brainmuffin

I like the highlights in his eyes. He also looks very friendly. I also liked your undead astronaut. He reminded me of "The Peoples" from Madagascar..

If he had peaked them, though, the preview render would be all angles too. But his renders are still round...

Excellent work. I've already watched it a million times. (Largeley because of the two smallish humans who gather around chanting "Again! AGAIN!" every time it ends...)

I did some tests. I zoomed the camera in quite a bit, so that I can scan the skyline. No more people walking in the foreground, no more boats. I shrunk the ufo a bit, and made it come closer to the camera . I'm having problems with the camera, though. I'm playing around with a aim at constraint, and some jitter, to try to make it look hand held. I'll see if I can get a good shot to upload tomorrow.

this is a test for an fx shot. I'm going to add in some lasers, explosions and smoke, etc. But I'm wondering how convincing this looks, before I continue. It's basically just animated photo- manipulation... http://mysite.verizon.net/vze1qub6/sitebui.../bostonufo4.mov Several things I notice: The boats don't move. I'm planning on cutting one or two out and putting them on seperate layers, and adding some rocking. Also I've thought about putting a small flag on the boat in the foreground, so that there's one more element of movement in the foreground. There's something going on with the buildings when the ufo is onscreen. It's got to do with the motion blur, when the motion blur is off, it doesn't do it, but it definitely looks fake then. I've also thought about cropping a bit, so that I can pan around a little, and add some camera jitter. What do you think?

It looks good. My main crit is: it seems like the keys are too evenly spaced. It makes the action look somewhat robotic. Try slower in, and faster out, it'll give your punches more punch, and your kicks more kick!

Not really looking to choose between them, though I also like the juggler better. But since it involves a lot of complicated juggling scenes, I'd rather not try to do it as my first short. Plus I want to take my time finishing the script, I want it to be perfect. The apartment sketch was an exercise that I did while reading "The Comic Toolbox", and I just thought it was rather funny in a strange sort of way. I'll probably start animating it sometime later this year. It's a good script for an animation, since there's only four characters, one set, and no complicated action to animate. I figure I'll do it in a rather cartoony style, too, making things even easier. It may not be the funniest script, but it's almost tailor made for a beginner animation...

Finally broke down and put a Katakata anime head on her body. I also gave her proportions a bit of tweaking...

And the other one... Apartment_Script.doc

Here are two of my scripts, one is finished (The Apartment Sketch) And the other (the Juggler) isn't finished yet, but it's very good, I think. Let me know what you think... They're both in Word format right now, but I can convert them if anyone needs it... The_Juggler.doc

I have a black velvet version of that picture hanging up in my hallway. I think the original is by Luis Royo.

did you save and re-open the project?

You're going to Tokyo, and you think you're going to have a hard time finding an internet connection? Don't they surgically implant one in your brain as soon as you get off the plane there? But seriously, enjoy your trip. Nihongo ga wakarimasu ka? Nihon ni ikitai desu. Tokyo ga suki desu ka? Anata wa ikimashta ka? Ja, mata ashita.

If you're going for something serious, shrink the pelvis a little and make the head a wee bit bigger. , and scrunch him up a bit. Hunch him over a bit, with bent knees. Don't let him stand up straight. Then, when you animate him, you can make him very bouncy, hopping all over the place.

Well, the other thing to do is to spoof their commercials... I've never seen one, so I've no idea what they're like, but I'm sure there's something in them you can easily make fun of.

Fitz, toes the chain that has him as a mascot have any commercials with him? That'd give you something to work with. If not, what I would think about are: what sort of burger-related super powers would he have? What kind of burger-related crises would he be likely to prevent or solve? is there or could there be an arch-nemesis for him to foil?

Auto ground placement feature? How does that work?

Actually, that lightsaber was constructed using theforce.net technique. I just didn't give it the bones, and it has two blades turned at 90 degree angles, like in the first jedi knight game.

I decided to enter the next mini-movie contest, with a star-wars themed film. This is a render of a "flub". That isn't the expression I put on his face, it's the one that's on his face when I open the project. (If I hit the space bar, it switches back to normal). So, I decided to get a nice shot of Lazlo (The character, not the... uh, me...) in all his geeky glory.

With such a simple mouth he should be easy to lipsynch.

I'm actually going to do both characters. I'm just going to make the body a little more stylistic fot the original head.

Well, here's an update. The almost anime hear started looking funny, especially with this body. So, I started a different head, that's more realistic:

The lighting is good. The bricks could use a bit of grunging up, and those corners.... A displacement map would take some of the sharpness out of the corners. Some roundness would help too. except for the corners, this is a great image. (I confess, I've ben guilty of razor sharp corners myself...)

Bruce: I thought that's what it was, but every time I tried it, A:M vanished. Must've been something to do with the image I used... Greg: Those are good suggestions, but it's not an alley, and it's not at night.... It's supposed to be a dark warehouse, and the only source of light is a grimy skylight in the roof. I made it very dark because I wanted it to seem like a part of the warehouse that was used so rarely that they don't bother to turn the lights on. The kind of place where an unsuspecting new guy would come around the corner, see that $50 bill, and think it was his lucky day.....

Thanks for the comments! Tom, you're right. I adjusted the contrast on the original, just a little bit, but it makes a world of difference. And, the answer to the trivia question (it's going to seem obvious when you hear it), The type of leaves I used are: Monstera Deliciosa!