fae_alba

I never was all that great with modeling characters. Here's a first crack at him. I'm not really happy with it, but let's hear some comments...

I have several stories I've always wanted to animate where I needed a crotchety old man as the main character (I relate to them oh so well!). Ran across this facial reconstruction of Copernicus on Mental Floss and thought now there is a roto to build a cool old man from!

Bloody hell Rodney, way to go above and beyond! Let me give a little background on what i intend to do with our Humphrey here...... A few weeks ago I created a little blog on trip planning for Disney (I won't post the url here so as not to break any rules), and in trying to come up with a way to have the blog stand out from the rest I started a bit of brainstorming. Growing up one of the Disney series that I really loved was the Goofy how-to's. I resonate with Humphrey largely because my kids kid my with the nickname of Pappa Bear, and Humphrey is a rather likeable bloke as well. So I naturally put two and two together and came up with five. Create a series of shorts starring Pappa Bear, aka our version of Humphrey, that highlight some of the hints and tips from the blog. Create another blog for the virtual studio creating the shorts that highlights the animation process (and as a major component A:M), cross-polinate, and walla! we have some fun creating a new internet sensation. So my goal is ultimately have humphrey totally rigged to make animation as simple as possible to minimize the development time of each short. Keep the short down to no more than 3 to 5 minutes, and staged in Walt Disney World. What I am still trying to decide is if Humphrey will be a true 3D rendering or toon, and if the park set will be 3D generated or use actual footage of the parks (I have some folks who still work at for Disney who I could have shoot footage, but that could get problematic in getting footage that really matches what I want). I'm leaning towards a more toon rendering, since to me I want to keep as close to the original Disney style as possible, with the scenes either projection maps or true models. This is still in the planning stages, but I'm pretty much ready to start work on this. Rodney, looks like he made the job so much easier with what he has done, though I can't check out the model yet since I'm still in the office. Rodney, you truly rock man, thanks.

In truth as soon as I posted the topic Rodney was my hope too!

Rodney I would be most grateful!

So normally I would ask my daughter to do this for me, but her mind is on other things, only weeks away from making me a grandpa, so I'm coming to the forums. I am trying to dust off, improve, and capitalize on my meager modeling and rigging skills for a little project I have in mind. Below is a picture of Disney's Humphrey the Bear. It is exceedingly hard to find images of Humphrey that can be used to create a model from, this being the best I've found so far. Serg2 had created a head for me last year, but I wanted to do the body. My problem is that I, for some reason, have a real problem in imagining the body in 3D space from the flat picture. I hope I will have better luck with proper sketches that can be used as rotoscopes. So anyone out there in A:M forum land willing to help a soon to be granddaddy out??

Rich, you captured the spirit of my rant...well said

OK, I've got to chime in here...imagine my surprise to see myself thrown under the bus, or better yet buried in the back yard in this discussion! In talking about community projects in general, and Rear Window in particular, allow my to explain/defend myself on how that all went down. The genesis of Rear Window was a discussion very much like this one: Let's do a community project whoopee. Then when it came down to someone to manage it .... silence. A lot of people want to talk about this, it's a great idea, but when it comes down to someone volunteering to devote their time to run it, no one steps up. For RW, I was naive enough to think I could squeeze it into my schedule. Big mistake on my part, but I wanted to see the project done. The deadline slipped for a very good reason; only three groups actually made a short... not much of a community project really. So a second call for shorts went out, again silence. Then my own schedule got crazy and I had to hand it off to another very capable person. Very simply put, reality sucks. Time is money for every one on this forum, large community projects are time consuming, and therefore expensive, even when we are all volunteering. The three shorts that were done for RW are fantastic, but in my humble opinion, not nearly enough to make the overall project a success. That being said, griping about how RW may perhaps failed is sort of silly. You want a successful community project then great! But don't bitch over the failures of past projects, learn from them! Talk to the people who were involved, find out what worked and what didn't. Don't complain about it. And after you are fully informed, if you still want a community project, step up, and volunteer your time to manage it. I'm officially off my soapbox now.

I'm in William! Good luck. I've also added a link to my FB page.

Kickstarter contributors aren't expecting monetary payback. I think what you have on the site is sufficient. As for how to make money, merch certainly..but a dedicated web site with, sadly advertising is a good way as long as you can generate clicks is a thought.

Will, just looked over your proposed kick starter page. Some thoughts: At the end of the page you list risks etc. Drop them. Don't admit to only working part time on the project. People will only let go of their money if it feels at least minutely certain the project will be completed. By upbeat. Set the tone of barely contained excitement. I narrated video, much like a trailer is essential as well.

research airmail rates with usps..back when I was doing my magazine I lost me shirt shipping overseas..back then it was like $11 for printed media

I have an ftp account for you to upload to, or if you prefer, you can set up a dropbox acct. Email me at pappabearstudio at gmail dot com for the ftp credentials

That was was nicely done. Great job, kudos, lauds and accolades to you sir

I've gotten 2 1/2 submissions so far. Are there any others out there?

that girl could give herself a black eye if she's not careful!

you have it

Is it me or do they go thru a lot of steps to do what we do in just a few?

I've got Mark's project and was able to render a quick test... who's next?

So Robcat is on track with his post of "sounded like something for simulation data, like for fluids or gases?". It comes down to a method of storing volumetric data to allow unlimited, faster calculations for volumetric effects. Cartoon Brew has a good description here.

SVN is a little different. I don't like it myself...it's tough to maintain when multiple users are involved. The database hook is much nicer, but then I'm a db guy to start with

Sounds like Data Cubes, or a new up and coming approach for databases. While I haven't looked into the Dreamworks approach, it sounds like they have created their own database utilizing data cube storage. The api is nothing more than the programmatic interface into the database. I'd hazard that they use this to store/archive movie assets during a project life cycle. From the data cube databases I've reviewed for work the reputed compression factor for files is close to 70 percent, perhaps better than winzip, with the added ability to retrieve records through the api. Using it with A:M would be fairly simple to do. Perhaps a hook into the project that instead of saving a model to a disk file, it is written into the database...sounds good to me.

I'm on V16b and am trying to import an image sequence. On the images folder I and select Import Image Sequence. The problem is I don't get a file open dialogue displayed. This happens on both the 64 and 32 bit apps. I'm running on a win7 box. Any thoughts??

I really want to hear your comments about setting up your render farm. For me, this is the primary reason for these projects!

no I do not Rodney is trying various things. Keep your eye peeled at the bottom of the forum. Robcat/Rodney you're efforts paid off...I see the forum, I made roll call....yeah!