Parlo

6 minutes is really good going seeing as you're using hair - though his age related lack of it may be to your benefit! Have you tried using A:M's native bloom 'post effect' on one of your renders? I've been playing around with the 'post effects' myself and have been very very pleasantly surprised by their capabilities.

Love the hair! It's really softened him up. My only comment would be that the moustache is a little too neat, especially along the top edge. Out of interest, what are your render settings and times for this image?

The advantage of sculpting the hair in a pose is that I was able to make a material deform with the hair.... Additional poses can then be created to animate the hair. It still needs some work but the principal is there. mediaho - thanks. I'm amazed that this topic got to page 3 before anyone mentioned the 'B' word!

Jim, You've hit the nail on the head with the door scale - it's proportionally the same as the rotoscope in the modelling window but once it's in a choreography and my fetish for wide angles kicks in, the house's depth plays havoc with the proportions. I'm going to do some rescaling when I next work on it. Thank your eyes for me. I keep on seeing Scarlett Johansen's face in it, I don't know why but I do. And before you ask, no I am not drunk.

Here's one of the sets that's in the process fo being reworked - I actually laughed at the original when I loaded it into A:M the other day... sweet laughter, the kind you voice when a child mispronounces a word. It's a house perched on a hill (I'm very fond of cliche me), the hill as yet isn't there, and the staircase is going to be constructed kind of on stilts. What textures are there are those left over from the model's childhood. The rocks are textured with a material at the moment and it's giving me one heck of a render hit. I'm trying to work out what'll be the best way to decal them. bakerrod - I considered updating the boys hair to the new alpha hair but I don't think it's a necessity and I've got to be ruthless if I'm going to get this project finished. Anyhow I like the stylised look his 'solid' hair gives him. I might however, give the hill some new-hair-grass, if I can manage the render time correctly that is.

In the modelling window press 'a' and you can click on a spline to add a new control point it, then click again to add a new cp etc. Take a look at page 85 onwards in the "Art of Animation Master" book for a better and more thorough description. It may be more useful to do the whole flower power tutorial first so you have a better idea of what tools are available to you before having another go at your face model. I remember modelling appeared totally incomprehensible to me at first. Don't worry it gets ALOT easier to get your head around with practice.

Here's a very rough suggestion for spline placement ...

That's a great start - it would be really useful for those giving advice to see a wireframe so we can suggest better spline placement. The major problem I can see at the moment is that most of the splines end in the same area on the sides of the head. Here you should think back to your lathed head(s) and see how the splines work at the sides of the head in those models and try to combine that with what you've got here. In actual fact you could lathe the back half of the head and attach it to this. For example the horizontal splines in the forhead should form circles round the back of the head and then round to the front again. If you post a wireframe it might be easier to explain.

absolutely gorgeous Jim - from the subtle wrinkles on the brow to the upper lid overhang.. brilliant. My only comment would be that in places the 'liver spots' seem too uniform or flat if you know what I mean. They just don't seem to sit so well on the upper lip, above the brow or the bridge of the nose. I find texturing above the brow is a nightmare - there's so little detail to play with. And the nose may just be the uneven flatten problem that often occurs when you've got a largish nose - not you Jim, yer man there! But I'm just nitpicking - it's like chiseling away at a monolith with a toothpick.

He's the boy's wireframe - in the model window (before the hair sculpiting pose has been applied) and in an action window (after).... There's still a fair amount of tweaking to do, especially to his profile.. and looking at it now there's a cp on his neck that's practically trying to start a fight! I'm not concerned with an 'animatable' lower face (mouth and checks) as this little blighter expresses himself purely through his eyes and eyebrows.

Dearmad - yeah you are right, the lighting on these images is very soft and lacks drama but then they are entirely 'key'less. The pictures of the old guy are in the 6 and a half minute range at a large resolution, and with 16x multipass. Before this, using materials I was in the 12-14 minute range for the same image, with a much less forgiving look (i.e. more obvious creases, 5 points and texture crawl when in motion). And this was before i did any composting after the render. What's so great about working with a rig like sky cast is that you can use it as a base, and you know that you won't have to spend any time tweaking each new lighting set up to make the model look 'good enough' and hide flaws - it always will. Any lighting tweaks therefore become an artistic exercise rather than a technical one. A current example of the above is I have a number of shots outdoors in the moonlight (which, quite frankly, is where the old man belongs!) I'm using the rig for ambient blue light, a key for the moon, and a key for a 'practical' lantern light. The blue is very dark, but it gives texture to the shadows. I love looking into shadows or darkness and realising that I can pick out more detail than I thought. Anyhow I'm using those 6 minutes for stretching my legs, doing a couple of reps, making some camomile tea and checking the forum. Every job in the world should have test render time, I can't live without it

Shaun - You make me blush. I suppose it's just the way I see the world - slightly off. I'm a massive fan of the illustration work of Maurice Sendak and Arthur Rackham. I Love when things are off kilter, proportionally obscene or just so much 'not normal' to make you ponder why? My background is in the theatre (every time I say that I wonder where I put my monocle) and there was a 90's theatre design trend here in the uk that really started to take advantage of perspective and a disregard for proportion. An internationally famous example of this would be Ian MacNeil's design for 'An Inspector Calls' - an Edwardian drawing room drama reinvented in what looked like a dolls house perched on a cobbled wasteland. This sort of stuff sticks so clearly in my mind - I suppose it helps to make the viewer's experience more childlike. Anyhow I first sketched the old guy in a motel on the outskirts of Charlottesville Virginia, April 2000 if that's any help? John - I'll post a wireframe of Alfie as soon as I've got my next model ready for looking at. I think I'm going to leave him in slippers/socks, I think that toes would be too much detail in the wrong place. The face has gone through so many revisions I can't keep count... all of the older versions are too embarrassing to even contemplate, though when he's finished I might well post them all to show the 'progression' if there is any interest. Ross - I don't think it's Rosceta, it's more or a grey-blue than red discolouration. My grandmother has got it and a friend of my father's had it so bad parts of his nose when black. Oh, the human body is such a beautiful thing.

