largento

The reality is that people who make money have long ago developed the ability to take advantage of other people. Artists are particularly vulnerable because there's an element of fulfillment that we get just from doing the work. The money is kind of secondary, but that's the artist's mistake. Creatives are abused constantly because of this. Case in point: Drew Struzan, the famed movie poster illustrator, went into the business with no idea of the business side, so he hooked up with a person he thought he could trust. Years later, the partnership dissolved and he seriously worried about every getting work again. Not only did he get more work, but he finally was able to speak directly to the people that had been commissioning his work. It turns out that his "trusted" partner had been paying Struzan $50K per year for designing and painting all those posters ...when the companies were actually paying much more than $50K PER POSTER! Worse, his partner had kept all the original art, lying to Struzan that the companies had never given it back.

Yeah, Jack, that's a no-can-do. The image belongs to the company I worked for when I made it. If it's any consolation, I was VERY new to using A:M when I made it, so I feel confident that whatever you need to do, you can handle it. Also, it would be unethical for you to copy the processes that are shown in this graphic. I'm sharing it with the forum so that they can see examples of work, but the company could very easily see this as a violation of their privacy. In other words, do your own work. :-) Still waiting to hear if they're going to go for it, Rodney. You know how these things are. People get all excited about getting something until they see how much it will cost and suddenly their excitement level starts to drop. :-) The fact that they didn't jump on it probably means that it isn't going to happen, but I'm waiting for the official word either way.

I had that same thought, Robert. This is one case where never throwing anything away will help. I still have the original files. 'Course, knowing just how new my "skills" were back then, that might not be any help at all.

Here's a ghost from the past! I just got a call today about possibly animating this graphic for my old employer! Only took six and a half years. :-) Just waiting to find out if they are willing to pay me enough to do it.

It's got some nice secondary movement, but I do think it's distracting how it is interacting with the scalp.

Thanks, guys! Every year I get older and I still manage to convince myself I'm still a kid. :-) Nice alliteration, Robert!

This isn't quite on model, but it could probably be tweaked into it, so it could be used as a pretty good starting place. olaf.mdl

(Insert roar of applause) EXCELLENT!

Exactly! And there's also a Futuristic Bleak setting that looks like it's finally going to be what I use for the look of the Wobbling Dead. :-) Incidentally, the 2 strip technicolor look is way fun. Makes things look like old George Pal movies. :-)

Admittedly, but it's clear that's part of what I'm seeing in the look I'm wanting. I just did it with some old renders of mine and it made me very happy. :-) It seems to kill that pervasive "gray" feeling I always sense in renders and why I almost always add some kind of ambient color to my renders.

Okay, this is kind of a "wow" for me. I went looking for info and remembered that I'd read that the theatrical release of Toy Story 2 had been on the old Technicolor Dye process. I wondered if there was a way to recreate the Technicolor 3 strip process using Photoshop. After some complicate tutorials and confusion, I discovered that starting with Photoshop CS 6, there's a simple layer adjustment called "color lookup" that lets you instantly add the 3 strip (or 2 strip, or one of many other color looks.) Look what happens when I do that to the Toy Story 1 image (along with a little blur/soft lighten layering) Granted, this is a low resolution image with lossy compression, but look at how instantly more vibrant it looks!

I, too, feel almost certain that there's compositing going on here, but I've never truly grasped the concept. There's likely some post color timing that's done, too. Maybe we could use some of the Oz models?

I'm coming in late on this, but going back to Robert's original request... "It can't be done!"™ — Getting A:M to render a frame that has the high quality look of a Disney/Pixar production. I'm not talking about matching the quality of the models, but achieving the high-end look of textures, colors and light. Can A:M make a render that looks more like Toy Story 3 than Toy Story 1?

That looks really great! That conflict of render time and quality is a really tough one. I've been considering the idea of trying more compositing this time out when it comes time to render the Wobbling Dead. I wish I understood the process more as far as doing things with taking the individual lighting passes, but I'm thinking I may render the characters and backgrounds out separately and take advantage of when I can use a single frame background for an entire shot.

