largento

Thanks, Paul!

Thanks to you, Stian! That got there pretty fast!

Looking good! I felt the weight when he climbed the stairs.

Can your shot be done like bullet-time? Set up a fleet of cameras (one for each frame) in the path you want to move through the particles and have them all render the same frame. Then compile those frames in order. You could use a moving camera, to figure out the position of each frame's camera. Admittedly, not as easy as changing a setting, but if it's a really short shot...

That's pretty awesome! Love the render/lighting/texture style and the character itself has great personality. Bravo!

I hate to hear that about Jeff. I bought one within the last year and liked it. It contained a great deal of info in his making of docs that helped inform me on what *not* to do for this. All those things that tripped him up or took longer than expected. One of those is public awareness. He was on better footing than me with Killer Bean, but going with a parody of something that already has the awareness was a key thing I focused on, too. It was actually the hardest one to commit to. I spent half a year coming up with original ideas and realizing I'd be in the same boat as The Wannabe Pirates. The con's a week from Saturday, so I'll find out very soon if this appeals to my target audience or not. I could technically count the 77 DVDs I'm mailing out to the backers, but officially, those are gifts. What's really bad in Jeff's case is that he could have been making LOTS of money during that period when he was making it, whereas I was already unemployed. :-) 'Course, I'd have to sell a whooooole lot of DVDs to make what he's probably making now.

Thanks, Robert! I appreciate your saying that. Especially in the later sequences, a lot of thought had to go in to how to stage the sequences and how many shots were needed, etc. It is also a compressed story, so that probably helps with giving it a decent pace. Being able to achieve that look (like it's old film) with the lighting and the post work was the biggest surprise for me. I really hadn't expected it to end up looking as good as it did. There is one shot that so looks "Rankin Bass" to me, that I can't help but smile everytime I see it. ...And the music was something I desperately wanted and was so grateful to be able to get (and at the last minute, no less.) When he named his price, I did hesitate. My Kickstarter fund didn't fully cover producing the DVDs and shipping the backer copies, and it was obvious even then that the music fee would have to all be out of pocket, but luckily I had a big freelance job that was about to pay out and I finally said to myself, I've wanted to do this for 16 years, why chicken out in the end? I was so glad I went ahead and ponied up the money. He actually mixed together a "Stalled Trek Suite" mp3 that I've listened to many times and I think to myself, "wow! I've got my own Star Trek soundtrack!" :-) Sound is 50 percent of the experience, they say, and the music was a huge injection of quality. He's offered to do the sound design (as well as the scoring) for the next one, which should be an even bigger boost. RE: the website... My hope is to launch the webseries around the same time as the con, so the website would actually be up and running. I'm cutting it close, but with the episodes now mostly written and them requiring only 2 minutes of animation each, I think I can do it. So, when they go to the website, there will be new content on a weekly(?) basis for awhile. After those five weeks, I can start teasing them with images from the TNG parody.

RE: Insanely Ambitious: This would only be IF the SyFy Channel bought it as a series and I had a budget and could put together a production company and hire writers and voice talent, etc. That's the pipe dream. :-) RE: More ST Stories: More Star Trek episodes are definitely in the future, Gerry. "Amutt Time" is a parody of "Amok Time." There are 77 other episodes I could parody. Same with the other shows, each would be a parody of a specific episode. The next Star Trek episode I want to do is a parody of "Balance of Terror," called "Balance of Terriers." It continues the dog jokes, since this is the episode that introduced the Romulans (or "Ruffulans" as I'll call them.) :-) However, my intent is to stagger them. So the next parody I'll do will be a TNG parody (right now, "The Best of Both Worlds, Part 1" is leading the pack). Next year, I could do "Balance of Terriers" and a Battlestar Galactica parody or Dr Who parody. Then maybe another TNG parody and a Stargate parody. Etc. What I don't want to get stuck in, is having all my eggs in one basket (like I did with The Wannabe Pirates.) All of these will stay in the same convention-going audience, but have more variety. My thinking is that in a couple of years, I'll have several DVDs for someone to chose from (or buy one of each). Assuming this one sells well, of course. :-) I'm holding off on making the DVDs available online until after the con, Gerry. There are a bunch of reasons, but one of the key ones is that I lost sales at the last con I did by offering up that they could buy the Wannabe Pirates book online. I had one guy specifically, who really wanted to buy it and didn't have cash on him and he was going to go to an ATM and I casually mentioned he could buy it online. 1) The impulse to buy went away when he left; ...and 2) Even if he had bought it, I'd get less profit from him buying it online. This time out, I don't even want that to be an option. :-) I'm also equipped to take credit cards via my iPhone this year, so that I don't have to have cash. Beyond that, there's the logistics of fulfilling the orders and I want to make sure I have plenty of them at the convention, in case they really do go well. The Dallas Comic Con had over 11K visitors last year and they're expecting even more people this year. I'll have about 900 DVDs left, so to sell out, I'd only need 1 in every 12 people to buy one. If some people bought multiple copies for friends/family or I made a deal with a video dealer to sell multiple copies at a discount, It is possible I could sell out. How awesome would that be?

