largento

Thought I would revisit this thread one more time because I had first public showing of Stalled Trek: Amutt Time at FenCon today! There were some bumps: For some reason, they took down my poster advertising it (?!) and started it without me so that I missed seeing the audience's reaction to the first four minutes. They were playing the DVD on a computer attached to a projector and had the aspect ratio messed up... BUT what I did see of it with the audience went over really well! Such an amazing feeling hearing a group of people laughing and enjoying the film! I noticed one of my legs was shaking when I sat down to watch it, nervous I guess, ...but it stopped once I heard them laughing, and I know I had a giant grin on my face. :-) This is why you make something like this! It was a great rush. After it was over, I got up and did a little Q&A and the audience was really great. They loved it and thanked me for doing it and wanted me to make more!

The upgrade cost is pretty small ($19.99). My laptop did not make the cut (it won't even run Lion) and my Mac Pro is the earliest one that can still be updated. The official word is: iMac (mid 2007 or newer) MacBook (late 2008 aluminum or Early 2009 or newer) MacBook Pro (mid/late 2007 or newer) MacBook Air (Early 2008 or newer) Mac mini (early 2009 or newer) Mac Pro (early 2008 or newer) Xserve (early 2009) You need to have either Snow Leopard or Lion installed, have at least 2GB of memory and 8GB of space on your hard drive. I wouldn't rush out to buy a new Mac to get the new OS, but it sounds like yours is coming up on the end of its life cycle.

So far, so good, Darkwing. I had worried about a slowdown, but some UI things actually seem quicker. Right now, apps seem a little slow to launch, but I'm pretty sure that this is because the system is indexing everything right now. I should have pointed out that when I went to re-install A:M, I was at first prevented from doing so by the OS. By default, the security is now set to only allow you to install apps via the App Store or from "identified developers." They call this Gatekeeper and it's meant to make it more difficult to install a malicious application. The fix is to go into the security panel of the system preferences and switch to "Allow applications downloaded from Anywhere." Once it's installed, you can go back to the more secure setting (or the highest one that only allows applications bought from the App Store.) I skipped Lion, so it's a definite annoyance trying to retrain my brain to scroll in the opposite direction. I know I can turn this off in the system preferences, but since this is the way it's going to work from now on, I'm just trying to get used to it. I've encountered this with using other Macs at freelance jobs, so I did know it was coming. Being able to resize windows by dragging either bottom corner rather than just being able to do it in the one corner is something I'm going to really like. Mail displays your messages in threads, so that clicking on an email shows you each of the messages in the conversation as individual sheets. That's cool. I haven't used Launchpad, but then it's not the way I'm used to doing things. I like the notification center. It's nice to have the notifications come up where you can see a clip of the new email, so you can see what's come in without having to actually go to the mail app. It's like Growl. One big motivation for me (besides not finding myself so far behind that I could only upgrade from a new install) was the iCloud stuff. Having an iPhone and iPad, it's nice to have things synched across the board. I had this to a degree with my old dot Mac account, but I had to give that up a couple of years ago. One thing I like to do with my iPad is write notes and now there's a notes app on the desktop that synchs up, meaning that I now have access to these thoughts from any device. Also the upgrade allows me to use Apple's free "iBooks Author" application that I could use to create an interactive book. I thought it would be cool to do a children's book that incorporated animated sequences and this gives me an easy, free way to do it.

