rusty

Justin, Congradulations! I too was drawn into the story. You have a raw original style that flows evenly through the animation, the characters, the story, the staging and lighting and, the music. Awesome dude! Totally sick, but awesome! I'm sure you've heard these two words only too often but, hey, you've earned them... SEEK HELP! You don't live anywhere near San Diego do you? Or CA for that matter? Cheers! Rusty

My goddness that's awesome. I can't begin to imagine the impact on modeling this may have -- how much geometry will this be able to replace? And I thought 13 was an unlucky number. Rusty

Very awesome. I sat for many minutes imaging the incredible sets and renderings these could adorn. Rusty

Very nice. Did you really model the eyes as parrt of the head? -- be tough to animate. However the model is very good and splines have been laid to meet minimal animatable requirements (you might need more in some areas but those you do have are configured correctly). Excelent job. BTW, I live up I-15 in PQ -- SD rules. Rusty

But WAIT!! There's even more! Ever want a little more control when rotating a model with TURN? Hold down the key (not sure for mac). Ever go through each material, model and/or action opening each in order to embed then? Many may know this but I didn't until recently. Right click on the top folder (the one with the project name) and select 'Embed All'! Ever want to clean up your groups, bones, decals, poses but... oh so slow... even crashes now and then! Close the all windows with the model in it! Fast, clean and easy. Rusty

This is a cool idea. I'll contribute... Ever build a model that has several identical parts, each of which contains intricate moving parts controlled by poses (say a robot hand that has 4 identical fingers) and as your building it think; why am I creating the exact same poses over and over? Build one part and create the poses and save it out to model file. Now embed the model into the project file again and rename the poses and the bones associated with them. Now import the one you saved and move it from on top of the existing one -- the poses will be read in and will work. As long as the bones and poses are renamed each time (i.e. are not the same as the model you want to import) you can keep importing the original model and its poses. I hope that makes sense. But wait! As a special thank you, you’ll get… Need to delete half of your model but dread deleting all the left over splines stretching across the break? Do this, copy half of the model, delete the entire model and then paste... bingo, no left over splines (save before you try this okay). But wait! Order NOW and you’ll get absolutely free… You build some shape that is not sitting on the zero axes and you need to duplicate it and flip it to the other side. So you copy, paste and flip on X axes -- now to move it over to the other side to the exact position. Got the setposition plug-in? Run it with the copied mesh selected, select group mode and flip on X (or whatever) axes. Its there! Next person... Rusty

Looks very good! You might vary the color a little in the face to break it up a little -- just a thought. Rusty

Looks good but I see what you mean. The guide splines will go flatter if you add more CPs to them. You migtht try this. Or you might try shorter hair. Finally, if you use decals to control the direction you can get the hair to lay almost completely flat against the patch. I think increasing the number of CPs on the guide spline might be your best bet. Cheers, Rusty

Very nice! Three and a half stars out of four (and I'm jaded as hell). I'm embarrassed to say I could not figure out what the bird did to 'down' the victim. I saw the bird hop up then, at the last, jump towards the guy with the gun who looked to be already falling backwards from ???.... or ???. I went through it a frame at a time and saw the two gun shots and the bird dodging (didn't catch this in real time). Perhaps the bird just attacks the guy at the end -- the falling back falsely leading me to believe there was something more then there is. Bushes and trees are not only hard on render times they're also 'busy' and 'hard' on finer story elements which can get lost in the bushes (thank goodness for 'clearings' -- too bad one wasn't available -- smiles). In any event, the above is not really critical to the 'idea' (or perhaps the 'idea' is good enough to over come it) -- clean and simple and, while nothings original anymore, it was different enough and presented well enough to catch me off guard. Of course, like any back seat director I could nit pick it to death but at the end of the day... IMHO very good! Rusty

Awesome! Just add the slow-mo spinning bullets and green lights! Rusty

Cool character -- much potential for personality! Freckles -- have you considered them? When I look at your character it looks like the freckles across the top of each cheek and across the nose are missing. The face seems made for them. Or not. Just a thought. Cheers, Rusty

I could be wrong but doesn't hair always face the camera? If this is so, then I don't see how it could work in a mirror or any surface with reflection (which is a real shame and a design error). You would have to 'fake' it as previously suggested. I'm really hoping this is not the case and, if someone got it to work in a newer version, as I think I read then, I must be wrong. Rusty

Very nice... and timely! Did you know we'd need something very simular in our upcoming project? No way you could have but we will! Will send you storyboard in a few weeks. Hows V12 cloth? Rusty

Good looking fella! Love to see him animated! Rusty