Thank you, Robert! Boy, is this a relief! I was overcome with self-doubt when I had to mail out the master. I was convinced it was terrible and literally broke out into a cold sweat and had knots in my stomach. I got over it, but this is really great to hear! And boy am I jealous of that 8 foot screen... I've seriously given thought to the show idea. If you think about it, each episode could have a 15-minute parody of a genre TV show (Star Trek, X-Files, Battlestar Galactica, etc.) with 10 minutes of the Paunk! Show wraparounds. Tailor-made for the SyFy Channel. Just think about how cool that boxed season set would be with parodies of all these geek-favorite shows? This fantasy always ends up with me in a mansion in Beverly Hills surrounded by a half dozen 20-something wannabe-starlets in my hot tub. :-) Still, as far-fetched as that is, I do think the webseries might be able to pick up some sponsors based on the fact that it has such a clear audience (middle aged nerds). Heck, even an exclusive deal with the SyFy Channel's website could happen if it manages to gather a decent-sized audience.

Thanks, Gerry! I really appreciate it! Awesome!

Cool, Gerry! Let me know what you think of it!

Thanks, Rodney! So what do you think, Robcat?

I guess I'm free to say this... I've been asked to be a guest at FenCon, which is a sci-fi/fantasy literary & filk singing con in DFW! I still have to send them my bio & stuff, but how cool is that?

Some practical tips. Bearing in mind that I'm no expert and that I tend to think of animation like stop-motion rather than traditional animation: 1) Set your key poses first in a pattern. Say, every 10 frames, key everything on the character. Now you can grab those keys and move them back and forth to adjust timing. If something happens too quickly, drag them further away, too slow, drag them closer. When you've got the major moves worked out, you can work on overlapping and follow through movements. 2) At 24fps, something must appear in at least two consecutive frames to be "seen" by the audience. 3) Get a timer or stopwatch or something to record yourself making movements and see how many frames it takes you to do it in real life. I have an iPhone app that does this and I've been finding it amazingly helpful. 4) Record yourself doing it and watch how everything moves and when. You don't necessarily have to rotoscope it, but lots of times you aren't fully aware of what all the parts of your body are doing when you do something. 5) Curves. I don't use the bias tools at all when I'm modeling, but I turn them on as soon as I start animating. You can smooth out movements using them and also zero slope to get rid of movements you don't want. 6) I've been thinking lately in terms of "move-hold" "move-hold" when I animate. It's made my animation less floaty.

Great job! I know it was following someone else's designs, but there was plenty of SpleenGene that managed to shine through.

Thanks, Ken. I wonder if that business is dwindling with the smartphones starting to take over? Having exclusive video content seems kind of passé when you've got all of YouTube and even Netflix on your phone. I think the web series is going to be a different animal than the DVD. I've decided for the moment to try it out just on YouTube and my own website to begin with. I'll try to spread the word as best as I can to various Star Trek and sci-fi blogs and see if I can generate audience that way. If it gets any traction, then I'll have some bargaining tools to approach sponsors or content services. I am re-doing the first episode. There are some changes I want to make and I want to streamline it as well.

Thanks, everybody! No plans for Wal-Mart in the near future, Rodney. :-) They say that one of the keys to success with something like this is to have a defined audience and find a way to reach them. I know who that audience is and I can reach them at the conventions. One thing I haven't considered yet is soliciting it to comic shops via Diamond. That's definitely an option to consider.

Thanks, Mark! It looks like there might be a public showing of it in the near future. I contacted a small sci-fi convention about the possibility of getting a table to sell DVDs at and the head of the con emailed me yesterday and asked me I'd be interested in having it shown in their video room and giving a "making of" presentation with it. Nothing may come of it (they haven't seen the film yet), but I do think it would be kind of cool to see how it plays to a room full of sci-fi fans. And of course, the beauty part is to be able to then sell DVDs after the presentation. :-)

Thank you, Kat!

Thanks, Ken & Gene! One down and (with luck) many more to go!

Thanks!

Thanks, guys! Jason, the DVDs will be available online after the con (May 19-20). I'll post the info here.

I wondered why the postage cost was a negative number.

How's this for a way to end a WIP thread? 1,000 DVDs arrived at my door today! What started as a crazy New Year's Resolution is now a real-deal!

A marked improvement over an already great looking test. Nice work, Matt!