largento

Rolling along! Here's the Stoyteller and another render of Poco. Just one more head to go!

Poco's head is mostly done. Good thing he's a mute, 'cause I don't know how I'd deal with those teeth in a lip sync. :-)

Wow, it's been awhile since I've updated this! The holidays kind of knocked me off track. Things have been progressing, though! We've finished the first 17 strips for the webcomic and they'll start appearing on the website starting on February 1st. (We'll be 20 strips ahead at that point). It'll update twice a week with new strips on Tuesday and Fridays. McCrary is handling most of the chores on the webcomic. I'm pitching in a little bit on the gags and doing the lettering. Last night I started back on modeling the heads of all the characters. This is a part-way-there Poco Boco (still hairless at this point). Poco's character design has changed a little bit from the original design and will have a beard and hair. I'm going to have to do some playing to see how best to accomplish it. He's also getting a scar on one cheek and his eyelids will be more droopy once he's rigged. After Poco there's just two more character heads to do: the Storyteller and we've given Cutthroat a parrot. Then it's back to give 'em all bodies. I may give up on this assembly line workflow, but for now, it feels like the smart thing to do.

Rodney took the words right out of my mouth. This just keeps getting better and better! Can't wait to see more!

This is great!

Are your splines set to display white?

I had to go put on a sweater and a hat before I could finish watching it! :-) Very cool, Matt!

Not anymore. A:M's web subscription is for anybody... and it's only $49.99!

Ha, that's really good, Jeetman!

One thing to do is try to keep the spline rings equidistant from the ones surrounding them. If it's too close to one or the other, you can get a crease. Another thing is to look at the splines from a different vantage point (top or bottom) to see the whole curve of the spline. If you have CPs that are causing a ripple in the curve, that'll cause creasing, too. These two things have really helped me to make smoother models. I haven't yet reached the point where I feel comfortable with fiddling with the bias handles. :-) And I really like how skin looks with porcelain applied.

Yikes! :-) Icicle teeth is pretty inspired. This'll learn those kids for foolin' around with Frosty. There must've been some black magic in that old silk hat they found... :-)

In my way of thinking, there's a purpose behind design and an aesthetic behind style. That's not saying that the two don't have some bleed between them, but there are practical reasons for design. Style is more about choice and isn't about rules.

Thanks, Robert & George! Here's one of my time-saving tricks... The snowman model is really just a modified Thom. :-)

Well, sometimes ignorance works in your favor. If I'd known better, I probably wouldn't have even attempted to get it done in such a short amount of time. :-)

LOL! It would be neat if we put together a page that was like the mantle of a fireplace where folks could display their cards on a special Hash Christmas page next year. Assuming enough folks contributed...

Wow, Jirard! You've been busy. Nice work on finishing 'em!

Thanks! Rodney, I came up with the idea of doing it Thursday morning on my way in to work and searched my iPod for an appropriately cheezy Christmas song. :-) I ran into some technical problems at the beginning (I do NOT like the new iMovie), so the bulk of it was done Saturday through Monday. I was really afraid I wouldn't be able to get it done in time... It was a great learning process. Nothing like trial by fire! :-)

Thanks, guys!

Merry Christmas, everyone! I took a shot at creating an animated Christmas card. Wish it'd occurred to me to do it sooner, but somehow I was able to finish it in time. I did have to cheat a bunch (which included using no multi-pass or shadows in rendering and a lot of tomfoolering in Flash and Photoshop.) Anyways, I thought I'd share it with you guys, too! The Wannabe Pirates Spectacular Christmas Special

You're welcome, Nancy. I was going to point to you the track on iTunes, but it's one of those "Partial Albums" and they don't have it. It's on the 2-CD " The Gold Medal Collection." It's called "My Grandfather."

Myself, I find the options that A:M give you to do the entire job yourself very appealing. This is not my career, this is my hobby, and I like that I don't have to compromise. (I have to do that too much in my "real" job.) My viewpoint is my own, of course. If I were 20 years younger, or if this was a career, I'd be in a different frame of mind. It's certainly not likely that many people will ever master every aspect of the process, but it is possible for folks to do enough of them well enough to accomplish their own amateur endeavors. Animation is something that's always required an army to do... and it still does to do big projects really well, but it's possible now for one (or a few) people to do something small the way they want to do it and actually get it out to people to see. Harry Chapin told this story of his grandfather telling him that there are two kinds of tired... "My grandfather was a painter. He died at age 88. He illustrated Robert Frost's first two books of poetry. And he was looking at me, and he said, `Harry, there's two kinds of tired. "'There's the good-tired and there's bad-tired.' "He said, 'Ironically enough, bad-tired can be a day that you won, but you won other people's battles, you lived other people's days, other people's agendas, other people's dreams, and when it was all over, there was very little *you* in there, and when you hit the hay at night, somehow, you toss and turn. You don't settle easy.' "He said, 'Good-tired, ironically enough, can be a day that you lost, but you don't even have to tell yourself, 'cause you knew you fought *your* battles, you chased *your* dreams, you lived *your* days. And when you hit the hay at night, you settle easy. You sleep the sleep of the just, and you can say, "Take me away." "He said, 'Harry, all my life I've wanted to be a painter and I painted. God, I would have loved to have been more successful. But I've painted and I've painted. And I am good-tired, and they can take me away.'" I don't know if this is more relevant to creative people or not, but there's an element of doing art professionally that I think is more personal than most jobs, at least to me. Usually, the person telling you what to do can't do what you can do, doesn't understand how it's done and what it takes to make it happen, but you have to do it their way, and *everybody* feels qualified to judge it. It can really beat you down some days. Too much of life is spent getting "bad-tired." I like that A:M offers me some "good-tired" days. :-)

Hmm... I'm not getting the pop-up with mine.

If you really want to make your own, then you should definitely start with drawings. Once you've got a design that you like, draw pictures of it from various sides (top, front, back, side, etc.) and make sure they all are at the same scale. You'll import those images into A:M to use as rotoscopes in the matching views of your model window. (From the front view, right click on the model window and select New-->Rotoscope and import the front view. Repeat for the other views.) Make sure they all match up and then start building the parts. You'll want to familiarize yourself with the various modeling methods and tools (lathe, extrude, etc.) you can use to build the individual pieces of your spaceship. Some will work better for specific types of model pieces, so you'll want to keep that in mind. If you want to start simple, you might use the primitives from the library as your parts and build it from those shapes. Good luck!

Your geometry needs to be associated with bones. The hierarchy of which will keep everything together. Have you worked through the exercises in The Art of Animation:Master yet?

Thanks, I'll give it a go.