ZachBG

And here at Jeff's request is the East Timor postcard... "Greetings from East Timor! Wish you were here!" Robert: I think the Hash guys are just really busy right now. Rest assured your movie'll show up soon enough. I'm looking forward to seeing it.

Thank you for the suggestion. Seriously. Are you talking about only the view from above, or the subsequent view from below as well? I'm not sure what you mean by the "sudden sideways" movement if you're talking about the above shot... I'll have to review it (naturally I'm writing this on a computer which doesn't have the short on it! ). **Ah, I see it now. You're absolutely right. He looks like he's hovering because... he is. Ha! You got me! Guess I must fix that.

Damn... but that's good. Love the squash & stretch on the heads. The render "look" is gorgeous, and should silence any complaints about A:M's renderer.

Hi, Daniel: The animation looks great so far, very ominous (which I assume is what you intended). I love the little detail of Shaggy's photograph! The pickup of the coffee mug looks strange to me, but I can't put my finger on why, with it going so quickly. And speaking of fingers, does Shaggy hit the light switch with the back of his finger? Seems like an odd choice to me, if so. Looking forward to more!

I was going to wait 'til this was up on AMFilms, but I have a feeling it may be a while until it's updated, so... May I proudly present: Soap Opera (11 MB, 5:28, On2 + QDesign codecs) All the animation is mine. All the music is Jeff "Godfrey" Lee's (well, with some help from Mozart). The modeling and texturing is a collaboration between myself and Jeff, as is the, ahem, singing. The full details are in the credits reel at the end; it was originally going to be anonymous for the contest. Special thanks due to the folks at MAAM who saw an early version and provided much-needed encouragement. I'm very proud of this, but comments and criticism are always welcome. Be as harsh as you like; I want to make it better. On the other hand, if you do like it, tell your friends!

Hi, Stephen: I feel weird doing this, as not only did I also submit an entry for the contest, but my entry came from the same jumping-off point as yours (a literal interpretation of the term "Soap Opera"). But you asked for criticism, so here it is. 1. It's not entirely clear whether the man in the shower is doing the singing or he's just mouthing along. If he's doing the singing, he needs to be much louder in relation to the sound effects. He is our protagonist, after all. 2. The man--I'm gonna call him Placido, for no good reason--never blinks, even when water is coming directly into his eyes. He does close his eyes at one or two points, but without blinks, he really seems, well, dead. Notice the next time you move your eyes to look at something. You probably blinked. 3. Related to that--his movements seem very linear. Go through and check the points between keyframes. Are there curves in his motions? If not, put them in. 4. He could also stand some anticipation. For most of his movements, Placido is simply doing his thing without any indication of where the movement came from. For instance: he leans back to hit the high note just before the toilet flush. To make it read better, he could lean forward before leaning back. Likewise with his reaction to the flush; he could go down and forward before jumping up and back. I hope this critique doesn't engender great bitterness toward me and I also hope some other people will chime in. Why should image contests get the lion's share of the criticism? Come on, people!

Hi, Ken: Maccers can handle MPEG-1 (anyone can, pretty much); it's DivX that gives us heartburn. At the moment it looks very linear. I'd suggest curving it up some on the breakdowns (poses between poses). Also check and make sure that you don't have linear interpolation on your channels. Are you using IK arms on the brown-haired guy? It looks like it. I don't believe the black-haired guy's "angry" moment. Seems pasted in. In general, this could use a lot more overlapping action. You have a good sense of pose-to-pose animation; try loosening it up a bit, though. Harsh enough for you?

Hi Logan! Congratulations on your first animation. You know that the feet are slipping. However, to me it looks like the whole thing is moving backward, as it were. Is there a keyframe on the model bone, i.e. is the whole model moving over time? It looks like your throwing arm is overextended. Check that the IK null (assuming you're using the IK Arms setup) isn't going too far past the hand. Also, you may want to animate the elbow bone so it rotates 90 degrees outward as the throw happens (even a CGI knight can't move his shoulders like that without breaking them). Keep it up and welcome!

Them's some seriously big irises.

Nice! ... but you knew that. If there's time, I'd love to hear if you all made any discoveries when creating characters that will be rendered flat-shaded, as opposed to 3D...

This is incredible. Never again will it be said that mechanical modeling can't be done in AM... ...okay, that was a straw man, I don't know if anyone has ever said that, but the point remains...

Hi, Mal: I'm not really much of a modeler, but here are a few things that jump out at me. First of all, you should bevel (add a curved edge) all your end points. You've already got a bevel at the end of the muzzle, but you should add them at the bottom of the hand grips as well. Second, note the seams where the hand grips intersect the body. Normally, you would want to attach the grips to the body seamlessly, via 5-point patches and hooks and so on. Another option would be to create a spline ring "moulding" to hide the seam. Finally, if you want this to look real, don't underestimate the power of "dirtying" it up with decals. The bump material is excellent. What was your material tree for that?

You need to make his antenna wilt!

Hi, Nat: The dude is very expressive, especially his eyebrows. Did you model him yourself? Love to see more of him. His sense of weight is off, and I think I know why; through most of the animation he appears to be resting on his elbows. But at the end, he lifts his left elbow off the ground, yet there is no weight shift. His torso should move to (his) right to compensate. The squirrel's movement could be tightened, especially at the end, but most of our attention will be concentrated on the guy, so concentrate on him. He's pretty good already. Nice work, looking forward to more. Zach

That first shot (BG01) is really intriguing. Are you doing a multiplane-composite type thing, where the camera tracks along with the walking characters, or do the black spots represent other background elements? Nice work. As always!

Hmm... are you worried that their stems are too short to get any water and will dry out? Looks good. Nice and evocative.

I want in! I want in! Ahoy!

I had a grand old time. Sorry I wasn't able to help clean up, though. I'll put in another request for those wireframes, Mack...

Much stronger! They look like they're in love.

Pose wise... seems a little static. Maybe you could incline them both towards each other, so they're not quite so balanced?

Hey Don: what sort of monitor jack does the projector accept? Can it do mini-DVI? Zach

Are you looking for crits on the render, or the animation? I'm not qualified to do crits on the "look" of the shop, but those drums look awfully light if they fell so quickly.

The file was too small... or too big? Too small. Things became muy pixelated.

Thanks everybody... I'm not trying to keep this thread going. I was just taught to say "thanks." pugless--good to hear from you again!

I can't give any animation comments; it was too good. But I would suggest rethinking the composition of your second shot. Why is he sitting in the right third of the screen? I think he'd look better in the left third, personally. The only animation thing that didn't ring true to me was the cop's lifting the donut to his mouth. I'm not quite sure why. Maybe the donut didn't stay at his mouth enough for him to bite. But the main character's animation was fantastic.