NancyGormezano

Your character's face has great personality - if you want to get away from realism a bit - you might consider stylizing the body as well - using exaggerated proportions - eg - skinnier legs, hips or more giant muscles, or longer torso or etc...something unreal which communicates the personality, intelligence, in a caricatured way. As for the ghost groups thing - it's a mystery to most of us - we've all? seen something like it it in various forms. Perhaps ? Delete all the phantom group folders, delete chor. Then save your models immediately (separately - not embedded) - close then restart A:M - bring models back in..still there?

It's been a long long time since I've posted any personal work - and I have now started re-fooling around (got my ver 15 back - woo hoo - me happy camper) - Here's the start of a character that I will probably use in one of the short animations I have in mind to do. The character is a modified Ork model being used in Scarecrow of Oz - designed by Alain Desroucher, modeled by Ken Heslip, rigged by Mark Skodacek, modified, textured, feathered by me. it's not finished. My intent with doing a sequence of short hopefully humorous vignettes is to develop & loosen up my animation style, and get a better grasp on short (1-5 minute) story telling via pantomime, or minimum dialog ... This is just a TEST to see how well hair/feathers will hold up with dynamic constraints on body parts (ver 15e) - This test doesn't have any shadows (2 secs/frame) - but I've been getting really good frame times - 10 secs a frame (4 passes with shadows) on other tests that I've run on this fluffy character. I think L'Orkerella/Orkerello is cute. But she/he's tricky to animate with backward bending legs. Don't watch if ya don't like cute and colorful, rough & dirty dancing animation. OrkerellaLow.mov

wow - that dead guy is gorey goodilicious !

bravo Robert - very clever

Good catch! Jesse

Yah. for an attention grabber - it works well. It communicates POWER. My one critique/thought - which doesn't matter given the intent of the video - is that it feels/looks "composited" - ie flat, with obvious layers - but well done in a stylistic way.

Sweeper is now a standard plug-in of A:M - (you've been in MAC land for way tooooo long, or smoking too much aspartame) In your model 1) create a path 2) create a shape - name the group 3) select path - right click - plugins/wizards/sweeper 4) select shape group to sweep - set other options & bam! For more details: Sweep Me Baby, Sweep me now

Sorry - Will this do? YooHooToob

Oooo...that's looking terrific - perhaps if you want to make him look fiercer, you might see what he looks like if you show more gum ?

EXCELLENT

The color is supposed to show thru - the bump map just makes ...er... bumps - based on the greyscale values - black is indent, white is raised - neutral gray - no bump

Uh-oh Martin - careful, careful - people might start to think of you as one of those evil, lazy programmers, rather than a saintly, accomplished crazy artist...

No - but I really wasn't looking for them - There were a smattering of posters, brochures on tables - but I didn't pay much attention. 10 is not a big number - they could have been gone?

Ah that is very sad. My father's generation is probably the last to speak Ladino fluently - a mixture of ancient Spanish and Hebrew - ie pre-inquisition (1492) with splashes of post-diaspora Greek, Turk, Italian influences. It was probably mostly due to the time of day of the showing - 9:30pm, that reduced the size of the audience, as it was on a workday, school night. There's still the Saturday (4:30 pm) and Tuesday (5:00pm) showings. And there were other films (full length) being shown in other places. There's over 200 screenings. Many of the geeks/nerds/students of San Jose/Silicon Valley were home asleep or working late or partying at the clubs. The week-end should be better. It would probably be a different story up in San Francisco (about 35-40 minutes away), as there would be a higher percentage of animated shorts film festival art patron enthusiasts. Are you kidding??? Of course! I would be thrillled to accept the award for you !!! I don't know when the award ceremony is ? Have they let you know when that would be? Is it at the last screening on Tuesday? You must write what you would like me to say on your behalf, or else I just might end up singing a song or 2 or doing a little dance or fainting or telling dirty jokes or ... EDIT: Just found out that the closing night gala & awards ceremony is Sunday Mar 8 (7:30 pm), and it includes the premiere screening of "The Nature of Existence" - which sounds terrific, and like something I definitely would be interested in seeing.

