NancyGormezano

I like! Sounds like a "enter anything you want animation festival by a due date". And for fun, perhaps add some unique, not-so-serious, honorable or dishonorable awards (to be suggested at close of contest): For example only: 1) Most creative violations of every animation rule ever invented 2) Least or Most likely to get approval from anyone's mother 3) Most likely to make the most puppies cry 4) Best use of Zombies doing Zumba since the dawn of time 5) etc

Wonderful - looks terrific, love the pace, camera work, render style - Congrats!

The 2011 Mascot contest is over, so just for completeness, here is/was my entry (with different background): Meet Mary Agnes and the Hickenloopers. I intend to start an exercise for myself, to develop stronger, better "golden" poses, more interesting facial expressions (using Lothario), and maybe do a short vignette or 2 or more of acting moments. It might develop into a story I have in mind, influenced by a recent trip to Amargosa Opera House (in Death Valley) but we shall see how enthused, or distracted I become.

Everyone who enters wins a prize. Many decades ago (sept '06), Hash had an active TWO recruitment effort going on, and at the time, there was a sci-fi? image contest where anyone who entered (with a reasonable entry, no bogus crap) got a free copy of Cristin McKees Animating CD series (forget the name). I'm not a spacey, sci-fyey type o' enthusiast, had never thought of entering that type of image contest, but being a greedy little devil, I sure entered that one. AND, as a side effect, it got me interested in participating in TWO. Much to the chagrin of others I'm sure.

I liked your entries John. I prefer motor mouth one without the legs, its less confusing, better design. Tho I admit I was surprised to not see any Boopsies in your entries. Motor mouth is a great character. I thought the kitty one was very creative, and loved it as an ad, but I also felt "bile flavor" sent the wrong message. "Heart and brain" flavor might be more palatable.

Nice new set! Nice composition. Lara needs to be looking more intense, and at the tiger - as it is now she appears to be daydreaming. Perhaps it is just another day at the office for her. I like the blur - gives a nice action feel

For my own growth, I am feeling like I need to work on more creative keyposes and storylines as well as animation timing, technique, gags. Ok.OK. OK. I need to work on everything. So for seed idea(s) I am about to start interpreting "acting moments". For interpreting these moments, I want to do a pose or bunch of poses to indicate the moment, perhaps different interpretations of the same moment, or a sequence of poses. If I get jazzed about any of the ideas, I might expand the moment, and animate it, turn it into a short vignette thing. The point of the exercise, besides practicing, is to get the juices going. Me personally, I prefer informal "contests", not competitive - no prizes, no stress, nothing required from Rodney, Jason...Perhaps there could be just threads devoted to an acting moment challenge, that anyone can post to at anytime, get feedback (or not). It's always interesting for me to see the different interpretations of the same thing. (but not 200+ animations with the same dialog - all in one swoop). Regardless, I am getting my seed acting moment ideas from things like this

Nice! Much better!

There are start, stop frame numbers in the render options for the camera as well as a step option (normally 1) - if you want every other frame it would be set step = 2. I have never tried step 3 or 4 but I suspect that would work as well

OH That's GREAT ! Original, funny! loved it! love the style. Made me laugh. Thanks for reposting!

Ah, you missed it...it's hiding just a coupla replys up in this very thread here Essentially, in the chor, and assuming you have imported your sequence, right click on the camera and choose new/rotoscope/"your sequence" (Alternatively, Robert drags & drops the sequence ontop of the camera) After you have chosen a camera rotoscope, then open the properties for the rotoscope and set ON TOP = ON. You can set your render settings, (frame range, resolution, file name, file type, compression, etc) in the camera at this point, then render to file. Or set the render settings in the dialog box that pops up when you go to render. Check that all is correct before hitting ok.

I have seen that. Or something very similar. But I believe I had been using some plug-in (like split, or split patch, or ???) - but I remember that it would clear itself up as well. I think I decided that I didn't trust it, and ended up manually doing something. I just tried those plugins and couldn't get it to be wonky. I'm a big help.

Ah yes. Wonderful! Lovely. Inspiring. A whole world opens up when one plays with these effects post rendering.

It looks to me that the chor that was used for rendering the sequence (with netrender) used a different camera setting (eg background color, angle, aim) than the chor that was used when trying to manually render using the resultant tga sequence. This shouldn't matter, as you were just trying to add a roto. It looks like you didn't add a rotoscope to the camera when you manually tried to rerender with the tga sequence as a rotoscope. Check out Roberts video. Unfortunately he is rendering to an avi, and doesn't use a tga sequence. But the basic adding a rotoscope to the camera is what he's demonstrating. And if you are really new to A:M, it would probably help to render while testing to much smaller resolutions - by just halving the resolution, your render time will probably be cut to 25% of the time. i.e 5 secs/frame is better than 20 secs. Then reup the resolution after you have tested. It will speed up your learning process.

