Simon Edmondson

Gerald. Thank you very much. regards simon

Pardon my ignorence. I just looked for the Realtime setting and couldn't spot them. Could you refresh my memory as to where they are ? regards simoh

Gerald. Thank you for yourhelp. I shall have a look. regards simon

David Thank you for your help. Much appreciated. I'm puzzled why they flipped in the copying and transfer . Not encountered that before? regards simon

Having a spot of bother with patches going missing. I have prepared a street model for the new project using V15 Copied the model file and the chor over onto another machine using V17J to build up a town using the duplicator wizard When I open up the file in V17 alot of the patches go missing Previously I have modeled in V15 and imported into V17 without trouble. The warning message comes up, but there has never been a problem. This time there was no warning, but it did have a problem. Can anyone kindly suggest a solution ? simon Street Block 01.mdl

Very Impressive. excellent work on timing andmovement. regards simon

Rodney Thank you for your detailed feedback. Much appreciated. These are all points to consider next time . I recently read a book by Blain Brown on Cinematography: Theory and Practice and that has strongly influenced my ideas on lighting and camerawork. It shows more in the shorts in the Ideas Test thread rather than here, as nearly all of this was done some months ago and awaiting finishing with the sound. I did try to vary the camework a bit, there are a couple of zooms and a few angle changes, with a short tracking sequence at the end as he gets to the bed. I realise now, that it might not show up as well as it could, because the room changes to a stage and the 'blank' background removes the reference points needed. They move apart laterally but the sense of movement about a space is slightly lost, the camera changes give a different angle but their position in the overall space gets confused in the process ? I watched a video essay by Tony Zhou recently were he looked at the work of Jackie Chan before and after he went to Hollywood. One of the things he points out is that Chan carefully sets up shots and locks off the camera position so you can see the action moving around the space and it is setting up what is to happen next. He compares that to the Hollywood method of master shots, then 'coverage', with the editing in post production being used to vary the pace and dynamics. One of the things I ike about European films is that they tend to favour long takes without the continueing cutting back and forth between characters, usually over shoulder shots. The Italian, "Inspector Montalbano" series, and the Swedish "Wallender", were both noteworthy in that regard. Because the Foley and dialogue sound was done after the animation I messed up the timing. On the recording his Mum says "Goodnight Charlie, lights out, straight to sleep" and he replies "Goodnight, Yesssss Mum" then trudges off upstairs. Because the tiiming was already set on the animation I had to ediit out the "lights out" and change the timing on the gaps between the words, so it would all fit in the available gap. There is dialogue for when she comes into the room at the end and says " whats all the noise"? then turns around and leaves because she thinks he's asleep. I didn't include it in the end because I thought it worked without and, again because of the timing. Big lesson here was, get your dialogue sorted before animating !!! I was very grateful for their help but, I have very little experience of working with actors ( this was only the second time ) and, while Sam goes to a Drama group ( I saw him in "The Crucible" a few months back ) his Mum is a District Nurse with no acting experience. The Charlie character is supposed to be about 11and so was Sam when he agreed to do the voice, but the delay in getting it all done meant he is now 13 and his voice is deeper than would be ideal. Your suggestion of having the bear on the bed as he enters his room is a good one and I may have time to set that up over the holiday period as its only about two seconds worth of frames. One thing I do like about computers is that they can be working on the teeth grinding stuff ( rendering ) while you get on with something more enjoyable ... Thank you for your help and feedback. regards simon

Finally ( ???) hoping that this maybe the last version Inevitably, when returning to something after a long absence, you notice the things you missed last time but I think it may be time to stop fussing and get on with the next project using the things learnt on this and the ones in between. I had a lot of trouble getting the sound to sync up properly post production and still not sure that it is. Any critical feedback greatly appreciated. Much to be learnt and learnt from. simon Ps this is a 720 from a 1080 render Ska Final.mov

Those look terriofic Tore. The lighting works particularly well and the strong diagonals make the compositions very stong. FAB. regards simon

Roger Its for the final project on the course I'm doing, so likely to be just me, although get some help with the sound. The big question at this point ( aside from writing the script ! ) is whether to use dialogue or not ? There are lots of different versions of the cards, I'll post some more later today, those were reproductions of 19th century originalsm which may suggest "Alice" ? Coincidentally, I listened to a radio showabout "Alice" a while back and was surprised to find out that Rev Charles Dodgson ( Lewis Carol ) was a mathamatics prof at Oxford University. regards simon

Roger. Haven't wsorked the script out yet so, still playing around with ideas. Don't know if you have it in the US (?) but, we have a card game aimed at kids, called "Happy Families" where there are groups of four cards and you have to trade/swap cards between players to complete the families. Mr Bunn the Baker, Mrs Bunn, Master Bunn, Mistress Bunn, etc. The present thinking is to use that theme and to have each house occupied by such a family. The figures would be drawn moving, interacting, on the surface of the cards while the camera moves around the cards. There will be some satire and social comment and a bit of tragedy ( if thats not too grand a word for it ) which will cause a house of cards to collapse, but don't know yet what might cause that, internal or external factors ? Possibilities included, financial troubles, affairs across the fences, inter family feuds... We start the project in two weeks time and have six months to do it so, it will probably start too big and get edited down ( thats what usually happens with me ). Regards simon Ps I bought somereplicas of early cards on Ebay.