Yes I was there...I'm so very glad I went. It was WONDERFUL!!! OF course! Just lovely, plain lovely - probably the most beautifully, perfectly done of all the entries - the sound quality, poem/song was also exquisite. In regards to your questions about the subtitles - Your subtitles worked, and were very readable & beautifully done. This was in contrast to other entries, whose subtitles were truly impossible to read. It seemed as if no thought had been given to contrast of subtitles against the imagery. I & my husband did not find your subtitles distracting at all. And I don't think educated American audiences (ie those who go to film festivals, as opposed to general dumbed down Hollywood movies) have any problem with subtitles (as long as they are readable). In my opinion, the beautiful tonality of the Slovenian language (Hungarian? Slavic? Yugoslavic?) added to the experience. I am almost positive that I would prefer the subtitles over an English voiced version - unless maybe? perhaps? the narrator/singer had the same rich Slovenian accent. It was hard for me to get a read on the audience's reaction - as most - 100-150? people, an older crowd than I would have expected (mostly 35+), 60-40 split male/female, were in back of me - but there was definite applause at the end. My guess would be that "Chicory" was in the top 3 of the group that I viewed. I loved seeing your name, Ken What's-his-name, & Animation Master's name in the credits. I sure whooped it up with the applause. The audience seemed to respond to the comedic entries the most - ie with audible laughter. There were a couple of stop-mo, 1 cute, 1 artsy crude, and one experimental with the most annoying sound track that was truly truly AWFUL - I would have rated it a minus 10 (looked like something I might have done) There were 2 dark, documentary type entries, in which the message/sound track/subtitles were more important than the visuals - usually done via taking video clips and using posterizing filters. The last film - "Slaves" was the most hard hitting, as it dealt with women and children being abducted in Sudan. The sound track (and subtitled) was actual interviews of 2 children, age 5 and 9 and the atrocities they endured - it could have been a radio piece - but the message was horrifyingly powerful - and to use the juxtaposition of crude animation - probably made the message even more powerful, than if they had used real footage. Many Congratulations Dusan! I was honored to be able to be there. (ps - I believe I have already seen one of the entries - "Our Wonderful Nature" on youtube perhaps? - so not sure if it got leaked?)

I will definitely be going to the Cinequest Festival & most especially to see your film. I have been a long time admirer of your work and this looks exceptionally top notch. Has an amazing appeal I hope to go see it tonight (9:30 pm) for the premiere - that's kind of late for us old folk (unfortunately got up way too early today) - and there is a good possibility of a heavy wind/rainstorm - but if I don't see it tonight - I will definitely go see it either Sat 2/28 at 4:30pm or Tues Mar 3 at 5:00pm It will be very hard for me to be unbiased and objective about this - as I already know that I will love it ... unless of course Ken Heslip messed something up (hee hee...kidding of course). I wish you all the success you deserve!

oh yeah - it's him - http://www.hash.com/forums/index.php?act=a...st&id=39251

he's terrific!

Hmmmm...now lemme see...who does this character remind me of? ummm...er ... could it be that ol' rascally MJL himself? It's great to see you cranking this stuff out.

Probably for the same reason that cartoon characters have only four fingers per hand. Nice Octopus, Paul.

awwww...he's just downright adorable. I like him just as you have him - as he looks like a young buck Kong, able to scale at least 6 stories - a mature and more menacing skyscraper climbing alpha male would probably have a higher & more pronounced forehead (click on picture as its an animated gif)

Silly me...You're right! He was probably from New York or Hollywood...Don't know what I was thinking. Here's link to lowland gorilla pic - http://www.solarnavigator.net/animal_kingd..._stern_face.jpg link to King Kong from movie (2005): (higher forehead - more hair) http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/6...g_bigfinal1.jpg Here's what he looked like in 1933 - more old fashioned gorilla (without his zoot suit) http://www.imdb.com/media/rm110987776/tt0024216 If you're trying for stylized - then it's whatever you want him to look like. Your version looks like it's aiming for realistic (to me).

You did a great job with the texture, thickness of the hair - but I think the facial hair pattern looks a bit odd - I think The Kongster needs a bit more on his face - here's some reference photos of mountain gorillas - old slides of mine, circa 1984, taken before Dian Fossey was killed and before the genocide in Rwanda.

I have experienced a similar thing - altho I believe IRC, that I interpreted dynamic constraints interferring with the hair dynamics - they didn't play well with each other. And the effect would change (get worse) the more passes one rendered with. Ie the hair dynamics would change with each pass. The real-time display of dynamic constraints doesn't always look the same as the rendered results. BUT I believe if you "simulate" first before rendering you might have more consistent rendered results - I don't really know as I gave up with trying to make it work ....

Excellent !