I can't definitively say that, but in the short time I played with it, opening and closing and saving files, I did not encounter the glitch a single time. This will, indeed be great news, if it turns out to be the case! :-)

I finally decided to take the plunge. After skipping Lion all together, I figured I'd better catch up with the OS before I get completely left behind. I went out and bought a new HD and spent all of yesterday backing up my old HD in case this doesn't go well. After a lengthy download, I've installed Mountain Lion and went straight away to see if it had any adverse affects on A:M. By coincidence, this is the day that my subscription expired, but I'd known it was coming and had bought my upgrade last week. After pulling out the files so that I could get A:M to prompt me to activate it, I entered the activation code and started up v16b. Everything seemed fine until I went to open a cho file. No luck. A:M couldn't couldn't access the Finder and the beachball came up and it became unresponsive. I forced quit and tried three more times. Same each time. I decided to start fresh and downloaded v17.0a and put in my activation code. It started up fine and success! It could access the Finder. Guess I finally got the push to go to v17. :-) Didn't spend a lot of time in A:M this time, but will do so this evening. Anybody else using A:M with Mountain Lion?

Sounds pretty pessimistic to me. :-) I mildly gripe, but every time I've gotten a mention on a website or podcast, I've gotten sales, so I don't think it's as out there as you suggest. Not to mention that the DVD is still the only way to see it in its entirety. The web series version will be broken up into parts and shown at angles on the viewscreen of the Paunk set. I've no worries about anything from CBS. Stalled Trek: Amutt Time is a parody. If you want to read up on that, you can. Suffice it to say that I knew what I was doing when I did it. I've been selling it for months now ...and if I was going to get a cease and desist, I'd have it already, since a senior VP at Paramount Pictures was one of the first people to receive a copy, having been one of my Kickstarter supporters. I know that one went straight to the lawyers. :-) Although I might be a fan, this isn't a "fan production" or a fan film. That's a different animal and that is a case where you can't legally monetize it.

You joke, Paul, but just like old time radio and early tv, I think sponsors are the best and maybe only way to go. Get a corporate sponsor and let them pay for everything.

Well, I'll find out how the free model goes over. Maybe it will create more DVD sales.

Thanks, guys! I tried getting ThinkGeek to carry the Stalled Trek DVDs, but they said they don't have any luck with DVDs and passed. On the bright side, they did say that Stalled Trek looked fantastic and wished they did have interest in DVDs. This is symptomatic of what I'm finding. People seem to love it, but not want to buy it. At one show, I had a guy come to my table three times saying how this was going to be a huge success and how he knew a good idea when he saw one ...but didn't buy one. :-) Gives me hope for the web series, but there's still the question of how to monetize it. I'm going to try putting up ads, but that will only be significant if it gets lots of views.

Thanks, Gene! I appreciate all of the support! Well, I procrastinated and I'm under the gun. I have to work freelance this week, which means the only way I can get the first episode up on Saturday, Is to seriously burn the candles at both ends. This project has been a crazy on since day one, so I'm going to go for it! I've got all the models and sets finished and lighted. It's easy talking head animation, so it's possible. I've broken it down into 15 shots. I've got to do a new opening title, too. Rendering and editing and designing a new website is going to be really tough. But hey, as Mr. Spock is fond of saying, I like to think that there always are possibilities.

Cool! Already drooling at the thought of seeing animation of Tar fighting a couple of these guys. :-)

LOL, I saw this yesterday and thought it was awesome. Especially making the bamboo cannon to take out the Gorn.

For Stalled Trek, since I was doing almost all of the voices, it seemed wise to record all of one character's dialogue in one session so that I could maintain as much consistency with the voice as I could. I recorded each block of dialogue as an individual file. These were generally single lines of dialogue, but could be multiple lines if it was a long speech. While editing the audio, I would remove all of the time before and after the dialogue and then process it to get the sound I wanted. I named them sequentially like so: "Spott_003_insist" ...this way I could find the dialogue in order and still have a clue as to what the line was. I saved my high quality files as aif files and my low quality versions (for use in A:M) as wav files. This did require me having to replace the sound files in Premiere, but it was fairly easy to match them up to their wave pattern in Premiere's timeline. I could have saved the high quality files as wav files, too, but by making them different, I was less likely to confuse them. Having individual tracks allowed me to put them in and adjust the timing between them. In most cases, a single track was all a shot required, but it was trickier when a shot contained several lines between two or more characters. I used Robert's method a couple of times where I decided I needed to trim some pauses between dialogue (within sentences, even.) I do it this way: It's not very intuitive, but it makes sense. Drop your sound file into your cho and you can visually see the waveform. By scrubbing, you can see that say a pause starts on frame 60 and goes until frame 120. Simply go to the properties panel for the sound (in the cho) and change the Crop end frame to 60. Then bring in another copy of the sound. Have it start on frame 70 and set the Crop start to 120 and bingo, you've trimmed the pause. Note: that in my case, I have to refresh the screen to see the change in the waveform. I usually go up and down with my scroll wheel on my mouse.