I found out about it on a Mac news website when Hash announced the OS X version. I remember being skeptical that there was an application that could do everything A:M said it could do and cost as little as it did. :-)

Looking better! Robert's suggestion is a good one.

I was flabbergasted at the art direction of Frozen. It is an astonishingly good-looking movie. The Disney animation is excellent, too. It looks like they are succeeding in getting the Disney style through cgi. The characters don't look or feel stiff at all. I thought they accomplished this in Tangled, too. I think the big eyes on the Disney princesses started with The Little Mermaid. It's definitely become their style now. Here's a pic of the latest two, Robert... I think you're getting the proportions right, Dan, but it looks like you're getting a lot of pinching. Can we see a wireframe?

That is funny, Dan, but I want to try to replicate the original shot as much as possible. Complete with the picket fence and Doc Hoppers billboard. :-) I may even try to rotoscope the bike movement. It's going to be a very short shot that leads into a big gag, so I'm hoping the audience will get it quickly and then be caught by surprise by the gag.

Some of the fun I'm having now is feeling free to throw in more gags. I've mostly steered clear of making direct references to the Muppets, but I've found an opportunity to put Recch on a bicycle like Kermit in The Muppet Movie. :-) It's a quick and dirty model, but I think it'll work fine.

Thanks, Dan! Obviously a big plus of doing puppets is that they don't have a lot of moving parts. :-) I'm hoping the comic will succeed in making it seem less daunting. There's just so many things I need to do, but somehow it seems much simpler if it's just stills in a book. And I do know from animating some of the Wannabe Pirates scenes that it does help to have pre-existing choreographies with everything set up and waiting for the animation to happen. ...and I'm hoping the May deadline will scare me into staying on track. :-)

Wanted to update this thread with what's going on with The Wobbling Dead! In order to help me get everything done, I'm doing a comic book version of it first. This is helping me not only in being a way to get me to do storyboards for the film, but also in keeping track of all the elements that I need. I'm essentially building everything I'll need for the rest of the movie for the comic. My hope is to have it finished by the end of January. That means I'll have February, March & part of April to finish animating. A process which should be greatly helped by having every shot already set up. I've booked a table for the Dallas ComicCon in May. It looks like this is going to be a giant one. Last year's sold out completely before 1pm on the Saturday (the show runs Friday-Sunday) and thousands were turned away. To accommodate the extra people, they have moved to the Dallas Convention Center. The convention will make use of some 600,000 square feet! They say they are going to announce some kind of partnership that will help to give it a national awareness. I can't imagine what that will be, but that'll just add to the scope of it. This will certainly translate to tens of thousands of con-goers, but who knows how that will translate to sales in the dealer room. I have struggled greatly with this one. I think I really took on more than I should have with this, but hey, you learn (and suffer) from your mistakes. :-)

It's tricky. You have to use the Command Prompt and correctly address it. This worked for me: C:\Users\xxxxxx>\\psf\Home\Desktop\rlmhostid.exe Where xxxxxx is your user account on your Mac. This generated the code for me. Unfortunately, despite doing this, I was never given the dual activation code or given the refund I was promised.

Wow, that is REALLY cool!

I like that approach. Let us know how it works out for you! And the added benefit... you've got a comic book to go along with your movie. That had occurred to me. :-)

This is a harsh reality I'm facing with The Wobbling Dead, too. I have this sort of misguided instinct that makes me think I can wing it on the fly and I'm finding that more times than not, my wings ain't working. :-) Stalled Trek had the benefit of having been drawn as a comic (a couple of times), so I had those initial storyboards to go to and as I approached each scene, I would draw rough thumbnail storyboards to work out the shots I'd need. I foolishly believed I could jump into The Wobbling Dead skipping that part, but then I'd find myself woefully unprepared when I moved onto the next shot. I hadn't taken into account all the stuff I'd actually need for those shots and I'd find myself coming to a screeching halt. The problem for me is that storyboarding doesn't seem to be working for me, so I've decided to go a different route. I'm doing the whole story as a "photo" comic. I'm building all the shots so that I can tell it as a comic book and then I can go from there to actually doing the movie because I'll have all the shots planned and all of the stuff built. I so wish I'd thought to do this from the beginning.