fae_alba

Rodney, It's funny, your post about interest in cartooning, and producing an actual product couldn't be more apropos. My youngest, who just graduated from high school is chomping at the bit to create her own animated comic. She is a big Marvel fun, and is writing her own script for a series. She keeps asking if "there is someone in the A:M forum who could help her on it". Long story short, I'm "making" her get at least an A.S. in computer science just so she has something to get a job with. This is a sample of her work....

Simon, you are correct. Education is not the same, since a good university would/should also require a more well-rounded course load that educates the student in other disciplines (language, science, math, history etc.) This in theory, produces a student better prepared to survive in the real world. Dealing with other cultures, understanding the world around you and so forth. That is the importance of a good education. Added to that, if (when) the student can't survive working in the art industry, then finding a job in say the business community would be next to impossible without a college degree.

Mu daughter spent $80k (of my money of course) getting a fine arts degree. She is now working at the local YMCA child care facility earning min wage. I'll be paying off the student loans for the next ten years. Her words right after getting her diploma..."wish I hadn't gone to school here...waste of money." Ouch.

"Gramps" Ouch. Break out my walker, rockin' chair, moonshine, and corn cob pipe...time to yell at them thar youn whipper snappers walkin on my lawn!

thanks folks! not much going on here, kids are all working or recovering from having the first grandkid..wife is working (chef) and I'm sittin' here doing well, not much.

PappaBearRigged_V1.mdl This is a backup copy of the model with the rig scaled, but perhaps not entirely positioned properly. Tried to follow the tut, but nothin sayin I didn't mess even that little bit up!

Good thing I saved multiple copies! Perhaps what I will do is post versions of the model at each major juncture of the rigging process for you to proof? Might not be tonight...first grandson is supposedly making an appearance today.... I DO NOT feel like a grandpa!

I did...doesn't mean I didn't mess it up in the process!

and so here it is PappaBearRigged_V1_6.mdl

And the rigging saga continues. This one is really dealing with the hand rig I suppose. When I rotate the right finger controller in an action window the pinky finger distorts. It looks kind of painful, really, and I was hoping our rigging gurus will point me in the right direction to correct it. hand_issue.avi

now we're talking! it always takes another set of eyes to see the obvious...many thanks

did i say the elbow fan??? my bad. The ring is assigned to the right bicep fan

OK, so I failed fan bones 101. I made it through the rigging of one half of Pappa Bear, CP weighted the ankle, knee, hip, shoulder (still some issues there) and started work on the elbow. I have been using one of the sample models that was included with the 2008 rig instructions. When I set the cp weighting for the middle ring of the elbow to 100% of the fan bone it distorts the mesh. Any ideas on what might have caused this?

So I've got the 2008 rig half installed, and am now adding in cp weighting. One thing I am wondering about as I go trough this process (strangely I'm rather enjoying the process this time through!), some areas of the mesh on the model look great when a bone is rotated along a more "normal" range of motion, but when you push it tho the extreme, the mesh distorts beyond an exceptable amount. My goal is to make the animation process as simple as possible by making sure that the model behaves well, with as little of the irritating distortions that could happen (bones being twisted all over the place, etc.) Is there a way to place limits on the rig so that so the pelvis bone cannot be rotated beyond a certain value? I'm thinking that doing that might make things a bit easier for me. I can't show what I mean right now since I'm at work, but perhaps the rigging/animating brain trust might be able to suss out what I am trying to say with my rambling and provide some insight.

Thanks! Gonna have to put these guys to work!

Mine Too, next to Goofy of course! I've started rigging using the 2008 rig. I think the biggest challenge is building a face rig that will give me the range of expressions that Humphrey had. Recreating the eye shapes and mouth/lip movements will be pushing my rigging skills.