At my old job, we had this argument often. Scheduling creative is virtually impossible, because the definition of "complete" is subjective and different for everyone. It's not like a math problem where you can have an exact answer. Stan Freburg has a great song on his History of the United States album. Betsy Ross has just finished making the first flag and Washington comes on and starts asking the ridiculous questions clients ask and then suggesting insane things. The song is called "Everybody Wants to Be an Art Director." You can guess, but if it's too high, the client will be scared off and if it's too low, then you've got an angry client. And don't ask me why, but the cheap client always wants more changes than the client who is paying big bucks. Creatives are then put through the ringer having to work nights and weekends to meet those schedules.

Looking forward to your video!

I experimented this with my Vulcanine set, which made liberal use of a procedural texture. Baking the surfaces not only failed to give as good a look, but actually took longer to render. Go figure. In the end, due to time constraints, I identified scenes where the camera didn't move and rendered a background frame and placed it on a layer behind the animated characters. Where the camera did move, I just bit the bullet and accepted the render times.

I could totally see a ZZ Top video in your style, Gene!

Day 3! Last night I decided to give the Pear OD-9000 a Captain Pike's chair/Robby the Robots vehicle body.

I was really meaning that they both are take offs on the old horror host monster movie shows of the 50s and 60s, but the theater aspect is there, too. One thing that's probably adding to the MST3K look is that I've been using old models as a kind of kitbashing for the decorations on the walls. Mostly the Jack Kirby-inspired ones that I made for Apeopolis. A sidenote: Some of the Kirby art I looked at and aped included the designs Kirby did for Lord of Light that were used by the CIA in a plan to rescue some of the Americans from Iran during the Hostage drama in '79 that is being featured in the new movie, Argo. Michael "Red State" Parks is playing Kirby in the film.

They do both hail from the same source.

Thanks, Nancy! Day 2! Working my way around to the middle of the set and setting up cameras for "standard" shots I'm likely to do. Trying to construct and light the set so that I can keep the same lighting setup. Thinking of this a little like a 3-camera setup. My thinking is that the monochromatic background will help the characters pop off more. The giant viewscreen is a bit tricky to work around, but I felt like it would make sense that Paunk would want to see it on a giant screen. This view will only be used when cutting out of a segment and will quickly switch to a close-up of Paunk. The final part of the set is Pear OD-9000's alcove and will be interesting to develop. Pear OD-9000 is now an android and mobile.

More progress. Building out the set. Going more for a "viewing room" vibe than a bridge set. Going more cinematic and large. Much of this will likely never be seen, since most of it will be shot as close-ups of characters.

Day 1! I've got 28 days to finish this webseries, so today starts the heavy lifting! Working on set pieces today. This is the new Isolation Chamber for Barry, the Earth Nerd. I think this will read better than the forcefields and also doesn't require me to do that extra work.

Thanks, guys. He has non-Hodgekin's, thankfully. I think it's likely they will do the radiation, but he's hoping he doesn't have to. He's due for a PET scan sometime after tomorrow's treatment.

Thanks, guys! Wow, I ddin't know that, Jody. He's doing the 6 months of chemo right now and they haven't made a decision about the radiation. The doctor says he is responding very well to treatment. He's only a month into treatment right now, but it's getting him down and we came out to try and cheer him up. I'll definitely pass on your story. The more positives he can get, the better.