largento

That's a good call, Gerry. Thanks! I'm still not sure how I'm going to handle the credits on the cover, but the "present" is a good idea. I'm actually now considering reformatting all of the strips into comic book pages to try the graphic novel route. If I do that, the cover will be oriented portrait rather than landscape.

Thanks, Jim & Ken!

Extremely nice! Something to look forward to seeing!

Thanks, Gene & Myron! I doubt I would've gotten this far without the encouragement and support from this forum!

Wow, I'm careening towards the end of this story! It's sort of tying up quicker than I expected, but once you get to the climax, there really isn't a point in prolonging the ending. Which means there's only two more days of strips before the end! It seems crazy to think that the end is here! I started working on the first strip at the beginning of August of last year. It's pretty much consumed my time for most of a year now. It's weird, too, that I'm almost a little depressed that it's coming to an end ...but of course, it's not really ending since I'm moving straight on to the next story. But I've been almost dragging my feet working on these last strips... like I don't want the end to come as soon as it is. I'm going to give myself 4 weeks to get ramped up for the next story. There are new characters to create and story elements that need to be sharpened and/or figured out. After all of this space stuff, I'm really looking forward to getting back to the ground again. To keep the website alive during that time, I'm going to run little making-of/how-to's/behind-the-scenes strips so that the space won't be empty ...and of course, new pages of Greyhawk will continue on Saturdays. One of the fun things I'm looking forward to in the new story is getting to make use of Cutthroat Jacques. There just wasn't room for him in Curse of Greyhawk Island. He's the only major character that I haven't gotten to really "act" with. I'm going to add a couple members of his crew (one was modeled a long time ago) and give him a new ship. This new story is basically the one that I was previously working on for the animated version and means I'll finally get to make use of the characters that Ken H. modeled for me last year! September 1st will mark 3 years since I started working on the Wannabe Pirates! It's hard to believe it, but I have this thread to look back at and remind me of all of the work I've put into it. I'll have more to update since I'll be getting to model new characters again!

Thanks, Jim!

Thanks, Ken! A valid crit (as usual). I may paint some in. My initial attempt to actually include the ship in the render of the water didn't work.

Thanks, Rob! Let's hope potential buyers think the same! Thanks, Myron! I really appreciate your saying that! Yes, right now there's very little validation for my effort, but I persevere hoping that will change down the road. I do think the CD cover is a little too risqué for the Wannabe Pirates page, but I'd have no problem with an ad that just showed the racked pool balls. We sell our ads through Project Wonderful. It's fairly easy to set up an account and they are sold via an "infinite auction." Which means, you put a maximum you want to pay and for how long, etc. and as long as someone doesn't bid higher than you, your ad is displayed there. It's pretty cheap to advertise via Project Wonderful and you can set up "campaigns" that will put your ad on as many websites as it can. Our ads start at 5 cents a day. I would say that you will get a lot more hits on your ads if you do show the girl, though. :-)

Thanks, Gerry! I worked up the cover art for the book version of this story. I think it came out pretty cool:

This is just my personal way, but I use 3-point lighting almost exclusively. I set the rim light behind, above and to the left of the character and usually bump up the intensity to 200%. The point of the Rim light is to help separate the character from the background. That gives you a nice "rim" of light on the character. The key light is from the front left, but not as high above the character. I make sure cast shadows is turned on in the settings. This is the main light and it casts shadows onto the opposite side of the figure, helping to give it depth. The fill light, I position front right and below. I turn on specularity in the options. The fill light works kind of like the rim light in that it breaks up the shadows cast by the keylight. It's meant to be reflective light. Normally, I like to give everything a warm look, so I use an orange rimlight, a white keylight and a lighter orange fill light. However, if the situation calls for a different mood, I change those colors to accommodate them. Here's a quickie comparison of the default choreography lighting and a quick example of how it looks with the lights set up the way I normally do.) A basic demonstration of 3-point lighting was shown in episode 8 of the video podcast Film Riot. Film Riot is about real world film making, but the concepts apply to 3D, as well. Plus, it's entertaining. This works great when you have a single character, but can get more complicated when you have more characters. Still, more times than not, I use only the three lights.

Whoa-ho-how! That fog and the lighting really help with the scale. Looks great!

Great job, guys! I laughed out loud at the dancing dove.

Cool image, Mark! I like the low angle and the poses.

I only have a passing awareness of the Thomas the Train show, but they look fantastic, Stian!

Keep in mind that specularity will be solid if your surface is flat. So when you're making your robot, it's best to avoid large flat areas. Give them some roundness or break them up with additional details. You can also do a search for the matcap shader and use a metallic sphere image.

Whoops! :-) You can use my real name, Gene: Mark R. Largent Thanks!

Thanks, guys! The Toy Story nod comes in today's Wannabe Pirates strip!

Happy Birthday!

Thanks, guys! Ken, I was going to keep his collar, but it ended up looking kind of goofy, so there's a black turtle-neck kind of thing in its place.

Next weeks' strips feature Flemm in Space! I've been looking forward to this part of the story for a long time! I hadn't intended to, but with Toy Story 3 out, I thought it would be fun to give Flemm's space suit a bit of the Buzz Lightyear look. I even Frankensteined some pieces from the Spaceman model that was on the Extras DVD. :-) I am rapidly approaching the end of this story! I was shooting for 200 strips, but one of the sequences I had planned ended up getting thrown out because I thought it would slow down the ending. I've plotted out the story ending with strip #185, but I may add a couple as I go if gags occur to me. Today's strip is #169.

Thanks, Mark3D. To me it looks like the letters are just floating slightly above the Denny's logo. I created the white outline as a shape in Adobe Illustrator and brought that in with the AI plugin. Same way I brought in the red type. I then positioned them to make them work. The red type has sides, but the white is just flat. It's positioned so that the red type breaks through.

Happy Birthday, Martin! Hope it's a great one!

I also took a couple of stabs... I used a yellow/orange global color (80%) and then a couple of lights. One orange rim up and behind on the right and a narrow yellow key below on the right. I did turn on AO, but I don't think it contributed very much. I tried one with depth of field and a little bloom post effect... [edit] I picked up the Denny's logo from "Brands of the World" and used the yellow and orange color values from that file (the outer frame is actually a different color than the interior.)

Knowing the care and attention to detail you possess, David, I know this is going to be worth the wait!

Set the Global Color to a warm yellow/orange. That should make the shadows orange instead of black. I wouldn't use AO myself. I'd set up some lights, so you can cast shadows within it.