Bruce Del Porte

Great simulation! The physics seems dubious but I'm sure the cats won't care.

Great piece! I love the characters and cinematography. Kafka is tough to interpret to Americans. Bravo.

An interesting idea, I've accumulated a bunch of them over various versions of Vegas, but never really played them. The grain adding filter just seemed to add noise to an already noisy piece. Going all the way produced a very old film look. Oldschool.mov Using a toon type filter gave a painted cartoon look ToonPaint.mov I tried a warming filter to give it all more of a "Golden Hour" glow that I think does soften it a bit. golden.mov I'll probably have to play with it some more before I'm convinced it is an improvement.

Thanks, good call. I'm going to have to compress this in Flash. Are there any pointers for getting good quality Flash for streaming?

A lot of great crits, thank you everyone. I rearranged it a little to edit out some dragging moments. I'm homing in on declaring victory so this version is close to what the final piece will look like. Any last thoughts? Sir Nigel, like a lot of us, have a lot interesting memories of the sixties. KRCC_T.mov

I started blocking out the third scene and tried Rodney's suggestion on an alternate entrance for the Imp. KRCC_P.mov Bruce

Thanks everyone, many of the crits helped plus things up. KRCC_M.mov I'll post a link once the final piece is posted. Bruce

Great stuff. Imaginative characters and fun dancing! Any thoughts of rigging the big guy's belly and throwing his weight around? Maybe try with dynamic constraints?

Too many of the poses are too off balance. Maybe with a spagetti legged rig? TruckinDemo.mov This is far as I went before I went back to a regular walk.

Thanks everyone for your input, some very good suggestions. Answers to questions: Yes the shadow continuing on was a gag but difficult to get to read because of the aspect ratio (400x647) dictated by the web master. I have shadow passes both ways, no biggie. There is no real story as a narrative, mostly symbolism The artists I had in mind were S. Dali and R. Crumb. Timothy (Mothy his DJ name) lives with a certain aura of punk rocker paranoia, very leery of the eyes of even the minimal fame being a local DJ gives him. The balloons in the sky are of course eye pupils. Disaster seems to follow Tim, the A-bomb blast, and his inner demons seem to drive his direction. The first scene are really a depiction of him cursing among his influences, shoulders shrugged, trying to avoid it all. It is all in his mind! The ZZ Top beard is a new look so I had started trying to create the R. Crumb-Mr. Natural-Truckin walk. I couldn't find anywhere where Crumb had drawn all the poses of the walk and I couldn't really get it to work. The first couple of steps of the second scene were the best I could get it. Looking head on, it looked like a fish out of water flopping about. The black clothes, the Chuck Taylors, and political incorrectness of the cigarettes (and flick) are all part of the punk rock aura of rejection of whatever. Tim struggles with life but seems to have found his niche working for this radio station. In the final scene he will introduce himself and the show. His friends who constitute half his radio audience will get it, and what the rest of us think is irrelevant to him. A lot of good suggestions here to plus up the animation, thank you all. Some Props The Mothy model was built around Jim Talbot's Sir Nigel. The Imp model was by Andy Gibbons

KRCC_H264.mov Here it is in H264 I don't think you have to pay again as long as you have a 7.X.X license. They are still in the 7s

Hmmm, It is 9mb using sorenson 3 compressed on a XP Pro machine. I have a newer version of QT 7.5.5, I'm not sure what to fix. What codec usually works? Maybe download it and drop it into a QT window rather than using a browser window, I'm at a loss????

A DJ from our local NPR radio affiliate asked me to do a cartoon for his page on the station web site. He does a weekly punk rock show on Friday nights called "Suddenly the Sidewalk". He wanted something surreal. Anyway, I have made some progress on the first two of three scenes and thought I get some critique if I have made any egregious animation errors. Let me know what you think. KRCC.mov Thanx in advance Bruce

I was wondering if this was dead, welcome back to the living. I even had thoughts of hijacking the thread and declaring a contest myself. I would get too hung up on getting consensus. Many posts (mine) were just suggestions rather than adamant disagreement with another person's idea. Unanimous agreement is likely impossible. If you choose to manage a contest or group project, you get to make the rules. You have a lot of interesting input to take into consideration. Keep in mind how much time and effort the rules place on yourself. In the end, those inclined to participate will and I can't remember a contest that didn't produce interesting work. GO FOR IT!

My thoughts on "anything" verses a theme is that it brings in WIP and half finished abandoned projects, not requiring an all new piece. Academy Members seem to be able to sort out and compare films of a diverse spectrum of genres. I think AM Forum Members are equal to the task.

