John Bigboote

SWEET! Will the new Setup Machine have a rig for it? Nice work....AWESOME detail! Inspiring...

Thanks for telling us it has a lot of Photoshop in it... if you hadn't a mentioned that I would say...'make it move and get it to Pixar and ask them 'when do I start?'' GREAT look! I WOULD love to see it animated. The art-direction rocks!

Probably smoother than the actual car off the assembly line, nice work! Whats it for? Keep us posted.

Hey Headless Bill---NICE Hollowbody! I'd pick it up and strum some Steve Earle chords...but I got blisstas on me fingas! Zach- That Strat is looking 'muy bien0' 2! check the spacing on those knobs though... are they equa-distant? I've got an idea for you...once your done and want to devote MORE time to this...change the 'look' of this pristine 'Eric Clapton' black beauty to a 'beat-to-hell' StevieRayVaughan #1 strat... I would LOVE to see that, and would pay for the file. If you don't know of SRV or the #1 let me know and I'll send along some pix! Cudos on the imageros!

I agree with Justin. I used to try to capture every syllable and phoneme, not any more. Now I usually just 'gloss'over' the words and tend to spend more time with extremes. Go over the entire text once roughly, then 'comb' thru it where it needs work. Remember, this is cartoons...NOBODY should be trying to 'lip-read' your character.

SPLENDID!

Hey Gang! Still experimenting with V11's neato hair. Did a quick test and thought I'd share. Constrained a vortex force to the hair dryer. Learned that the Vortex Force 'goes-thru' objects...other than that its purdy danged cool! Have a look! (WARNING: Model used in test is wearing bikini...) blowdryer.mov

CINDY. Nice Zombie...How do you like the cog system...does it take long to implement? Does it make your character nice and bendy? Do you use it in conjuction with The Setup machine?

Thanks TacoballZ! I wonder how many hashers see my avatar (Christopher Lloyd) and think I am some kind of mega-nerd. Bucaroo Banzai was a great flik, way ahead of it's time. My favorite line was when Perfect Tommie is leading the cowboy (The dude from 'The Fly') thru Bucaroo's engineering room and he notices a watermellon wedged amidst the machinery and asks 'What that watermelon for?' to which Tommie pauses and replies...'I'll tell you later'--- for some reason THAT just stuck with me for years! I'm sure it was supposed to be explained in a sequel that never happened...would'nt it be GREAT if they made a sequel? The wolf was modelled by my friend John Aretekis, a great Hasher whom I am trying to get back into the app. He and I are hoping to start a Detroit area users group...(Detroit Animation:Masters Network aka DAMN) details to come... ANY DETROIT or Michigan users out there? please contact me...

Hats off to Randy and Bob and Noel and all the rest of the A:M programmers! I was unable to get reflections to work properly in v11 G and H but now in v I everything seems to be reflecting fine in my test render so far. That is GREAT tech support! I'm off on vacation for a week(no pewter), can't wait to see what I missed whenst I come back! This is a good note to take off on tho-

Hey Sacman- The cheerleader scene did not bogg down the renderer too badly. I think it was about 1:30 per frame at D1 (720X486) resolution and reflections off.

Done deal- did it yesterday the 24th, let me know if you did not recieve.

Very NICE Amar. Looks like she'll animate well. Keep with it! What do you have in mind for an outfit? Now is the time to be thinking of that as well. We can't just have naked women running around in our animations, now can we? Also, hope you are thinking of some V11 hair. Keep us posted!

Me again. I thru a mirror model into the mix. Notice anything unusual? Oh, I checked the model's 'options' and cast reflections is ON.

Okay---I'm WIGGIN out over these reflections! I just made a new project, put two spheres into the chor...one sphere WITH hair and one sphere WITHOUT over a reflective floor and rendered. Worked fine. I reopened THIS project and got the same results...no reflections for the chick. It looks fine in a preview (render lock mode shift+Q) but WILL NOT RENDER RIGHT! I'm going to send this project to Randy Croucher and Noel Pickering but do I send the .mdl files as well? Or does the project file contain all?

Frame from Big Ed...with reflections anomoly illustrated...

And here's another...my 'girlie-girl' in cheerleader form...Pom-Poms and hair all with V11. I had to turn-off collision detection because it was causing cofusion amongst the models, the hair was going everywhere. This was to test action-blending and how hair reacted (very well) and how multiple hair instances work on the same model (short hair on head...long hair on head...and pompom hair) as well as on 3 instances of the model. I rendered this at 30fps at D1 res...looks GREAT! cheerleaders.mov

Posted these yesterday but they got bumped so I am reposting today... Some characters we are working on, my friend John Aretekis had A:M for about a year and then sort of gave it up. When I asked what kind of work he had accomplished he said he had modelled some characters, so I asked to see them and they were WONDERFUL! He has this wolf, 3 male fat hiphop piggies and 3 female fat hiphop piggies, all decalled and modelled. So I borrowed them and rigged them and now we are trying to conjure-up a '3 lil pigs/ goldilocks' modern day takeoff. This is a quick animation test with minimal lip poses for tracking to a clip I nabbed off TV... In this re-post I am using the clip that rendered overnight WITH reflections. Notice how the floor reflects fine (except it pops) for the character without hair but will NOT reflect for the girl with hair...this is a problem I can't get around and need to know if its just me or is anyone else having trouble with hair in reflections... BigED.mov

Yes, good eyes. Some elements WERE 2D, as I didn't have the time to model characters for limited use. They were implemented in hash in some instances, in others it was all AE. One big trick I did was to put a 2D element in the AM chor with an 'aim at' constraint set to 'camera', I could then place it within a 3D scene with little worry. I have always been a big fan of Disneys and Fleishers Bro's multiplane techniques and A:M's chor is a NATURAL environment to practice what you've learned. Thank-you for all the feedback! Matt Campbell (aka) John Big Boote

http://amfilms.hash.com/search/entry.php?entry=754 HI EVERYONE! Ken helped me post an animation I made last year for Chrysler's Auto Show AV support. I really like the way that AM Films is coming along. I work for a video post-production house in Detroit, so we do LOTS of automotive and nuts and bolts stuff. Every once in a while someone will want some cool character stuff instead of charts and graphs. A:M has been an incredible addition to my graphics capabilities and has elavated my portfolio and workload. This video (Jeep TREO Unveilling) was used to build anticipation for the 'magic moment' when a tarp is whisked off of a car at an autoshow. After the video finished, a real-life Janna (the main char) emerged from the car in the bright costume I designed in Hash and posed beside the car for press pictures. The TREO is a hybrid/prototype that most likely will never see mass production but is loaded with many of Chryslers forward/thinking innovations in the works for the future (fuel cell, slideable steering wheel...etc) I had 5 weeks to complete over 2 minutes of character animation following a very tight, dry, corporate script. Initially they wanted hand drawn animation, but I showed them what A:M could do with it's toon-shader, and lots of drawing became lots of modelling. So here I am. I grabbed an identity from Bucaroo Banzai, and now hope to be more visible within the A:M community. Thanks for having a look-see. Matt Campbell