largento

I keep reading posts asking that question and most of them seemed to say that it did work, but then, I probably stopped paying attention after awhile. I can run older versions as well as the latest on Windows, right?

I'm looking at running Windows via Parallels on my Mac, so that I can take advantage of some of the A:M plug-ins that don't work on the Mac (ie DarkTree textures, Setup Machine2, etc.) In order to do this, I have to purchase Windows and in trying to sift through the stuff, I find myself scratching my head. Windows 7 OEM 64-Bit seems to be an attractive option, yet it says in the eula that I can only purchase this if I'm building a PC that I'm going to sell to someone else and provide support for. Yet, Windows 8 OEM 64-bit says I can use it personally. Windows 7 is a bit cheaper, but Windows 8 apparently offers a free option to update to Windows 8.1 providing I purchase it prior to 8.1 being released. Why I wouldn't just buy 8.1 instead, doesn't appear to have occurred to them. So, it seems like I should go with Windows 8 oem, but I hear that most Windozy people do not like Windows 8. If I go with Windows 7, will I be immediately incarcerated for not selling my computer to someone else?

Looks really fantastic! I'm really curious to see how the fake ao works on the Mac.

Congrats, John! Guess this means a whole lot more tinkering?

Three weekdays to retirement?

I'm sure the rigging masters can tell you the best way to do that, but count me as a vote "yes" for the particles, gives an extra level of excitement to the whole thing.

I think the exaggerated bounce would be a good idea. It feels stiff compared to the bouncing at the end. Looks pretty darned good, though! Really like the animatic. The idea of having the company name as the star on the tree really works. Bravo, Gerry!

It's a tough nut to crack and I think it's going to be more and more how independent creative projects get funded down the line. I think the important thing to realize is that almost without exception, the folks getting tons of dough from Kickstarter have a pre-existing audience, either of fans or acquaintances. I just don't think Kickstarter delivers that many discoverers. As much as I fell into that same trap, I think Kickstarter works best when you can almost entirely do the project yourself and just need a little bit of help financially. My first one went that way and was a great experience. I was already a third of the way through making the movie and just needed money to print DVDs. Only needing to raise $600 meant that I was able to raise it quickly and everything over was just encouragement. Contrastingly, I went into the second one thinking bigger and got burned. At the same time I was asking for $5K for The Wobbling Dead, a bunch of guys here in Dallas were also pitching an animated project for $250K. Mine was only successful because one guy came in at the last minute and donated way too much. (I was already resolved that it would fail.) Those other guys ended up with over $770K! And they weren't even going to do the animation. But, theirs was an animated version of their successful stick figure webcomic. They had over 14K backers, I had 63. I say I got burned because I was really more interested in the success of The Wobbling Dead than in wanting to make it myself. When it became clear I wasn't going to reach my goal, I more or less moved on from it. So when suddenly it did meet the goal, I found myself kind of trapped. Now I have to do the movie and yet I'm also aware that it's not going to have much of an audience. It really makes it tough to keep working on it everyday. My point in saying this, is that although there's the temptation to use Kickstarter as a gauge of success or a get-rich-quick scheme, the reality is that you have to love the project that you want to do whether or not anybody else does. You are the one who is going to have to do the really hard parts.

It's looking very good, Gerry. My only comments would be what I'm expecting to see. I expect the "growth" to become more and more rapid as it goes, because the loops are getting smaller... to the point that it kind of rushes up the last few loops and that's what creates the momentum for the stretch. I also found myself expecting kind of a hoola-hoop action where the speed of the growth almost bounces against the sides. Almost as if each loop were individual... a kind of loop-dee-loop-dee-loop-dee-loop-dee-loop-dee-loooooop-pah! I have no idea if that makes any sense. :-)

Stalled Trek is most definitely parody. It even says so in the box. Parody is protected by the law. Satire is not. :-) That said, I love parody. I love satire, too, but that's a broader net. Parody is specific. Like a knock knock joke.

Mad Magazine's demographic was abundantly male. Star Trek has always had a very large number of female fans. I hesitate to say that satire doesn't appeal to women, because Mad was written by men for men. The younger crowd know the original series only really by reputation. I don't think many of them have watched it and was told so by many of them at the cons. Their parents watched it, but not them.

LOL, no Sinatra this time, Nancy. :-) I've given thought to what else might be done with the concept. I think one of it's strengths is that it can be turned around quickly, which allows for doing something that releases regularly. I'd love to be able to do some kind of weekly thing, but the haven't found that reason for doing it that isn't just an excuse to do it. Teaching/tutorial type things aren't out of the options, but not being a teacher, they don't excite me a lot. Everything is on hold right now, since I'm way behind on The Wobbling Dead and can't really think about doing anything until it's finished.

Thanks, Gerry. I don't think Stalled Trek will ever be a runaway success. It appeals to a small audience and it isn't edgy or hip. Still, I look at it with some level of pride. It was definitely something I've wanted to do for a large part of my life and I finally did it. Thinking about it, I always flash to that guy in the audience at the convention it was shown at who asked the first question afterwards. "Why?" I guess the real answer is this was more for me than for everyone else. I still don't know yet if YouTube will let me set it to have ads. They sent me a form letter saying they may want proof of my rights. I've got a signed contract with the composer giving me perpetual rights to the soundtrack and I can always get statements from my two female friends who did a couple of the voices. The only tricky part, I guess, would be if they didn't believe me that I did everything else.

Thanks, guys! Just looking for a bit of a boost and hoping to attract some Trek fans that might really dig what I did. By coincidence, today is actually the anniversary of the first airing of Amok Time (the episode I was lampooning.) Weird how that happened. I submitted the link to Reddit and emailed a few Trek sites. I watched it when I uploaded it to make sure it looked okay and hadn't seen it in awhile. I've long since lost objectivity, but I did marvel to myself that I'd really done it after all those years of dreaming about doing it...

Woke up with this morning with the urge to release Amutt Time into the wild! Although I'll continue to sell DVDs, you can now watch it for free on YouTube! Just go ! Be sure to "like" it and make comments. I'm kinda' hoping this will give me a boost towards finishing The Wobbling Dead. A little encouragement goes along way when you're working alone in a vacuum.

Does this mean that after doing so many of these, your first thought is "screw Christmas?" :-)

The plugins for installing TSM2 on the Mac stopped working with the Mac OS a looong time ago. I want to say I bought it in 2007 and it already had stopped working on the Mac. It's a shame it was never supported beyond then. Very excited to hear that FakeAO is coming to the Mac in the new version. Was feeling left out of the fun. :-)

Matt, the point of corporations seems to be to suck the fun out of the world. What they should be, is amazed and thankful they were able to get that level of quality for an internal presentation. Instead, they just see it as an opportunity to ask for more. Oh well, it looks great and like you said, you did get to save some on the front end.

Neato!

Congrats, Gene. I think your stuff was way under-used, but hey, it's a paying gig!

Congratulaions, guys!

Thanks, guys! A part of me was hoping I'd get the ball rolling for you others to show us some behind-the-scenes of your entries. Marcos took the bait, how about the rest?

Very cool, Marcos! Love to see some of the behind-the-scenes on your texturing, too.

Thanks, guys!

Jeff Lew isn't supporting these things anymore, but it looks like you can still get DVDs of Jeff Lew's Learning 3D Character Animation on Createspace (Amazon's Print-On-Demand company.) Here's a link. These are great DVDs and Lew is using A:M to demonstrate the techniques. Somebody has uploaded about 30 minutes of the first DVD on . You can watch some of it and get an idea of what they are like.