Well, here's some more. Rodney, I went back and forth on the chest tuft of hair. Watched some of the Humphrey movies, and what jumped out is that hair detail was animated when the bears were in profile, but normally for the chest it was more just a chest muscle kind of detail. So that is what I did, modeled in some pecs. I also added some shoulder spline rings and, as Rodney suggested, added a spline loop to define the stomach region. I'm feeling pretty good with the model right now...I think it is time to start the rigging process. I'll admit that I didn't think I would get this far. With the exception of Sergs' great job on the head, the body was a ground up effort...something I've never been able to pull off before. Now let's see if I have the same success with the rigging! pb_w2f.mov pb_solid2.mov

Thanks Largento! Rodney, I think there is still some work to do on this guy. The head still feels like it is riding too high on the shoulders, I squashed it down some, but I don't think enough. I really want his chin down on his chest like Humphrey's is. I was wondering about splining in the arc for the chest colors, so since you mentioned it, I'll give it a go. Now as to whether or not he should be an exact match to Humphrey, I'm on the fence. I certainly want him recognizable to Humphrey, I want to animate him using the same expressions, movements etc. But making him an exact match scares me a little since the ultimate goal is to create shorts with him in Disney park settings, on my Disney blog, and what I really don't want is nasty-grams from Disney lawyers! So I think I'll follow the artistic license route, make him look like, but not be an exact match of Humphrey, name him Pappa Bear, give him a family and go from there.

Here he is...take 2. Lots of spline rings removed..

You are right, though admitting it is painful. To relate a story to you, when I was publishing my magazine I thought that if I just kept bulling through, printing issues, ignoring the fact that I was hemorrhaging cash. It took me literally going bankrupt to learn the most important lesson of business: Know When To Let It Go! The nice thing about what you are doing, is that your real costs, other than the domain hosting, is your time (and as far as the IRS is concerned, is FREE). So you can afford to take a more artsy approach and not worry too much about making money. It takes time to build up a following on a web site, so put the web comic out there, promote it where you can, learn along the way and above all, enjoy the effort.

How sad is it that I can remember those 'toons! Great job and O the memories!

Thanks for the model. I'm going to hold it in ready reserve. If I get so frustrated in my own efforts I'll incorporate your model.

Can you show this happening? I'm not sure what you mean. If I run across it again I'll get a screen grab and make a copy of the model.

I'm digging the direction of motion comics (yeah I know I've been out of the loop for a while). When I was publishing my magazine (print) some 10+ years ago I started on the same sort of concept (Scottish storyline, drawn in anime style). Almost had a RPG video game deal out of it and a TV series through a producer in Canada. But alas, none of it came to be. Now, fast forward to 2013 and my soon to be high school graduate daughter is bugging me to help her do the same thing with her stories. I've been resisting, not really sure what the reception would be in the web-o-sphere, but with your approach, minimizing the effort like you are might make it a serviceable concept. Might need to buy another copy of A:M for Nicole (my daughter) and let her have at it!

Rodney: As soon as you mentioned the shoulders I saw it too, and did the ultimate hand to forehead duh! It sticks out like a sore thumb doesn't it. Your sketch of changes looks spot on, and I'll work on that this evening for sure. Robert, I cannot take credit for the head, serg did that for me last year, and did do a perfect job of it since he rigged it as well..just need to get the body to match the head..and this bear is ready for his debut performance! When of the challenges I had was that every time I stitched pieces of the body together, the spline paths seemed to have a mind of their own. That together with some really weird behavior with bias twisting splines totally out of whack and it became somewhat frustrating. The legs and feet I am not at all happy with. The feet I actually did about two years ago when I tried modeling the character, and were the only thing salvageable from that effort. Now i look at them and sort of cringe, since they are so spline heavy. One of the things I think I should do is go through and delete as many spline rings as possible to try and smooth of the mesh, I think that is where much of the "lumpiness" is coming from. One other thing that keeps wondering around in the back of my mind is whether or not I should add a spline to define the stomach region where the color is different. Right now it is a decal, which may be ok if I can get it applied properly. Lots to do before I can even start to think of rigging, but I'm bound and determined to do this right since I have plans for a lot of shorts for pappa bear aka Humphrey!