Odd is not good if you want the most people to see what you're doing. 20Mb seems a large file size. Many, including myself will not bother to jump thru hoops downloading, installing new software, unless they know, really know their life will be changed forever. And not by getting some malware, maybe mess up some other stuff installed. I will probably download VLC at some point. I repeat: Nice, nice work!

I really love how it's looking. Wonderful feel. How are you achieving that variegated misty look? Are you using Volumetric mist type or fog effects? or is it really the coloring/texturing. I will have to study it closer. I wish I had some good advice on compression - it's always a struggle to balance size/quality. h264 seems to be what most use. Perhaps skimp on audio quality as much as you can stand.

I'm not sure if that image (the tga) is supposed to be the first image in your sequence of tgas - but I will assume it was. I am also not sure why you are re-rendering a rotoscope from a chor, rather than importing the image sequence, and then right clicking (or whatever macs do) - and then saving the image sequence as a qt movie from A:M or even doing it in QT pro. However, lets assume you have a reason for rerendering the roto from a chor. Can you post a screen capture of the the chor that shows the image sequence is a rotoscope for the camera. I also suspect you will have to set the ground plane to front projected, flat shaded as well. Or else make the ground plane inactive. Or set the rotoscope to ON TOP. Has it been acknowledged yet from others that Macs have a problem with whatever you are trying to do? in whatever version you are using? (I have not closely followed this topic). EDIT: - I see why you might be rerendering, you are trying to add audio. Did you also add the audio to the chor that you are rerendering with?

Very, very nice! love both designs, love the renders. However, I can't see the mpg movie either. Suggestions? What compression codec is it? (media player can't find codec, QT won't open). Yes I did save to my HD.

Stian seems to use (or used) pfhoe (not free - but reasonable price) http://www.hash.com/forums/index.php?s=&am...st&p=241599 http://www.hash.com/forums/index.php?s=&am...st&p=303610 I did a search on "motion tracking" as well as "camera tracking"

Tips and Tricks Volume # 2 talks about demo reels I'm quite impressed by the enormity of your efforts. And it's been evident that you've been cranking it out full throttle, with productive, wonderful results. I have no experience with demo reels either, but from what I've observed on YouAnimator, it would probably be good to take some of the best of your clips to the next level and finesse them. Take the time and put in some polish. However, not knowing who nor to what types of industry, position you are targeting to receive this reel, this may not be necessary. Severely editing your current clips to the shortest, bestest frame sequences sounds like a good idea, as others have suggested, if for an animation job. Would be different emphasis for special effects, production, management work. As a twist, you might consider a mashup to make a funny sequence, almost story, different from either TWO or SO. eg take Yoop swinging-booby entry sequence and follow it with cut to Trot face in horror (around 5371) or something like that As for sound, I have read that reviewers are known to turn the sound off, unless it's supposed to be dialog. Much luck to you!

I may not understand what you are doing - but perhaps a camera rotoscope (front projected on the ground, objects) would work better for you?

Feliz cumpleaños !

When you do get back to it - I like both this style and this with longer feathers coming down similar to the first example. Nice start on the crib for the Cupidman (cute character)!

My feeling is that it is always good to have the viewer questioning "why" or "what" from the beginning, and even in the middle. It's a great way to get 'em hooked, and keep 'em hooked throughout the entire piece if they are always wondering "what happens next" or "why". They want to know the answer, so they will keep watching. Don't answer the questions too soon. It will work as long as the questions eventually get resolved, revealed, or are left for the viewer to easily interpret/guess (and feel smug). My comments in my previous post let you know the questions that I as a viewer was wondering as I watched this. My comments above were after watching 1 time, ie a first impression. After thinking about it now, and replaying it (a couple of times last night, would have to rewatch again) - I am guessing it is the same character, and that he is running out of his (someone's?) house? palace? to greet or wave goodbye to the canoers. At this point it is not obvious why I need to know about the house, other than it looks grand, large (adding more confusion about which culture had grand houses?) So, if in your piece, it becomes obvious later on as to what that room was and how it's related to the landscape, culture, story (and I expect it will), and it becomes obvious that the characters are the same (or not), then I wouldn't worry about it at this stage. You can always add a bridge scene later if it still turns out to need it. Or perhaps have a slower dissolve between the scenes (rather than abrupt cut) to connect them.

I think it looks beautiful! Love the soundtrack, sound effects. This has my interest hooked. I am surprised that the sound reminds me of Native American culture, yet I thought the imagery was reminiscent of China. Will this be a melding of cultures? fantasy culture? The abrupt cut from the running character to the character (same guy? new guy?) waving on the shore is a little confusing as to continuity, but perhaps the inevitable "more to come" will fill in the gaps eventually.