares the heck out of me because I feel I would have to quit my full-time paying job to learn all this stuff. I'm still trying to learn how to model. What I am most impressed with is the amount of talented people on this forum. I don't know how many people here are professional animators or hobbyists but if I could afford a way to get everyone together for a international meeting of the minds at a hotel conference room it would be pretty terrific. Continued success to everyone here.

Real nice mood to this image. For me the most powerful aspect is the handmade visual appeal.