largento

Hey Gene, the really short version is that you create a material and change the attribute type to fluids. Then you create a model with at least one patch and apply that material to it. That will create an emitter that you can place in your choreography. Fiddling with all of the settings is the time consuming part.

Wow! The big 5-0! Happy Birthday!

You'd have to experiment, but one thing to try might be to put a container shape under the emitter and then animate it like you would the glass if you were throwing a glass of water in someone's face. Give it some time to "fill up" first.

I can't offer too much of an assist, but my first thought is that a sprite emitter would be the way to go for the high-pressure leaks. I really haven't gotten my feet wet with fluids yet (pun intended.) :-)

Hey Al! I'm having the same issue. I'm pretty sure it's a font conflict, but I haven't tracked it down yet. (It also makes the numbers on my timeline disappear.)

Thanks, Lee! That's a hard question to answer. I still *want* to do the movie serial, but the demands of the webcomic aren't really making it possible in the foreseeable future. However, when this current storyline is finished, I want to do the storyline that was going to be the movie serial. I can't help but think that I might be able to use that as a way to do a lot of the preparation for an eventual animated version. I'll be creating all of the assets and in a sense, doing storyboarding (although the gag-a-day strip doesn't really translate directly that way.) There's no question that afterwards, this work would go a long way towards doing the animated version ...but after it's done, I have to start working on another storyline and then the next one and the next one, etc. I'm committing to doing this for somewhere between 3 and 5 years. If after that point the audience doesn't grow to the point where it seems practical to continue, then I would consider dropping the webcomic. If that did happen, then I would have all of these assets and I think I would want to do one last hurrah with an animated project ...for a failed webcomic. :-) The best case scenario would be that the webcomic would take off and become successful enough that I could bring on help and maybe get enough capital to do a series of animated episodes that would have a ready-made audience from the webcomic. All of that is too far away to seriously think about right now. Right now the comic is the thing and it's got to be my main focus. LOL, when I started this project it was supposed to be an easy short that I could finish quickly! Now it's never-ending!

Thanks, Gerry! Sadly, self-promotion is something I'm having trouble with. Whenever I get a couple of bucks from the ads on the site, I do a tiny bit of advertising, but that's about it. I really need to be more of a go-getter in the self-promotion regard, but I find it so hard to do the "look at me! look at me!" thing.

Awesome!

Thanks, guys! There is definitely a sense of having more and more toys to play with, Rodney. If the audience ever got big enough to support it, I'd love to look into creating some figurines of some of the characters. The harsh reality is that there are too many regulations in place for us to ever consider making toys. I saw this company recently, which does 3D printing on demand: www.shapeways.com Don't think there's not a part of me that is remembering my Death Star Playset while I'm working on this. :-) LOL, the vinyl sticker boards you're talking about were called Colorforms. :-) I think any sort of drama like losing a tusk would be too severe for a Wannabe Pirates story, Rodney. Were you the kind of kid who broke your toys? :-)

I've been working on the interior bridge set for Greyhawk's ship. McCrary sent me some designs for it. As with everything, the Wannabe Pirate characters require specific considerations for their small legs. Still have a fair amount to do... I haven't even started on the lower level yet.

Myron, I'll say it again, this is incredibly original! Bravo!

Nice start, Lee! Are you going to do the leather "scales"?

Thanks, Gene & Darkwing! Glad you're enjoying it, Darkwing! Doing this crossover is a lot of fun. Greyhawk has been with McCrary and me since 1985, but the last time we did anything with him was 1997. It's been fun getting back to him and his crew! Public kudos to Mark S. for his face rig! I've said this many times, but it's been great how much expression I've been able to get out of K'Bor's face (and all of the others, for that matter)! Really brings them alive for me! Now back to the grind! I'm working my way up to strip #99 this weekend!

Gene, it's easy to see that this is going to be your best one yet!

I do find cases sometimes where the AI plug-in chokes on bringing in an Illustrator file, but I've been using CS4 for sometime now and I can confirm that saving out as an AI8 file works with the plug-in. Look out for weirdness in your AI paths before you export. Lots of times I'll Expand a complicated drawing and discover that AI has some points stacked on top of each other. The rounded rectangle tool does that if you draw something pill-shaped. The plug-in doesn't seem to like that.

Thanks, guys! Holmes, the sea serpent was actually just a hologram, so it's possible that somebody on Greyhawk's team was having a little joke at K'Bor's expense. :-) Wasn't intentional by me, though. :-) Myron, the very earliest version of K'Bor (when we were first creating the character in '94) had even more teeth! McCrary wisely chose to streamline them. My initial concept for K'Bor was an alien version of Little John, where he looked big and tough on the outside, but was actually a nice guy.

This week, I get to do a big knockdown-dragout fight between Flemm and K'Bor! (Big thanks to Mark S. and his rigging expertise!) In the words of that other immortal bard... "It's clobberin' time!" :-)

LOL, Poco is rigged, but he doesn't like scraping his knuckles on the ground. :-) Virtually all of my characters keep their arms bent because they have very short legs. :-) Poco's case is probably more pronounced, since he's hunched over all of the time. I will admit that there is a generic stance Action that I usually drop on Poco since Poco is rarely involved in what's going on. Poco is an odd character. There are times that I use his facial expressions to indicate that maybe he realizes just how dumb Flemm is acting, but there are many times when I feel like he's just not paying attention and is off in his own world. At the final size of the strip, most of the subtlety of those expressions is lost unfortunately. In the strips where Flemm is buying the Sea Anemone, I actually had a whole deal where Poco is seen looking at the ship and then is roaming all around in it through the next several strips. Unfortunately, almost every time he was just too small to be noticed or covered by a word balloon, so the effort was in vain. Yet, I always work in important plot points for Poco to do to move the story along. He's also great for instances where I need for Flemm to have someone to talk to, but someone who can't tell him that he is doing the wrong thing. That's why I had him with Flemm during the scenes with the chickens.

Gotta' go to Google, don't know this reference... Oh, "Scrubs." I've never really watched that show.

Not much in the way of new models. Most of what I've been working on for the upcoming strips has to do with the interior of Greyhawk's cave. I did think it would be fun to add another character, though. I'm going to explain that the majority of Greyhawk's crew are out on a mission, explaining why there are so few of them around. I don't know if I'm going to give this guy a name or not. He's kind of a junior space cadet sort who idolizes Glimey and Glimey is going to call him only by nicknames. This lets me have another background character and the model itself is a simple refit of Glimey. Still, I think it's going to be fun to have some interaction between a Wannabe Starbuckler and Flemm.

Looks really good! That's a pretty challenging thing to model.

I notice on his storefront, there is a link on the left side of the screen to "Send this user a message." He used to post on these boards, but I don't remember what his screen name was. I contacted Barry before I bought them (they were on DVD then) and he was very helpful.

That is hilarious!

By far, my favorite tutorials for character modeling are Barry Zundel's which can be purchased here.

You are welcome, Gene! They look great on your ark!