Dig the subtle panelling - what's his left hand for? Get him moving (or limping) already!

He's the phil tippet stop motion droid nemesis in Robocop... A flight of stairs proves to be his downfall.

He reminds me of ED209 - which is a good thing, indeed it's a very good thing! just makes sure he's careful when it comes to the stairs.... What I love about your models is that you can instantly see how they are supposed to move. Strong work.

As draw dropping as ever Mr Talbot. I especially love the bags under the eyes and the "shoulders back, chin out!" nature of his posture. May I suggest a monocle and a squint?

Jim - thanks for the er.. compliment I think that there is an inherent sadness to these characters. Part of it is intentional and I think part of it is just me. It's very odd how it's crept in. Yes I'm still having problems with cookie cut's, though the same imsge works fine as a transparency map. I can't figure it out and may try rebuilding the decal from scratch to see if it's just one of those problems that occurs when a model has been poked, tweaked and proded over a prolonged period of time and in differents versions.

yeah, I've been playing around with how large I can make the pores and pocks on his face before they seem too big. If you've ever seen an old man with a what I would call a "dead skin nose" you'll know the look I'm after - one of those noses that's lost alot of it's circulation, and has pores the size of saucers. I actually just using decals, and the 'pores' are created with a noise layer in a photoshop composite so I'm playing around with the scale of this to see if I can get the exact look that I'm after.

Thanks again to everyone for being so positive - The hair is created by modelling a series of straight tubes, applying a decal to them, then - in a pose - sculpting the tubes into hair. It took some time but I'm really pleased with the look. Here's a different angle and total change of expression for the creature - I'm having some problems with the cookie cut on the collar but you get the general idea...

Gorgeous model.. I am particularly impressed by the seam! I love the way that he(?) feels as though he is made out of leather without even having a texture. Awesome.

Here is another of the characters that's going through a more aggressive rebuild - The pencil sketch is the blueprint for the redesign....

Thanks for the great responses! A few answers, but it's late so I might not make much sense - Jim - Yep this is the fella from way back and that 'short' you saw was an early version of the opening of the film. It's interesting that you mention pastels as I created my pallette by scanning in a pencil colour sketch, blurring it to produce strong blocks of colour then sampling these in. I find that coloured pencils are great for this kind of thing because you can't mix them and therefore have to layer them to create strong shading. This is great when it comes to working in the computer because it's given you a very primitive understanding of what you want to achieve and also helps to make you bolder in your choices of colour. I'll be posting other bits and pieces as they pass through the '04 inspection and revision phase! bakerrod - Happy ending? Comedy? Well..... Happy-ish and as creepy as I can make it! It's makes me laugh that I got the idea to redden his eyes and lids from looking at my exhausted face in the mirror one night whilst brushing my teeth after spending a 15 hour day animating! Ross - The rest of him is very spindley and spider like... I'll post some more of him once I've sorted out some of the problems in his hands.

This is really great... here are a couple of suggestions: 1 - When he moves his hand up to his head have his head in a much more different position before, so that the change in pose is stronger. 2 - When he moves his hand down to look at his wrist try to vary the speed and flow of the movement by having the hand come down faster, hold it for a second or 2 (you might wiggle his fingers to show his impatience) then move it down. 3 - Make him stiller before the battery comes down... then add to his reaction afterwards... I'd find it very funny if he panicked and flapped his arms around in the air at the end. 4 - In general, try working on stronger contrasts with the poses, actions and the flow of the movements. It's good stuff so far and I like the character.

As the last push on this project commences (5 months and counting), I've been going back and reworking some of the older elements to bring them in line with the most recent - I've been working on this on and off for 3 and a half years so there is a very large difference in quality between the older stuff and the newer stuff! Anyhow, I thought I'd bring something to show and tell this week so here's my main character re-worked and re-textured for 2004. I'm only using decals (no materials) to save on render time and the maps were created in a method almost identical to that documented so well by Jim Talbot. There's some more work to be done on the lips, eye, forehead and scars but the basics are there. The render below was done with a 2 light skycast rig, 16x multipass, on a pentium 4 1.5 in 5:36mins As always, all crits more than welcome -

Thanks for all the postive replies... Iham: Ssshh... I think you might be onto something John: Skycast is awesome. Though this isn't the right thread I think that it would be worth you putting a much higher quality version of the 'Toys' movie on your site. The version that's there has too many compression artifacts to let you really see how soft and smooth the render is. A larger file would be worth the download time if someone was really interested in seeing what Skycast can do. As for the simplicity of design, it's one of those ironic things that it's taken me much longer than I thought to get his look right even though it's so simple. CRToonMike: Details? That's where 'God' lives... in the details. Some say it's where the devil lives but (to quote Tom Waits) "there's no Devil, just God when he's drunk". And no I'm not getting all theological... by 'God' I simply mean 'Good Orderly Direction'. After all, how can there be a God when Fox is allowed to axe 'Family Guy'... hang on a sec, it's being recomissioned!... well, now I'm confused.