Thank you Rodney. have to finish theboy with his Teddy Bear first but, hoping to get some more done later in the week. regards simon

Initial Test of staging for new project. Intention is to use 'House of cards' buildings with hand drawn animated characters living there. Not sure yet if the interiors will be 3Dcg and exteriors hand drawn, all up in the air. SimonHF 001.mov

might this be of interest to someone ? http://graphicshakespeare.tumblr.com/

Tore Where did you see the listing ? Svankmajeir is one of my fave animators regards simon

Robert Thank you for your help once again. I'm afraid the bit I think you mean ( comes forward over her left eye- screen right ?) Id down to operator error on my part. When it started to render without crashing I noticed that the eyes had big gaps around them and went back to adjust that. But forgot to adjust the poses accordingly as I was pusehed for time at that point. Hope to readjust overthe weekend. Regards simon

It did render out n the end, only to find I'd messed up the poses for the eyelids .... ( hey ho, ) In the file that kept crashing, the scene files were inactive except for the figure and one light. I deleted all the inactive files and turned off the volumetric setting for the one light. That seemed to work. Intro Toon.mov Coincidentally, volumetric lights with Toon render produces some 'interesting' if slightly unpredicatable results. Not sure how I could use it but good to know the option is there. regards simon

Rodney Thank you for your very speedy reply. I'd just returned to possibly edit or cancel the question ! This may be famous last words but, I may have found the problem... Indeed that was famous last words, its just happened again as I was typing ( g'rrr ). I will save the chor and model and post in a short while.. Thank you for your kind offer of help. regards simon And yet further, It seems to be going through now. will report back later. Such a joyful afternoon...

Having some bother with Toon render in V17g. ( OSX 10.85 ) At the weekend I succesfully rendered the same chor with Toon and non toon renders, then composited them together. That was at 720 HD. As the project overall will be at 1080HD I went back to try it at that res This was the non toon render When I reset the chor so that only the figure was visible and tried to Toon render it, with the same setting as used for all the other chors in the project, It crashed everytime. I've tried it about 20 or so times now, trying different variations of toon setting but without success. I just tried it with non toon and it worked but, without changing anything else, when Toon was selected again. It crashed. It only happens with this one chor ( the intro to the project ), non of the others. Can anyone kindly suggest a possible cause and solution ? simon

Rodney, Robert I watched the trailer and that was probably enough for me. I didn't know if they were referring to that or the full movie in the article ? The implication was that they watched it and picked up the subliminal bits and went to the frame by frame stepthrough to confirm the impression. My idea was a bit juvenile as I was seriously brassed off with a book we had to read,which was the worst bit of academic writing I have ever encountered. The idea was to put quotes from the book as part of the work but subliminally place rude comments about it in the background.. We were tasked with showing emotion and I chose anger. I should add that normally very placid person, last time I came close to losing my temper was about 30 years ago. regards simon

I found this today relating to subliminal messages in film and animation. Its part of a chapter in a book called " A reader in Animation Studies", edited by Jayne Pilling. simon xhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GoLhLn9hVkE Don't know if it relates to the short above or the feature (?) Mod Edit: Fixed the link and enlarged the image to make it a bit easier to read.

Robert Thank you. That seems to have got rid of the composite. When adjusting to my personal pref's under tools>options it kept crahing on the action tab ( without me having adjusted anything ) when a warning box came up about valid values. Subsequently realised it was becase grid was set to 0 by the reset. seems to be working again now. Thank you. regards simon

Having a spot of bother with V17g under OSX 10.85 Several things really. If I do a test render, I get a little window offering up a composite. Must have turned something on by mistake, but don't know what ? That was irritating before but, now its giving me the composite window but not rendering the file requested. I changed the scene slightly, did a render to jpg, that doesn't appear where it was supposed to ( desktop ) and the composite window appears with the scene as it was, including the camera effects turned off in the render window ( apply camera effects to render ) ? Its worked well for several months but, in the past few weeks, has developed a habit of crashing when first opened up, before anything is clicked. I then reopen and and it loads fine and opens up the same project without problem when selected from the previous projects list. A further symptom is that, when opening up a project ( both first time, pre crash, and on reopening ) it has lost the location of some files and asks for the location. It hasn't changed since previously and I have then resaved as, with specified location and name but, it happens again next time I try to use it. Seems to lose mainly map files and cho files but models disappear too... Can anyone kindly suggest a solution ? simon

Just to confirm Nancy's observation above. I was working on a new scene for a different project and got the following results One interesting anomoly slightly later was this were it seems to render it as lines without colour. Hve gone over to non toon for the new project . simon

Nancy Pardon my late response. I'm not a graphic designer so take my comments in that light. You've definitely achieved the non cg look sought after and, as usual, you have a highly tactile sense about the image. I think the first composition works better because Ostrich is heading up and out of the frame to the right ( upwards and onwards ). The placement of the text over the shadow takes away a strong visual element of the composition and has the effect of flattening the space, taking away some of the elevation of the plane. The stong shape on the ground leads the eye back to the spectators which emphasises the space between them, which is what you want (?). If I may make two small suggestions, A slight tonal variation in the giraffes in the top left will make them stand out from the sky/landscape a bit more and, If you made the text flow along the shape on the ground, changing scale and possibly colour, as it moved towards Ostrich, it might enhance the sense of movement and add to Ostrich's achievement ? Would that I had your colour sense ! regards simon