largento

Presumably this effect (at least in film) was created by closing/opening an aperture like on a camera. I don't know if there was a way they did it in camera or during printing, but you could very easily make a model of one. See this flash diagram. It's a series of blades that are all exactly the same, rotating on their pivot points.

It may be a crazy idea, but I think I'm going to try to make a 3D model of the old RKO/Desilu backlot (40 acres.) My thinking is that since it was designed as a set that can be used multiple ways, I could use it multiple ways. Not only for The Wobbling Dead, but for future projects. It also would have the fun factor of being vaguely recognizable to people who are aware of it. 40 Acres goes all the way back to Gone With the Wind and was used in tons of movies and TV shows, most recognizably in The Andy Griffith Show. It was also used extensively in Star Trek and there's that fun scene where Kirk and Edith Keeler walk past Floyd the barber's shop: Which would mean I could parody City on the Edge of Forever in the future if I wanted to. I found some 3D models done in Sketchup that I'm going to try to use to model new ones. I downloaded Collada versions and exported them out of Meshlab into OBJ, but even as props, they look pretty sketchy. Still, the buildings are mostly just facades, so there's not as much work in rebuilding them as you'd think.

I honestly find it a terrible mis-use of Kickstarter, but it seems to be the trend now. Why use this device for funding independent artists with no means of support to fund the "promise" of a movie version of a TV show (Veronica Mars.) Goon has been around for many years and has an enormous audience. So does something like Veronica Mars or some of these other celeb-campaigns. It's great publicity for Kickstarter and the huge returns mean money in the bank for the website, but you have to wonder how much attention and potential backing they take away from the folks who really need the funding.

I got the individual sets as they came out (much pricier, since I think they ran $60 a set). I've been too broke to get any of the new blu-ray releases.

I've got a project that requires my full attention until October, but after that, I'd be game to consider something like this. Especially if it had a reasonable production time (i.e. months instead of years). :-)

Thanks, guys. One of the plusses of that desaturated, shallow depth of field look is that it hides a myriad of sins. :-) But it also gives it a miniature look, which works well for a puppet show. I was guessing at the scale on the semi, Jost. The majority of these vehicles are just going to be abandoned or flipped over and have no interaction with the puppets.

Happy Birthday, Mark! Hope you have a great one!

Thanks, Mark! Well, Agep & Xtaz aren't any immediate danger of having competition, but this'll do for my little puppet movie!

One of the dreaded dangers of the South ...the Speed Trap!

I think a great source of promotion would be to try to reach other fantasy-type creator's audiences! Drawing a sketch of one of the characters in a webcomic is a great way to get them to feature you on their website and link to your project. Here's some I found just doing some googling: The Legend of Bill— Funny barbarian strip by Dave Reddick (who works for Jim Davis' studio doing Garfield.) Dave has several routes you can go to do fan art. Battlepug—A Conan-type character who rides a horse-sized pug. Sword & Sarcasm—A funny-animal sword & sorcery comic Swords & Sausages—Anthropomorphic fantasy comic. I gotta' believe there's an audience out there for TAR. You just gotta' find it!

Great job, Gene! Love the stuff with the dog and the amusement park ride feel of it. The music sheet for the height chart when they were getting their mugshots was a nice touch. Bravo! Keep livin' the dream, man!

It might help some to draw out more of the story. Incidentally, I looked at wikipedia wondering if there was any odd characteristic of Hippos, but didn't find much. The only thing I found amusing was that Hippos seem to be overly aggressive to crocodiles for no real reason. They just don't like 'em. :-)

Just bear in mind that Scott Sava pays for his models and sets. I'm wanting to say around 2007 or 2008, he said that he had already spent over $100K on assets for the strip. I don't know how much he's spent since. That said, if Hash were to be okay with it, a team could work on a strip set in Oz using the assets already made. Essentially create their own stories in that universe leaning heavily on pre-existing assets.

I think David's idea of teams is a great one! I'm going to make an alternate suggestion for a community project. I know my experience was that I got A:M in 2004, spent a month or two in love with the idea of doing something in 3D, but just couldn't understand the concepts and dropped out. When I came back in 2007, many of the old guard were gone, but I got lucky that so many of them had left behind tutorials that I could seek out. Hash should really attempt to buy Barry Zundel's training videos and make them available to all. They were such a key into my understanding this app and the difference between my 2004 experience and my 2007 one. But even with all those tutorials, the real learning comes when you are trying to solve problems while working on a project. And you soon realize that hey, even though I'm capable of creating all the things I need for an epic feature film, I don't realistically have the time! The haystack doesn't look that big until you start trying to count the straws. What saved me was doing a comic! Doing 5 comics a week on The Wannabe Pirates was a huge learning experience for me. Each of those strips had 3+ shots that had to be set up, lighted, characters posed, etc. I had to figure out how to organize assets, deal with the demands of the story and my own abilities or lack thereof. The sheer volume of that helped me immensely. Sure, it wasn't animation, but it was almost all the steps around animation... and a lot of animation is posing and composing, which is what most of the work is in a comic. It kinda' makes sense when you compare it to doing storyboards before animating. Comics also don't require any audio, so you don't have to worry about soundtracks, voice artists, sound effects, etc. You can just concentrate on storytelling. Comics can also be distributed much easier. They are smaller in file size and require less time investment from the audience. Also, you get to cross the finish line over and over and over again. After having spent more than a year trying to make an animated Wannabe Pirates short, I suddenly found that I was getting to finish something five times a week! I think it's worth considering doing a comic strip or comic book project as a stepping stone ...and I can tell you from experience, that once you've set up all those choreographies for the panels, it's not a huge leap to take them to animation and you've already got your storyboards finished, too! Just my thought...

