largento

Experimenting is the key. You might also look at some compositing or post effects, too. This is just me taking the first two images you posted and compositing them in photoshop with some layer effects. It would take some experimenting, but you could use the A:M compositor to achieve the same kind of mix. I went for a spookier look and used a blue filter to desaturate the warm colors. I also added some blurred noise layers to simulate adding a little bit of fog and did a small amount of blurring to simulate depth of field. A small amount of black fog and depth of field might help give it more atmosphere.

That's looking great, Gerry! The lizards came out great. I wonder if you could use one of those "morph" apps to make the tear-to-lizard transition a little more subtle?

Another winner, Myron/Gene!

Thanks, everybody! Robert, unfortunately A:M Track is still Windows only. I fear my Windows installation for Parallels won't work after losing the last hard drive since Windows will inevitably think it's another machine and all the license info is in storage. Nancy, the felt look is simple noise via the Surface settings. The hat and coat use the ToonNation->Joyce attribute.

That's pretty spectacular, Mark!

Thanks, guys! Well, obviously for brand reasons, you can't call him a Muppet, but the idea is to treat the characters like a mix of marionettes and puppets, which is where the Muppets get their name. Of course, in this case it'll just be a simulation of a marionette/puppet. I've been obsessing for months about the idea of animating puppets. Puppets can be more "animated" in their performances and they aren't as complex and subtle in their movements as people are. The bar for "realism" with puppets is significantly lower. :-) He's the former, Paul. I haven't completely committed to it being entirely black and white, but I know at least part of it will and I want to see if I can achieve some film noir with it. I may desaturate the non-b&w parts so that just a touch of color is there. I'm thinking of this as part proof-of-concept. The goals are to see if I can accomplish simplifying the animation process by using puppet-models and also see if I can get a more polished look. The short should be around 4 minutes long.

Having trouble getting any Wannabe Pirates work done, so I figured I'd try working on something different to see if I can get myself back in the groove. This is something I've wanted to do for awhile. Started working on the first of two character models for it:

Super neat stuff!

Well done!

Hi David, That's a glitch with the Mac OS that showed up a few OSs ago. There's a workaround, thankfully! In the case of there just being one windeow (ie Save As...), just switch to another app and then back to A:M and the options won't be greyed out anymore. You can do this quickly by using command-tab. In the case of a finder window on top of another window (say you've got the render dialogue box open and want to select where to save the render), use the Hide command FROM the application menu and then go back to Animation:Master. It's become second nature to me, but it was quite frustrating before I figured out a way around it! :-)

I remember feeling the same way (and still do sometimes.) Like any big task, the key is to tackle it a little bit at a time. Then it starts to get cumulative and doesn't seem quite as overwhelming. I've had this conversation before with people about how once you start to get into it, you realize, hey, this isn't so hard ...but then you realize the sheer volume of work necessary to create an animated project and you get overwhelmed again. :-)

Nice, Gene! Very cool!

Wow!

JimD, just do a search for "greyhawk" on the iTunes store and you should find them. ("The Wannabe Pirates and the Curse of Greyhawk Island") They are optimized for both the iPhone and the iPad. For the iPhone, the app will go through the stories panel-by-panel (programmed by the guy who wrote the app.) It works really well. Rodney, you might want to check with Ka-Blam and see if they lost your order. I remember them saying they had some computer problems awhile back. There is a 2-page "making of" article at the back of the graphic novel which has some of the original character design sketches and info about how the book was created. Oxicomics is about to go into a closed beta, but I really like the idea of digital comics and hope they catch on. I think low prices are key to that, though, and there's pressure from the brick and mortar comic shops against the publishers not to lower prices for digital comics.

Thanks, everybody! I greatly appreciate the words of encouragement! JimD, I do have a series of iTunes apps for the first story and I'm working on doing them as individual issues that are available via oxicomics. My goal is to complete this story so that I have a second graphic novel and go from there.

Thanks, Mark! I'm doing something new in the strip these days. After a sabbatical/come-down-off-of-the-ledge period, I decided to do the strip as comic book pages, rather than comic strips. I've been converting the strips into pages for print, and the results have really been great, but I like the idea of being able to design the page from the beginning, rather than design it after the fact. A computer crash set me back a couple of weeks, but I'm once again trudging along and I really like doing the pages. Since I'm only doing one a week, I can spend more time on it and I think I'm starting to get better at making the set-up in the choreography better match the layout in my head. It also gives me more space and a broader canvas. This story is also going to play with some comic book tropes and having the full page means I can do some homages to some of my favorites from the past. Here's the first couple of pages:

I use the AI wizard often when I'm making anything mechanical. As Rodney suggests, You can plan ahead in Illustrator by making the points in the path make sense to A:M. I almost never leave it up to the plug-in to fill in patches, though. I just bring in the path and do that on my own. I've found it helpful to create several parts in one AI file at the same size and bring them in all together. For a background machine I made recently, I also threw in some common shapes that I knew I would be able to copy and paste for creating things like buttons and switches.

Just voted! Keep bumping this thread up to remind us!

Nice!

Bravo!

Stunning as always, Stian! Speaking of patch count, has anyone enountered a patch limit with the latest versions of A:M?

Very nice! Shaping up into a genuinely creepy little dude!

And now, for something completely different... :-) That's quite an exercise regiment you've got them doing. I keep waiting for them to drop. :-)

Greatness.

Looks like a mystery to me, too, but a general caution: be mindful of when you have Mirror Mode on. It's the usual suspect for many an odd behavior.