pequod

Thoroughly entertaining, very funny, watched and it several times. Just one small suggestion, the shot where he falls into the toilet, the slow mo shot, I think you should make much more of that. It's a great scene and should be really milked. Maybe increase the distance and perspective. Frame the Don more centrally and improve the slowing down of the motion. At the moment he seems to hover over the toilet not plummet. I think part of this perception is you can see his shadow cast on the toilet and the shadow looks far too large. Also, there's a slight sideways movement of the character towards the end of the shot which is very distracting. Again, great short.

If anyone is in desperate need of a haircut, it surely has to be me! ............ and I seem to have been permanently stuck to that side of the wall during the afternoon. Anyway, I had a great time too, thanks guys and brilliant site Paul. I rather like BAM (British Animation Masters), especially considering none of us actually hailed from London, but I guess it doesn't really matter what we call ourselves.

Parlo, it looks VERY accomplished to me. I really like the way you did the initial surprise movement, I must remember that for later use. Here are two arbitrary crits: Have a little more emotional contrast between the first and second walks in terms of pace maybe. When he leans over to view the gap, lift and tilt his hips forward. In other words, get the whole body stretching and straining to peer over.

Hilarious......thank you for that.

Oh! I didn't realise there were any new posts here. I don't know if people are still up for this, but assuming we stick to Saturdays, I can make the 21st or 28th of this month. I've never been to an actual user meeting, but I've met up with some Hashers from these shores in the past. We generally sit around and bitch about AM, but then agree what an awesome program it is. I'm definitely not one for making or presenting tutorials. I'll just bring my years of experience and show off any new animations I'm working on ......... of course that depends on whether we can access a computer.

Brilliant! Totally bizarre, and very well animated, I can't really find any flaws in it whatsoever. I wish I could let go and produce something as wacky as this.

Really nice animation Somboun, When you have finished the lip synch, you might consider switching to muscle mode and tweaking the CPs to reduce the creasing around the mouth on the final close up shot, but don't lose the exaggeration.

Well done, I enjoyed it.

Wow! cool, that really turns it into a proper event. I'm afraid I'm devoid of a laptop also, we'll just have to sit and stare at each other

Wow! cool, that really turns it into a proper event. I'm afraid I'm devoid of a laptop also, we'll just have to sit and stare at each other

Late July sounds good to me. Shall we say Saturday 24th or 31st? Sorry, I like to plan ahead.

Count me in Sam, I'm always keen to meet up with fellow UK Hashers.

Fantastic! The bleached environment was perfect for the mood of the piece, and dare I say somewhat of a time saver I shall look forward to your new short, "Council of Mice" with keen interest.

Wow, really superb stuff Parlo, this one, in terms of acting seems way more advanced than your WOTW. I'd love to see his coat tails have some secondary motion applied. Oh, and a very very small detail, but his thumb looks a little stiff compared to the other fingers, it seems rigid towards the end of the sequence. I wouldn't mention it normally, I just want the piece to be perfect.

Wonderfully distinct and characterful work Parlo. I too like his 'crane' like walk towards the camera.

Ditto the praise everyone else has given.The squash and stretch works really well and his little furrowed brow is just too cute. Have you thought of a solution to attaching those horns?

Most excellent hair. I didn't know there was a video tutorial on hair locks

Thanks everyone for the continued pats on the back! My head is beginning to swell to giant proportions Nancy..... in further attempts to persuade you to do more of your animation in the choreography, here are a few more tips. When you start to animate, try deleting all the lights in the choreography, you'll end up with that much clearer default light you get in an action. Also, I make constant use of the 'active' option to hide models, lights etc that are interfering with my views. Be sure however to toggle the animate button off when you hide a model, so you don't create any keyframes. I look forward to seeing your WIP.

Hi Nancy, I tend to animate solely in a choreography. Animating in actions is for repeatable sequences where you have to make sure the character's movements look good from most angles........and this takes time. The advantage of animating through your choreography camera, (once it's setup for the scene,) is if your character looks alright from this view, then that's all that counts. I realise these are sweeping statements and AM's powerful NLA tools as demonstrated by Raf Anzovin show what good results you can achieve by blending actions. I do use the 'add' blending quite alot, especially on cycles. But, for this short, blending a series of choreography actions didn't seem necessary. I've had a mistrust of action-objects ever since version 5, but I'm sure they are working fine now. Even so, I find it much easier to keep track of constrained objects in a choreography. Constraining the piece of paper to Schlitzy's hand was your basic 'translate and orient' two step. I always use compensate mode. Kinematic constraints are similar. Normally I would move the hand (arm) and the paper being constrained to the hand would follow. But at one point in the animation I needed the constraints to be reversed. I wanted both Schlitzy's hands to be constrained to the paper, so I could move the paper around and have the hands follow. I used kinematic and orient constraints for this. Exercise 6: 'The stuck door' in the manual that comes with the program is a useful chapter to read. It explains how to use kinematic constraints amongst others and also how important it is to keyframe the relevant bones before unenforcing these constraints. My paper model had lots of bones which I rotated to quickly simulate folding and creasing. I also made sure that all these bones were children of a master bone. When I constrained the paper to the hands of Schlitzy I didn't constrain this master bone to his hands but instead used the paper's 'model bone' or 'shortcut to paper'. So, during the course of the animation if I needed to slightly move the paper in relation to his hands I could, and not worry about ruining the offsets that were created between the paper's 'model bone' and Schlitzy's hand. I find constraining props difficult too. It was technically challenging to have the paper constrained to his bottom, to his left hand, then to both his hands etcetera, etcetera, and make sure these enforcements gently eased in and out without obvious jumps. I was making lots of keyframes and inspecting the channels to ensure that their wasn't any channel drift between them. If you are doing an animation which has a lot of constraints popping in and out of hands like this, only apply these constraints towards the end of the animating process. Because if you decide to change the timing or readjust your hand movements for example, it can once again mess up the offsets on your constraints. This advise can equally apply to a lot of other details like secondary action (tails, floppy hats etc) which should only seriously be worked on once you are completely happy with the rest of your character's motion. Okay, I've gone on long enough and you are probably more confused than before. If you've anymore specific questions you can ask here or email me if you wish. Stephen.

It's an oldie, but a goodie! You don't have a better mov. version you can show us?

Great model Mike. Aside from the rather frentic arm swings mentioned already, this is a really nice walk cycle too.

Cheers everyone for the compliments, I'm chuffed. I think well over half it's appeal is down to Jim's excellent model, Schlitzy is just oozing personality. Not that being a drunk is a light hearted issue kids! Parlo- I did originally have his 'hat droop' dynamically constrained, but no matter what i tried it never looked right. So I animated it the old fashion way. I don't know how you and others are having so much success with dynamic constraints, I just can't get the blasted things to work well for me. The stiffness settings on a chain of bones, to my eye, have virtually no effect, or not the effect one would expect anyway. It be cool if you could bake the simulation, giving you a chance to tweak the motion manually.

Cool, So the mad scientist sits inside?

Lovely model Javier, It's both sinister with that sort of klu klux klan hood, and cute with those ears and flat snubby face.

Splendid spline work Jim. I agree with others, the bags under his eyes are wonderfully crafted and observered. Sneaky use of 3-point patches also. There's some nice warm turning edges on his skin, is that just good lighting or are you using some shader or other? Personally, I think he looks French, like Charles de Gaulle!