fae_alba

Digital doodling..the A:M way.

You all may have figured out by now that I am a rather big lover of Disney art, particularly of an earlier vintage. One of my passions is trolling certain auction sites for various pieces of Disneyana. Usually I find props from recent movies, or signage from the Disney parks. But just last week I managed to score some original artwork from a Disney animated short. Sadly, the actual short it was used in is unknown, so as in all things, I had to take it on faith. BUT, it does look the part. It's this look that I have always wanted to reproduce with the Papa Bear shorts that I am working on, which hopefully, I'll actually be able to get back to soon! Anyways, for your viewing pleasure, here is the artwork.

I've had a few conversations like that...now i know what's going on!

Will, This is something I've been trying to get going with Papa Bear for a while now. Rodney and I have had plenty of conversations on different approaches. I like the idea of a "virtual studio" that not only creates its own properties, but fosters the creation of properties of those artists associated with the studio. It's a concept that I hope to revisit after the holidays. I've begun work on the first title "Gone Fishin'" already, and have several other scripts that I have been mulling over for years now. It all boils down to time for me; I've been logging between 80 and 100 hours of work per week since August, so not much time for story telling. At any rate what you describe is exactly what I've been trying to get off the ground for a while now.

pricey propositions. Marketing alone can be a budget buster. While all that is possible, you would be kissing your $79 a year subscription rate goodbye. How much are you willing to pay for all of these goodies? There's a reason the other animation products cost so much in the beginning, because software development is expensive.

"Not available for use during the user’s normal working hours" What the devil does that mean? Who determines "normal". Hell, I put in 101 hours of normal hours last week! If I get a hot minute at 1pm does that mean the guys in top hats and badges are gonna come knockin?

sleep is one thing that always eludes me when I'm on the road. I'm usually pretty dragged out by the end of the week. Hopefully I can get some work done on Papa Bear's first short, that's the goal at least.

The project I've been on for work has had me totally swamped (as Rodney can attest to) for the past year. Every two weeks I'm flying across country to the client site and living out of a hotel room for 5 days. Very disruptive to getting anything done. Each trip, I hole up in my hotel room and wish I could get some work done on A:M. But not wanting to lug two laptops around in the airports leaves me without A:M (sigh). Well, just a few minutes ago, as I sat through another conference call and was gearing up for another trip, I bit the bullet and bought another copy of A:M, and loaded it on my work laptop. Now, assuming I have the energy, I can work on A:M at night. No more excuses!

i have lost of ideas! But, And I Mean But: We still have one in the offing that I have been trying to complete; Namely "Rear Window". Before any other projects, I'd like this one put to bed (or in the can). I had asked , here for some help in creating some additional clips to tie the story together, but got only one response. Perhaps you'd be interested in helping with this as a warm up?

again go with simplicity. Use fluids for the first piece of the fluid leaving the spigot, then at the right moment, a camera cut changing angle, and switch it to cloth. Remember to always "KISS" the problem!

Excellent answer Robert! Too many times we try to use the spiffiest solution just because we can, failing to realize that all that really matters is how it looks in on screen in the final cut. Read an article once that when the producers at Pixar (can't remember which movie) wanted a water splash effect, he decided to just go out to a pool, film it, then place that into the clip.

I had time estimates on processes I've been writing for work....kind of got smacked down when the powers that be heard them. "Get them down to 1 hour!" was what I heard. What's your solution to trimming the seconds?

How much time is that in dog years? 15 minutes is an eternity in animation. Someone break out your calculator.. how many 10 second tales could be told in 15 minutes... And there's the thing. What is a 15 minute tale if it isn't just a series of shorter 'takes' strung together in a plausible sequence. Any movie/animation can be broken down in that way. But can they be done to stand on their own two feet and still tell a story. The animations i grew up with are really a series of separate bits, strong together as you suggest. Wile Coyote comes to mind. Each part of the 5 minute short could be shown on its own, and you get the story; poor Wile is going hungry yet again.

almost makes me want to build a story around just that effect. Very nice!

i have no intention, nor the strength or mental capacity to contemplate producing something in access of 15 minutes. Even that would be a bit long.

I looked too...roughly $3300 bucks. I need a render server before a 3D printer!

I'd test it... delete the folded over splinage and save as- OR redo it without the foldover... that is a trick that works in A:M-land, but you have to think actual mass now. I like AM better!

John, I leave it alone. It comes back repair failed. One thing that I find interesting is if I send Papa Bear up by himself, it works (I have to change the repair method to get it to do so) and the colors come in fine. Sending up the whole model and the fur color comes across as blue. I'll try sending up the base separately. To me it looks like the base is the cause, but its the simplest part of the whole shebang! My suggestion is to start with one shape that works and add others in until you find one that causes a problem. Then you know where to begin problem solving. Is that clothing really single thickness? Robert, the shirt is one thickness. The collar does fold over, but the mesh itself is not doubled up.

Did you give it time? 20 minutes in some cases. Also, as always- make sure you have your normals facing right ways or that will make for some confusements to the bot... How many subdivisions did you set in the obj export dialogue... I've been using 16 I think. As I said p at the top... you go back and forth many many times between A:M and Sculpteo, so you need to change something up and try again. I did 16 subdivisions, checked normals. This is what I was going for.... and this is what sculpteo sees ...

I tried sending up a model of Papa Bear to sulpteo this weekend (on a pedestal, with a fish at his feet and holding his fishing pole). The repair tool choked on it, and no matter what I did it wouldn't work. Ah well.

I've never had good luck with building site front ends like yours. None of the browsers implement HTML let alone HTML5 in the same way, so you have to code in tests and workarounds for multiple browsers and browser versions to cover all of your basis. The alternative is to only support the most popular and place a disclaimer of "Best Viewed on ...." I want to see you succeed, so that I can have you do the same for my site! My challenge is I'm using wordpress, so I have to marry this great stuff into that.

Fix that by a quick camera cut. Like say to under water looking up at the bobbin. (Hint hint)

Now that is sweet!

I see this in Papa Bear's near future!

I'll note that this is a bit more specific effect and rather different than rain-drops on a pond. To do this right we would need to know what the shot is and be certain it's not going to be changed. The special effects you see in movies are designed for the the shot that is planned. Everything about he camera location and angle and lighting are known before had so hey can build the effect to work in that circumstance. Haven't gotten that far in storyboards yet. But the basic scene is bright sunlight, wooded stream... but enough of this ... we need to get back to your original post!