largento

Good man KenH was kind enough to animate one of the scenes for me! Doc Bokor and Mr. Sneeze comment on mysterious islands... mysterious_shaded.mp4

Thanks, Rodney! I gave Scott (the talented fellow doing the voices) a very specific request for Doc Bokor's voice: I wanted Doc Bokor to sound like Geoffrey Holder (the 7-Up "Uncola" guy) who played Baron Samedi in "Live and Let Die." I think he did a fantastic job of capturing it. What's been fun for me is having another person interpreting the characters with their voices. It brings some freshness into it and it's very inspiring. The voice and audio work was always what held me up from getting a Wannabe Pirates animation off of the ground.

Thanks, Ken. You're right. I know I definitely went a little overboard with Doc Bokor's swaying around. I need to make it a little more subtle. I wanted a little more snap on Flemm's fist movement, too. I'll get the chance to tweak the shots a little before the final render. Excited to get this done, though. Think it might get the Wannabe Pirates some attention.

Thanks, guys! (Jake, Flemm is saying "Are you sure he's not just yawning?") Trying to buckle down and get one shot done a day so I can knock this puppy out! Here's today's. This is only a shaded render, but I'm holding off now on doing the renderings until I get everything pieced together and see how it all works! This is the Laugh at Danger bit... lat_shaded.mp4 It wasn't just for the look that I gave Doc Bokor that huge mustache. Makes lip-synching for that character a breeze. :-)

Thanks, Steve! I found moving the camera really helped sell that.

Another shot! This one's the Sea Monster scene. There'll be sound effects added to all of these and the final editing will probably be tighter, but here it is in the raw: playitroughscene_s.mp4

Spent today creating a little logo animation for "Endeavor Comics" to use in this commercial. Endeavor Comics was the label we self-published our books in the '90s and I still have the website, so thought I'd use it for this, too. Simple model, but made cool via matcap shaders and transparency/bump maps on the back! eclogo144.mp4

Can't wait to see how this gets used, Gene! I like the cartoony-ness of it!

Neat, Gerry!

Thanks, Rodney! They were made to be animated, but I don't know that we'll ever get to see a real animated project. It was interesting to me to hear someone else interpret the voices the way they heard them. What I like about the Flemm voice is that it has that kind of puffed-up quality to it and is very comical. The Greyhawk voice was inspired by the actor Stewart Granger. Seeing this movie poster makes the connection pretty clear! [EDIT] Thanks, Ken! They look okay to me on my computer, so it could be a playback issue. Those modulating scanlines do make the frames a bit more complicated.

The first sequence!! I'm probably going to experiment a little more with the opening part to do some more distortion/static type stuff, but this is basically it! First time speaking with their new voices! Sequence_01_2b.mp4

I'll let you know when they start going up, Rodney! I'm going to put in some puzzle pages in the comics and started working on one today with a maze. Never did a maze before, but it was cool that I could do it in Illustrator and then use the AI plug-in to bring it into A:M and make it 3D.

That would be great, Ken! I'll keep you in the loop!

I'd welcome the help, Robert! I'm still waiting on the voice tracks. He started them last week, so I'm not sure how long it will take him. Almost all of the clips are very brief and mostly are lip synching.

Cover for the first issue of the regular comic book! I was going for a very nostalgic feel, but looking modern, as well. I think "dialogue" covers aren't done anymore, but I still dig them. The "movie poster" cover works well for the graphic novel, but for individual issues, I like being able to take a sequence in the comic and do a new gag with it. I think it's more representative of the actual comic, too. Checking on advertising with local comic shops and businesses.

Thanks, guys! After giving it some thought, I've decided to start a "The Wannabe Pirates" comic book! I've got plenty of material (at least a dozen issues so far) and I think it would be fun. It would also offer a lower-price alternative. It's still a little pricey ($3.99 for a standard comic), but it's not outrageous. It will also give me a bigger footprint in the online stores. Of course, it means a whole bunch more work, but time is the only thing I'm not short on these days...

Thanks, Rodney. The pricing is definitely a penalty of doing Print On Demand. Sadly, the reality is that there simply are not enough Wannabe Pirates readers to warrant doing a press run. (Not that I could afford to do one anyway.) I would have to be in the position where I could sell thousands of books before I could go that route. I think I'll be lucky if I sell a couple of hundred of them. The POD place I went with (Ka-Blam) has the online outlet (IndyPlanet) and one that distributes to Comic Shops. They have a minimum price associated with the one that distributes to the comic shops and you can't price the IndyPlanet one for less. This was the lowest price I was allowed to charge. I could have split the book up into two books to lower the prices (although they'd probably end up costing more for two than for one) or gone with black and white interiors, but I wanted to have the whole story collected into one volume and I think a black and white version would be a let-down. Like you mentioned, the Print On Demand option does give me a great prototype to show to people for potential business. But at this point, it's mostly just wish-fulfillment on my part. So cool to finally have this in print. All the time doing the original strips and then all the work reformatting them into comic book pages was made worth it when I got to open the box and hold the books in my hands. :-)

Since I currently don't have a decent camera, I modeled a 3D version of the book to make a display photo: Better in a way, since you don't have to worry about gravity. :-)

Hey Everybody, Just got in the copies I ordered of the print version of The Wannabe Pirates and the Curse of Greyhawk Island and they look amazing! SOOO cool to see this in print! 208 pages (full color)! (That doesn't include the outside and inside covers which includes a full-page ad for Animation:Master!) I had my doubts about the quality of Print On Demand, but happily they were unfounded! The colors look great and the high resolution art lets you see more detail! Very happy with how it turned out! Here's the link to it! Go buy copies for everyone you know! :-) PS-->I can't see anywhere on the site if sales are limited to the US. They prefer PayPal, though, so I'd imagine they ship everywhere. So you non-US folks can take advantage of the weak US dollar! :-)

At least a *productive* use. I downloaded a free game called "Gold Strike" a few weeks ago and have lost many an hour to it. :-)

If you're running the latest version of OS X, you have access to the new Mac App Store. There's a free application in there called "Art Text Lite." It reminds me a little of an old application called TypeStyler that I used to use in the old days. Anyway, the free version comes with several preset styles. If you make a circle and apply the styles to them, you can then save out large resolution spheres that you can use with the Matcap shader! (Make sure your final image is square and has a black background.) If you spend the $20 for the full version, you have access to even more preset styles and you can customize your own.

Hope everything gets back to normal for you, Jirard! Best wishes!

Definitely are the models Jirard donated to the forums.

Hey, Rocky! Watch me pull a rabbit out of my hat! What if you have a framing sequence with a tuxedo-clad magician who somehow either puts his hat on the floor, or it is blown off of his head by the wind and then each participant does a character reaching into the hat and pulling whatever out?

LOL @ the ending. Cool.