largento

It's a lot like animating a movie without animating. :-) In the case of The Wannabe Pirates, they began life as a comic strip. Usually a 3 or 4 panel gag. Each panel was a choreography set up and rendered. I then took the rendered images and placed them in a template in Illustrator and did the lettering and then exported them out for the web. For the comic book, I reformatted the strips into comic book pages (using a template from the printer), made the files print ready and sent them off to the printer. You can change the dimensions of the camera frame, so I would set up the camera to match the dimensions of the panel and arrange my objects allowing for room for word balloons, etc. I did this strip as part of a series about how it could be done, but this process of placing the word balloons and panels into A:M was something I NEVER did when I was actually making the strips: [EDIT] You can start from here to read the "How To" strips I did several years ago.

Cool! Really gives some contrast between their outfits and their skin.

People *say* that, but when it comes down to it, they go for what's cheaper.

I won't forget that, Tony! Rodney, I'm looking at other options for digital distribution right now. Storenvy isn't designed to do digital downloads. It's more for physical products. As it is, if you were to buy a comic through them, you'd have to wait until I got an email, uploaded the files to my server and emailed you a link. That's not acceptable. You need to be able to download them at the time of purchase. We're still waiting to hear from Comixology. If they pick us up, that may be the way we go. I'm also considering going through Gumroad and selling them as CBZs. Right now my focus is on getting the print issues finished. I want to have at least six issues in hand to sell at the next con I do.

Sad to see it fail, too, Will, but you've got to put a positive spin on it. You're not out anything but some time and you've no doubt found some valuable information and connected to some folks who had never heard of it before. You'll do your own post-mortem (as I've done with mine) and gain some insight that you didn't have before. I was googling Tar not long ago and came across a 3D model you did of him in 2002 with the idea of doing a digital comic. I don't know how long ago you did the airbrushed comic, but it's clear this is a demon that isn't going to go away. You gotta' release the beast! I can't wait to see it happen!

I say, go for it! I've been using Ka-Blam, a print-on-demand company specializing in comics. It's run by a trio of independent comics folks who I met when I was doing comics in the 90s. A 24-page floppy, full-color is only $2.67.

Go for it, Rodney! It's a whole lot easier now than it was back in the day. With print-on-demand you can literally order 1 copy. All you gotta' do is get to work on filling up the pages! :-)

Still continuing on with making individual issues of The Wannabe Pirates. Nobody may ever buy them, but I sure love having them for myself. :-) Working on issue #4: This one includes a new splash page and, as always, a puzzle page. So far I've done a maze, a crossword, & a word-search. This time out, I'm working on a connect-the-dots. :-) I think I may have to put in a bug report, though. For some reason v17 can't handle displaying the Sea Anemone in shaded mode. It crashes everytime. I even tried saving out the model again, thinking maybe it was a versioning issue with the model file. However, everything worked fine in v16, which I've had to go back to for the new images.

Does make it look more like steam. Good call!

This is pretty cool! Uploaded Flemm in a heroic pose: http://p3d.in/Ec8vy Flemm's Ship (modeled by Stian): http://p3d.in/Di2Hs And Greyhawk's Ship, the Renegade II: http://p3d.in/DLSLm

Day for night has been around for over a hundred years, Rodney. I didn't invent it.

Big-time fun, Sebastian! And very well done!

Lloyd, have you considered shooting day for night? Here's an example: The lighting setup on both images is exactly the same. However, to make it look like night, I set the global ambience to a dark blue and set it at 30%. Then I added a black fog to the camera. By controlling where the fog starts and becomes solid, you can control where your light falls off. Finally, I created a 1-patch model that was colored blue and the transparency set to 60% and place it in front of the camera. You could adjust the transparency of the blue patch to allow more to show through. In post, you could slightly desaturate the image and help control the darkness, as well. I find this much easier and controllable than trying to simulate darkness in the choreography.

Thanks for rediscovering this, Robert. I think this may be the approach I need to take with the exterior Wobbling Dead scenes.

Nice start, Douglas. I believe others have written to Barry and he's sent them the rotoscope he's using to help. You can also do a google image search for character model sheets and find suitable images to use. Keep in mind that joints (elbows, knees, wrists, shoulders, etc.) usually need at least three splines. The outer two hold the shapes of the connecting parts and the center one handles the bending. Avoid placing splines very close together. They don't like that. Best practice is to try to keep a spline in the center of the two surrounding splines, if possible. Keep going, though! The more you do, the more this will start to make sense.

Thanks, Douglas! That would take a bunch of pages. :-)

Thanks, Douglas. No, those are all of them. I had thought once or twice about doing more, but I did think I had covered all the key concepts I had wanted to. All of them were things that had been key to my understanding of modeling, but things I wasn't finding in the learning materials. I guess the old timers just assumed you understood them. Spline Continuity isn't obvious, but it's enormously important. Barry's videos are great. He walks you through everything warts and all. The only really important change to modeling is that you can hold down the shift key to start a new spline with new continuity. He was either unaware of it, or it was a new feature.

Patch modeling hasn't changed very much, so any of the tutorials out there are still relevant. The ones that changed my life were Barry Zundel's Animation Training Videos. They were available on DVD when I purchased them, but now you can get them as individual movies. Some of the concepts that I believe are central to patch modeling in A:M I covered in my comic book tutorials here. I had a locked thread with just the tutorials, but Rodney seems to have tossed it into the haystack again. :-)

Thanks, Nancy! Robert, to better explain, here's the rotoscope I've set up for the next one I'm doing. Taking screenshots of the various views, I construct a rotoscope like this (although mine is much, much larger.) This is a really great example of what a backlot building can be. This a center building that most of the other buildings in the Midtown section sit around. You can see that it has tons of possibilities for what kind of building it could be based on where you train your camera or what sort of set decorating you use.

Thanks, Robert! It's all in A:M. I found some models built in Sketchup that I've used to create the rotoscopes, but all the modeling is in A:M. I started out really intimidated by the thought of modeling buildings, but I think I'm over that fear now.

Continuing with my virtual backlot, recreating buildings from Forty Acres. Still some detailing to do, but here's the ol' Mayberry courthouse and market. Love how set designers thought. The courthouse could just as easily be a bank or post office or a law office. And of course, all the storefronts in the market, can be whatever store you need.

Yeah, I've never used projects, either. Nancy nicely covered the reasons.

Thanks, Rodney! Just for fun, here's the house with some color and texture ...and made black and white, since that's the way most folks saw it. Had to help a guy move a piano today and lost most of the day, but going to see if I can knock out another building tonight.

So, first building for my Forty Acres backlot: This was officially known as Residential House #4, but more famously, it was used as the exterior for Andy Taylor's house in The Andy Griffith Show. [EDIT] Myron asked to see a wireframe on Facebook, so since I made one, I thought I'd include it here, too:

Hey, you know the old saying, you're only as old as your birth certificate says you are. :-) Happy Birthday, Gerry!