"For the record, when it comes to contests we don't have a lack of people creating cool stuff. We have a lack of people submitting their cool stuff." I agree! The old contests were always fun. Why not start with one and keep it simple. For instance: 1. Animations can be any length, on any subject, in any video format, resolution, and frame rate 2. All animations must be created using primarily Animation Master (any version) 3. All animations must meet Hash forum posting guidelines 4. All models may be used 5. Animations must be posted in this thread by Saturday, June 4 either uploaded to Hash or linked so it may be viewed by all. Animations should be marked as an entry with a short introductory description of the piece. 6. Credit must be given to all animators, modelers, sound clips, and third party creative software. Animations will be judged on (maybe a winner for each) 1. Basic animation skills as defined in TAOAM 2. Artistic merit and originality 3. Best Picture My reasoning for simplicity is that dictating the subjects and models narrows the number of people who will be enthusiastic to participate. Those who regularly animate with AM may not have the time or inclination to create an all new piece with no relevance to their artistic interests but they can certainly submit their best sequences and experiments made for other purposes. It will be great to see it all. To those who are worried about their competitiveness, nothing hones your skills like finishing a piece to show. You will for sure get constructive feedback. When I started, nothing was harder than working out as many animation problems as possible and completing a piece. (particularly to a deadline) If nothing else, do a great TAOAM exercise and state in your intro blurb what animation skill you wish to be judged on. This forum is generally a generous crowd. No matter where you place, you will be glad you completed the piece and participated in the contest. Bruce

Thanks for your answer, I think I will pass on this one. Good luck with your project.

I couldn't find an answer in this thread, why are we using jpgs rather than TGAs? TGAs introduce less noise in video compression (lossless) and have an alpha channel allowing for compositing. The set is static, if you render the characters separately and composite over a single background frame, it will abate a lot of the render time issues. Am I missing something?

I was an excellent project because of it's very loose rules, a lot of room for creativity. This was my entry. It didn't make the final film because the DVD got lost in the mail (It later resurfaced after the final cut was published). Maybe something like any character enters frame right, does some sort of dance/athletic/gymnastic move, and exits frame left. It would make it more physical and exercise all the important animation skills. (Weight, S&S. timing) The point is of course to animate. BallofPaper.mov

I think her voice works. You also want the voice to fit her personality, have you thought of a bio?

The last video letter was a success, so I of course did another. Same story as above. This is the intro redux centered around the Halloween theme. A similar start reusing the same joke, ah la The Simpsons opening. The video letter included home movies of trick or treaters and a Halloween party I attended plus the usual family news and stuff (of no interest here). The intro was done with AM, primarily using models from the CDs. They had a costume contest at Gloria's base and she went as a GI, thus the GI is her (Ruscular did the face). (45 seconds, 8MB, Sorenson 3) HalloweenIraq.mov

I forget what old version had this problem. When this is happening, does the file size get huge? If so, look at the prj file in a text editor, there are probably long lists of dead drivers. They don't hurt anything but the save and load times and you can delete them to get back to a reasonable file size but the problem, if it is dead drivers, wasn't fixed until the next version, upgrading is your best bet.

Thanks I guess animating hair is possible, it would make sense for it to be in a chor. If I have created keys, and I must have, I can't find them anywhere. I am just going to live with it. It will be on a DVD, they have dial up and only a few internet connections for the entire brigade. She will have to wait for A-mail (Army mail). Thanks for the wishes Rodney, this is her second deployment. So far, all is quiet on the southern front. Knock on wood.

This is the intro to a home movie I am sending to my girlfriend currently deployed in Iraq. The movie is a compilation of greetings from friends and family, updates on news from the home front (not really important here). The mood I was after for the intro was the surreal ambiance of fall foliage in dawn light. We are from Colorado so of course fall foliage means, for the most part, Aspen trees. The under-the-bridge is sort of her joke, claiming that I would probably spend her year away sitting under a bridge somewhere drinking whiskey. As far as the joke goes, I am sure she will get it. There is an artifact I don’t understand if someone has some insight. All the trees are photos on hair. As the camera pans, some of the foreground trees sway. Dynamics are off and the movement appears to mirror grooming tweaks I make to the tree’s position in that chor. I know you can’t animate hair and I can’t find any keys but it appears like the hairs are following grooming over time. The entire sequence was rendered as a single render in sequence (no multiple instances, TGAs). I can’t get hair to actually animate but I don’t seem to be able to get rid of the movement either. I can live with it but does anyone know what is going on? V14 Some of the artifacts in the background trees I think can be attributed to viewing angles of individual hairs. I will live with those. All the models are from the discs except Brucebert who is a derivative of Fatguy. All the trees are photos attached to a hair material. Sorenson 3, 45 seconds, 15MB Fall04.mov

For some reason I can't delete a file I posted, I just don't see the button. use this prj' alphadecay.prj