Kickstarter limits it to 60 days and encourages you to do it in 30 days or less. They claim their research shows that longer projects are rarely successful.

Going for that amount of money is really a battle. You've got to really get it out there and publicize it. I had a few suggestions I sent you earlier. You can't count on KS to help, so you have to do the heavy lifting. Tony is right about updates. Make it seem like the project is urgent and alive. Also, it might help to add some specifics to your story about what the money is going for. You don't have to do an itemization, but it gives people an idea of why you need the help. I let myself get discouraged last time and regret it. I waited until the very end to really fight for it. Go out there swinging ...or regroup. You can always cancel the project and relaunch with a focus on individual stages of the production.

Thanks for the purchase, Dale! Hope you enjoy it! There's definitely something to that, Rodney. I've definitely thought about it all year while I was sitting at my table at those conventions. If you only have one item, that's pretty much all you can sell to one customer. Some might buy multiple copies to give as gifts, but in most cases, it's for them and you have noway to build up more sales. With 2/3/4/etc. DVDs, I'd have the chance to increase sales with the same number of customers. Plus, some variety of subject matter, might draw a larger customer base. If only I were about 20 years younger, I could get to a pretty good selection. :-)

Thanks, Rodney. Every new project seems to involve me having to stretch more and more. At some point, I might even get good at something. :-) Making the set multi-purpose is something I started thinking about when I was working on the sets for Stalled Trek. I was so impressed by how the sets were designed to work within the confines of the studio that they had. Obviously, they couldn't have miles of hallways, but they could construct them between sets to allow them to be redressed and stand-in for various decks. It just seemed like a really smart idea to me, so I've been trying to think that way with these new sets. The hospital set was designed to follow through all the shots I needed to to get to the gags and had very little in the way of wasteful stuff. In this case, lack of space isn't an issue, but rendertimes are and you don't want to have to take a hit on time for elements that won't even be seen in the final picture.

Not gonna' lie. Doing backgrounds terrifies me. I'm just not good at even thinking in those sorts of terms. After much struggling, I've come up with most of the first set and started feeling okay about it. I'm using very simple shapes and trying to get some value out of it, but not make it so time consuming that it will be impossible to do what I need to get done by October. The results are pretty good. Obviously I'm using the same pine tree over and over again, but the texturing gives it some character in the background. I'm building the set with the idea that I can use it for different scenes requiring roadways. The center is an intersection with the four roads curving away, so that you can't see very far down them and then they join up with a circular road that goes around the entire set. So, the set kind of looks like a pinwheel. My thinking is that I can use that circular road to do driving scenes of any length. I'm adding the pine trees in the cho, so that I only need to add as many as I need to fill out the frame of a shot. I'm also playing with trying to get the desaturated look of the show. Red Giant has a nifty plugin with all sorts of different preset color grades, but it's $399 which is just too much for me to consider. There's a free option that has ten which I checked into and it's interesting, but not exactly what I'm looking for. Right now I'm just pulling down the saturation, upping the warm colors in the medium colors and upping the cool colors in the highlights. Then adding a warm photo filter and film grain. It's promising. Especially when you compare it to the original:

Wow! That was a long incubation period! Nice job, guys!

The part I found appealing was that it was much easier for people to buy stuff with. You can put a button on your website and clicking it brings up a pop-up that doesn't even take you away from the site. You don't have to create a log-in or anything like that. Simple and fast. I'm just reacting to people who have said they'd rather have a digital version than a DVD. I looked into Amazon's video service, but it requires the film to be at least 20 minutes and Stalled Trek is just under 16. My primary concern is with having their be issues with the file, like incompatibility or things like that. With a DVD, there's not really that concern because you put it in a DVD player and it plays. I don't want to have to do tech support for people who buy the file and my concern was that it would be more complicated than it looks, but Tony seems to have had a good experience with it. I would have to sell a lot of videos to make any real kind of money and I don't expect that to happen. Like I said, it's more about a convenience for people who'd rather watch it on their iPad or smart phone than on their TV.

Thanks, Tony! One of the challenges I'm facing with this production is creating a lot of real world things that I don't see as being in my wheelhouse. This is pushing me to get over that. A big one of these is automobiles. I wasn't one of those guys who drew pictures of cars. I had some struggle with this. It's still got a few little details left to add, but overall it's satisfying enough. Puppet on patrol!

Thanks, guys, and I'm relieved to hear that, Tony. I only found out about this site recently. Want to make sure it goes smoothly.

Let's hope so! I'm aiming at having it finished and ready to go in early October (in time for Halloween). The new season of TWD should start in November, so my timing may work out. I don't know that Bill Gaines ever actually wrote anything for Mad. I'm pretty sure he wrote or at least came up with plots for the EC horror comics, though. He could have written real stories for The Walking Dead. :-)

This is kind of experimental. I found out about this site, Gumroad that lets you sell digital media and I want to give it a shot and see how well it works. It's set up so that all you have to do is give them your email address and payment info and you get an email with the link to download it. You don't have to sign up for anything. Starting now, you can purchase a digital download of Stalled Trek: Amutt time for only $3.99! Significantly cheaper than the DVD and no shipping! The file is an mp4 and should work on mobile devices. The price may go up if I decide to make this permanent, so get yours now if you want one ...and let me know how well the process works! Just click on the link in my signature...