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Thanks, Gerald!

I like that idea. It gives the potential customer a sense that we have things going on as a community.

K-9! I've thought a couple of times about modeling him. Such a cool design.

Awesome! Thanks, Curtis! I'm really glad you the kids liked it! There are definitely things that make me want to do other seasons of TWD, but I'd have to see a lot more interest.

It took me awhile to come to what Robert describes. With my puppet models, they start out as full body puppets. Once the clothes are modeled, I then go in and delete the mesh that is covered up by the clothes. Like Robert says, it isn't seen and that way you don't have to worry about the skin breaking through your clothes when you animate. Not to mention, it solves some rigging challenges. For example, If you just have a wrist and hand sticking out from under a sleeve, you don't need to worry about having the wrist twisting when it rotates. I've also started to google sewing patterns when I have to make clothes and see what I can learn from them. Trying to model a button down shirt as one model can be more difficult than modeling the parts (a back panel, two front panels, sleeves and a collar) and joining them together.

Just a suggestion for this contest. To avoid the several re-starts to the vote, could the voting page be set up as a preview first to allow everyone to confirm that their entry is present before actual voting starts? Give everyone 24 hours to report a problem and then make the vote live after that? That way, we don't repeat the fiasco last time with missing entries and three or four voting sessions that were thrown out.

I'm with you, Paul. It's nice to have an excuse to try something new and I don't think there have been many projects I've done on A:M that didn't add to my learning of A:M. (If it's even possible to learn it all.) I can't wait to see all the entries. This is a really cool topic for an image contest.

I ran into this same problem last year in this thread.

Great Googly Moogly! This list needs to be somewhere easy to find for new users!

Yes, have a safe trip! Wow, that's going to be quite a difference, weather-wise! But definitely for the better from my POV. :-) Best to you and yours!

Mostly my issues early on were trying to figure out how to undo what I had done. I didn't understand continuity at the time (I didn't understand much of anything at the time.) I've probably cheated in using them (without actually using them) by making shapes in Adobe Illustrator and bringing them in to A:M as parts and pieces of my mechanical models, but for the most part, I've not needed them.

Never! :-) Yeah, that's something I've mostly steered clear of due to having made a mess of them when I was first learning A:M. Being an old Adobe Illustrator user, I thought they worked like the path handles in AI. It doesn't take much unknowledgeable fiddling with them before suddenly your splines start to act in very uncool ways. I did use it correctly on a recent model. I needed to make a circular wall with arched doorways and realized that I could get the look I wanted by changing the in and out amounts. But that was for something static that didn't need to bend or move.

Bravo!

Yeah, it doesn't sound like there's anything that does what I'm looking for. I normally do it the way Matt describes, but that results in interrupting the curve and requires I adjust them. Holding-A while adding the CPs avoids this, but it's hard to get the points to line up on a plane, since you're just eyeballing it ...and when you try to correct them, you end up breaking the curve again. I suppose if your regularly work with the bias handles, that's not an issue, but I almost always keep them turned off. I've made thousands of models without having a tool like this. I just wanted to make sure there wasn't one that I was unaware of.

I was wondering if there was a plug-in that would create a halfway point spline ring between two spline rings. In other words, if I were to have two spline rings that are too far apart. Is there a way that I could select both and then have a new spline ring that would appear halfway between them and also tween the shape (like Flash does)? I tend to start on the low end as far as splines when I'm modeling and add more as I need to. I sometimes realize I need that extra spline ring, but manually adding CPs between them doesn't always give the result I want. Especially since I avoid using the bias handles.

Adobe seems to be treating the CC as a free for all. Whereas there were 18 month intervals in new versions, they are pushing things out as soon as they have them and they are entirely focused on the current apps. In authoring the DVD for The Wobbling Dead, I used to be able to count on the compatibility between Premiere and Encore. Encore was dropped by Adobe and so Premiere CC no longer had that compatibility. They haven't been able to focus on a coherent plan. I'll be calling to cancel my subscription this week. I'm reaching the end of my "special" pricing deal. I say it that way because after claiming it was only being offered for a 3 month period to those who had purchased CS6, they are still offering it a year later and it can be used by anyone who owned CS3 and up.

Adobe CC can be installed on two computers at a time (I believe.) But you can unactivate it on one computer so that you can use it on a 3rd. The improvement over the CS is that it doesn't matter if the computer is Windows or Macintosh. With CS, you had to stick with one platform. Files become useless after ending your subscription because they can't be opened correctly by previous versions. Obviously, this depends on the type of file and you can save out your documents as a previous version (assuming they don't have anything non-compatible.)

Sent mine in.

Although I don't think the movie is very good, I love the look of Rankin/Bass' feature "Mad Monster Party." The characters were based on EC Comics/Mad Magazine artist Jack Davis' designs and the sets are great. I came across this image today. And this character design and puppet for Dracula is just plain awesome.

Hope I get one! :-)

Finally decided on my entry. Now I just got to do all the work to make it. :-)

That's the one! Not sure what he makes from the YouTube advertising, but here's a quote from that story I was talking about where he notes that he has books, apps and other merchandising on the way: "It puts you in control, if it's your vision and it's your channel than whatever you do is yours," says Simon Tofield, creator of Simon's Cat. "You don't have a team to impress or get in the way — if you make something and it does well, it's good." "You don't have a team to impress or get in the way — if you make something and it does well, it's good." Tofield himself is the perfect example of that statement. An in-house animator working on advertisements in 2008, his short animated film about a cat blew up online, leading him to create what has become the second largest animation channel on YouTube, with over 2.9 million subscribers and 500 million views. In tow are four books, two apps and loads of merchandise. The success of Simon's Cat is surprising, given that the episodes are in black and white, without dialogue and don't follow a strict airing schedule. "That's the beauty of YouTube," Tofield tells Mashable. "On paper, if I had gone to someone with my idea of very simple line drawings, simple sounds, no color, it would've been turned down. But YouTube allows you to test these things."

This is very interesting, indeed.

Trust me, Dan, I know what you mean! And you did, so you don't have to regret not trying. I honestly believe that marketing is the key. Somehow you've got to get it in front of people's faces and without lots of capital or a super go-getter-people-person persona, it's really hard to do. That or be doing something they are already searching for. There was mention in one of the threads about an animator that was doing short little 2D animations of a cat doing cute stuff. That was smart on his part, because there are people looking for cats doing cute stuff videos already.

Bravo! Count me as one of those people wary of using cloth simulations (and hair, and dynamics, and physics...) :-)