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That was fantastic, Gerry! By far, your best yet!

Very cool, guys!

Have you written this commercial yet? If it's short I might be able to animate it for you. Some kind of head was definitely the original plan, but I was literally down to one hour to finish it. That's a generous offer, Robert! I haven't done anything yet for the commercial, but my thinking was always that it would just be short cuts of different characters and things from the story with a narration of some sort, but that's about as far as I've gotten with it. Most of the "cool" assets that I would need haven't even been started yet.

Well, I ended up having to rush this, but I think it came out okay. Thankfully, the reason I had to rush was that I picked up some freelance work, which I really needed. The majority of the work was home-based, but I started today doing three days of work back at my old work. I'd forgotten what it was like to do that. :-)

Very cool, Jake!

Very cool, Al! The detail (as always) is fantastic! You're going to have to do something with all of these models when you finish!

That really works well!

Haha! He's hilarious!

Thanks, Kat!

Thanks, Ken! I'm crying fowl, Myron! :-) Thanks! Nancy, I'll have to see if we can afford the licensing with our budget. We may need you to bawk "For He's a Jolly Good Fellow" instead. :-)

Thanks, everybody! LOL, Nancy. I don't think I know that song, but it makes me think of "Young at Heart" ...and if the need ever arises for a chicken serenade, you'll be the first person I go to. :-) Never is too strong a word, Robert. I am committed to doing this webcomic for at least 3 years to see if I can grow an audience. This does mean that I can't make an animated film during that time, but I can work towards one. I think it's actually good for me in the sense that I'm getting a lot of practice at posing, building sets, lighting, etc. My goals for the animation were too lofty. I was feeling too overwhelmed by them, but as challenging as the webcomic is, I feel like I can accomplish it. And with the webcomic, I feel like I'm accomplishing something every time I finish a strip! I do have in mind doing a "commercial" for the printed book when the first story is done ...and I'll have all the assets I'll need for it once the story is finished! Heck, it might even be something I can do mid story to advertise the comic... but the primary objective has to be the comic.

Chickens! Chickens are a very important plot element in this story. I'm keeping them pretty simple, since they'll appear pretty tiny in the actual comics.

Thanks, guys! Ken, there weren't any other webcomics at the show using 3D that I saw. I've encountered a few just looking around, but the majority of them seem to be "poser" deals that I find bland and uninteresting. Of course, there's Scott Sava's Dreamland Chronicles which uses his own character designs, but he's spent thousands of dollars of his own money producing it. (As an aside, he just recently reached his 1,000th page!) I found a video showing the process that one of the 3D webcomics used and thought it was interesting that the majority of the characters' clothes were added after the fact in Photoshop, painted on. I'm struggling to get back into the swing of things. I'm about to have to make a move because most of my freelance work has dried up. I'm holding off until the first of December to make the decision, but I've already given 60 days notice on my apartment. Hopefully the economy will pick up next year! I'm going to keep going with The Wannabe Pirates, though! Maybe in a couple of years, it'll grow big enough to be self-sustaining. That's the hope anyway. :-) Dallas Art News is doing a deal where webcomic artists are recreating famous pieces of art with their characters and style. I've signed up to do one. I'm going to do the classic Howard Pyle illustration, "Walking the Plank." I'm just in the beginning stages: I am going to give Flemm the blindfold, but instead of being tied up, he's going to have a kid's inflatable float ring around him. :-)

Nice job, Gene!

Coming together nicely, Gerry!

Google pays a licensing fee to cover all of the music that's used on YouTube. However, different countries have different organizations that cover music licensing. A quick Google search shows that talks between Google and the German music collection broke down in April. I don't know if they had an extension or it's just taken until now for you to be notified.

That's really looking good, Ken!

Thanks, Ken! Hopefully I'll get some new eyes on the website. I'm just finding this out today, but I had a sort of long conversation with an older gentleman who asked me a lot of questions about the 3D and if it would look good in black and white and how I was making money off of it (I told him that I wasn't) :-) Long story short, it's only today that I'm finding out that was Bill Hinds who draws the syndicated strip Tank McNamara! I feel like a complete moron for not knowing who he was... I did ask him about his comics, but he didn't mention the one I would recognize.

Whew! I just spent the whole day at the Dallas Webcomics Expo. It was a lot of fun and I was able to give out a bunch of the postcards I'd had printed. Mentioned Animation:Master to all who asked the question of what program I was using and a few of them had heard of it! (I think that's partly due to Hash's presence at comic conventions!) It was great fun seeing how much the kids liked it. There weren't many there, but it was gratifying to see! One of the other webcomickers told me that she prints out several of the Wannabe Pirates strips and puts them in her kids lunchboxes! Hearing that was worth the whole effort of attending!

Nice! Yes, there's nothing like taking on an animation with a real deadline for your first one! :-)

You might want to start another thread about this. I'm a Mac user, so have no clue about Windows stuff.

That tutorial is now part of The Art of Animation: Master. You can find a PDF version of it here. It starts on page 139.

Thanks, Andy! I agree about the background. I had something else in mind, but couldn't get it to work. It's a wait and see on whether or not this brings in more readers. It's only been two days and I did some advertising yesterday. Our numbers did improve when we went to five days a week. Now it's going to be six days a week. Hopefully, it'll pick up. I'm going to do a small convention on the 14th and hope to get the word out to a bunch of people there.

Nicely done! The sound effects work perfectly!

Wow, where did the time go? The Wannabe Pirates strips start going up on the site today! I've just started to get back into doing them again. It's been hard to get started back up. I was in such a zone before, but I'm sure I'll get back there.