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Thanks, Nancy! I see what you're talking about. I'll see what I can do to get that across better.

Okay, here's my first go at it: psb_wbp_s2.mov

Great looking character! Love the ao render!

Thanks, Kat! You should still make a comic book version of your story, using frames from your animation as panels!

Nice one, Robert! I'm racing to get mine done. One more day should do it... (I hope...)

"Greyhawk and the Starbucklers of the Caribbean" was sort of our last hurrah into self-publishing, Rodney. Our first was in '91 (I believe) and it was a local publisher that did a local magazine. McCrary and I had finished a graphic novel we called "Headfirst into Fire" about a group of friends who get zapped through a portal while on a canoeing trip and end up on an alien world in the middle of a war. We were going to split it up into 4 issues and it made it as far as being listed in the distributors' catalogs before the publisher went out of business in the middle of the night and left town! We never even found out how many orders it got. In hindsight, we should have just done it ourselves, but we were pretty green back then. In '94, we self-published a two-issue mini-series called "Mister America." We distributed them nationally and I get a kick out of the fact that they show up in the Comic Book Price Guide. :-) It was a money-loser, though. We had decided to go with color and the printer we used had a 5,000 minimum for color books. We also bought full page ads in both of the big distributor's catalogs. Our numbers were okay, but with us having to print 10,000 comics, they weren't good enough. So, when we finished Greyhawk 3 years later, we decided to start off with a small, local run with the idea of paying off our printing costs *before* we solicited the book through the distributor. We did break even, but that's about it. In the 3 year gap between publishing "Mister America" and "Greyhawk," there had been a nuclear meltdown of the distribution market. It's a long, convoluted story, but basically Marvel decided to buy one of the small distributors and make their books exclusive to it. Most retailers made their money by discounts from bulk orders. This new deal forced retailers to have to deal with at least 2 distributors in order to get all of their books and cut into their discounts. This caused the other comic book companies to panic and sign exclusive deals with other distributors. DC Comics chose Diamond. It turned out to be a disaster. Now having to deal with multiple distributors, many shops ended up having to close and almost all of the distributors ended up folding. Marvel had to close their self-owned distributor and ended up in Chapter 11 for awhile. When the dust cleared, there was now only *one* major distributor, Diamond. With this monopoly, there was no reason for Diamond to compete and since obviously DC and Marvel were their two biggest clients, when those 2 companies complained about all of the "noise" of independent books in the catalog, Diamond acquiesced and started severely limiting what books they would accept for distribution. I had made the decision that a horizontal (landscape) format for a comic made more sense than a vertical (portrait) format. After all, the movie screen is wider than it is tall. Our vision works that way. So Greyhawk was a "sideways" book. Diamond said that our book was the wrong size and rejected it ...even though it was the exact same size as a comic, only turned sideways. (Years later when Frank Miller did that with 300, Diamond did not have a problem with it.) :-) Around that time, life interfered and I ended up moving out to Dallas and McCrary moved out to Kentucky not long afterwards and although we kept talking about doing other books and would start working a bunch of times, nothing really panned out. Still, it was something we always wanted to do and we did it! :-) That's part of the fun of "The Wannabe Pirates." We still get to work on a comics project, but it's not a huge amount of work and we don't have to sink tons of money into it. The movie serial on the other hand... :-)

Off topic a little, but I put up a nostalgic blog post about the first pirate story McCrary and I ever worked on, a graphic novel we published in 1997 called "Greyhawk and the Starbucklers of the Caribbean."

I think what rob is suggesting is to have the particles emit from where you want them to land, render it out and then reorder the frames so that the render plays backwards.

Thanks, guys!

I'd say it's pretty darned realistic looking already! Terrific job, Eric!

Thanks! Just a quick note about what I've been up to with The Wannabe Pirates! I had one of those Aha!-moments last week and was able to get a new handle on writing the chapters for the movie serial. It basically involved the fact that I had so much backstory to tell that it was bogging down the first chapter. It suddenly occurred to me that I could split the backstory across most of the chapters, not only solving the problem of making it easier to digest, but by creatively withholding certain elements of the backstory, I could keep a greater sense of mystery across the whole story. I also realized that by just giving away a snippet of the backstory at the beginning of each chapter as a sort of before the credits prologue, I could add punchlines to them and more refreshingly, those parts don't have to be part of the rhyme! I've been adjusting to going into writing mode. The movie serial isn't easy to write, but I don't want it to be. I figure it may very well be the only animated version of these characters I get to do, so I want to do the best I can with it. In addition to working on the movie serial's script, I've been working on writing a fill-in story for the webcomic. We're winding down on the Henry Morgan's Treasure storyline and McCrary is wanting to take a break afterward to recharge his battery and build up a buffer for the next storyline. To keep from having a gap, I'm working on what'll probably be around 20 pages of a fill-in story starring the Waldo Morgan character and his group of "nerd pirates." I think this is going to be a lot of fun since it'll give me a chance to draw some strips and it will be a sort of palette cleanser for the reader before getting into the next storyline. To help differentiate it from the main storyline, I'm going to do all of the strips larger. This will also work in our favor when/if we get around to publishing a book collection, since each of these strips will fill an entire page. My new found freedom is making a huge difference, since so much of this story part is having uninterrupted time to sit and daydream and think. Time that was in short supply before.

Just as an update for folks who wondered which overpass to find me under with my tin cup and cardboard sign... :-) So far, so good. I was able to pick up my first freelance job a few days after I left my old job and it looks like it's going to cover my bills for another 5 months or more! Fingers crossed that I'll be able to continue finding work! Haven't figured out a schedule yet. Working on that. I've had a few days that weren't very productive but I'm trying to adjust. Not homeless yet. :-)

Let's hope that works for me and you both, Rob! :-)

I think with this sort of thing, it may not be possible to learn *everything.* I'm more than 2 years in at this point and I'm still learning things! Of course, it isn't *necessary* to know everything to do what you want to do with A:M. Loving to learn is definitely a good attribute to have going forward! For me, I think drawing is easier than modeling in the sense that I can draw something much faster than I can model it. I think you're asking if it's possible to model without being able to draw and that does seem to be the case. I'm hesitant to say that it can replace talent, though. (Even the manual qualifies that "Modeling takes talent.") I've seen some great character models by people who don't identify themselves as artists, but I've also seen some spectacular character models by people who *are* artists. An argument could definitely be made that modeling is a talent in and of itself. If you keep your expectations reasonable and put in the time, the rewards are great!

LOL! That's awesome!

Both look incredible, Matt! I'm working on mine as I write this. It's a little complicated, but I should have no problem getting it done by the deadline.

That's hilarious! Looks like he's going to be awesome!

Thanks, guys. Mark, I may go back and add that splash. Rodney, thanks for the look of the water go to Photoman's tutorial. There's no title for the second volume. It's just Volume 2.

Well, my luck being what it is, I managed to get a sinus infection just as I was reaching my last days of work and I've been pretty shut down for the first couple of days of my new freedom... But I have managed to get a few things done. I've been putting together another PDF book to put up on Kidjutsu. Here's the cover:

At that size, it doesn't sound like it's the roto's fault. Still a mystery then. And very strange that you are seeing the slow down just in certain views.

This is really great!

Hmmm. Not sure why you'd have the slowdown with so few patches in your model. Is your rotoscope a really large resolution?