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I played with creating the transporter effect from Star Trek when I was working on Stalled Trek. I used A:M and Photoshop CS3. Post #76

Al, looks great except those flat sections on the primary hull (on the fore near the sensor dish) aren't inset like you have them. [EDIT] Nevermind. :-) I guess I never noticed that before...

Al, the application I used is called "Comic Life." There is a windows version. The Enterprise is looking great! You're modeling it really quickly!

Nicely done!

Hey Al, looking good! This might also be helpful: It's from the fan-produced series and shows some decent detail and color reference.

I'm thinking using the same ball is limiting. Especially in regard to scale. I had no trouble following the ball in the previous film.

According to YouTube, the best formats: Video Format: H.264, MPEG-2 or MPEG-4 Resolution: 640x360 (16:9) or 480x360 (4:3) Audio Format: MP3 or AAC Frames per second: 30 Max Length: 10 minutes Max file size: 1GB 640x360 is the same aspect ratio as 864x486 and I think it would be good to have the higher resolution so folks can make full quality DVDs. When I did the Christmas greeting, I did it at the actual size for a DVD 720x480 with a 1.21 ratio. But I could see where that would become confusing for folks. Last week I was watching a video about fields and that added a whole 'nother layer of complication. I think the widescreen format will add some fun to this, too. More horizontal space to play with the ball.

I would vote that the bare minimum we should do is YouTube's *widescreen* settings. 'Cause YouTube is widescreen nowadays.

Any chance we could get Hash to consider this "official" and have them put the finished piece up on the Hash YouTube channel? There are lots of folks out there with music that we can use through creative commons. It would be cool to get some really kick-ass tune to drive it.

'Fraid so, Gerry. I did some searching about it last year and found some threads where people were asking if Anzovin would ever make it compatible with Tiger. The answer was maybe, but it seems that they were putting their effort into making versions for competing software. Of course, if you have Windows installed on your intel Mac (via BootCamp or Parallels and other solutions), you can use the Windows version. Rob, I did stick the plugins and try them (just because) and it didn't work. (I don't remember if it crashes A:M or just doesn't show up in the menus.) I didn't try just putting in the first two, but like you say, what would be the point?

Here's a thought... what if we made it something other than a ball? Maybe like a paper airplane?

Of course, I'd be up for it.

The Setup Machine 2 does *not* work with current versions of the Mac OS. I think the last version it was supposed to work with is Panther (10.3).

Thanks, guys! I really felt it was important that he be an interesting looking villain, so a lot of thought went into the design. The nature of the narrative will mean he won't get to give "bad guy" monologues, so he needs to be obviously a villain and seem creepy and threatening (as much as possible with the cartoony style of the look of the Wannabe Pirates.) I wanted him to be that ghostly green and have glowing eyes, which probably is inspired by watching so much Scooby-Doo as a child in the 70s. :-) Character-wise, Mordred stole the crown and power while Arthur was away, so I liked the idea that he had a sort of twisted crown. The bat wings were inspired by an old engraving of Mordred from the 1900s that gave Mordred a bat motif. I think it makes his helmet very interesting. He has no beard to make him appear younger, but I sort of liked that the helmet almost suggests a fake beard and jawline as if he's trying to make himself more heroic than he actually is. One of the great things that Ken captured with his face is that he has a regal look, as if he were someone of nobility, but there's a noticeable touch of cruelty, too. The missing right hand is a very important story point. ...and the belt is totally a nod to that greatest of great supervillains, Dr. Doom. :-)

Whoo-hoo! This is an update I've been looking forward to! The Evil Spirit of Mordred! Designing the villain for this story was something that I really struggled with. I can't even remember how many variations I went through! For a long time, my intention was that he would just be ghostly armor, but I just couldn't come up with a helmet design that had enough personality to carry him. So, I gave in and gave him a face and body! Once again, Ken has done a masterful job on the modeling! I confess I was jealous at first since I thought he would be fun to build, but I doubt I would have done so excellent a job!

Great job, Steve!

What can I add that someone hasn't said already? Great stuff, Nancy!

Still being a relative newcomer (and a social pariah since I use a Mac), Extruder and Sweeper are two different plugins. Both are there in my Mac versions, too. I've really only used Sweeper, though.

Thanks, Paul!

VII. Shot 4: The Abandoned Version This shot was problematic. The gag from the storyboards was that Flemm would turn around to look back out at the snow and as he sang "Let it Snow, Let it Snow, Let it Snow," the window would progressively fog up. I turned Flemm around in the previous shot, so that I could have a big, excited movement from Flemm. The plan was that I would cut in closer on every "snow" and Flemm would disappear when the glass fogged up. Then in the next shot, he would be seen wiping the window with his hand. It just didn't play right. My original thought was to have Henrietta be very nearly hostile from the outset. So there would be this contradiction, where it actually looks fun outside and not fun inside. (Again, making the song lyrics ironic.) But as I animated Henrietta in the second shot, I didn't like the idea of her basically just being angry the whole time. I thought I should make it so that as the song goes on, Flemm becomes progressively more annoying and that would lead up to her tossing him out the door. As it ended up, I decided to play her as being a little more patient with Flemm. In the end, I think I also just didn't feel like it was such a great gag. Here's all I did on the shot before abandoning it: shot_004alt.mov It never made it to the point of doing the close ups.

Thanks, Rodney. The body rig is TSM2, but the face rig is Mark's. I can't say enough great things about Mark S. The rig is awesome and his help with it really helped bring these characters to life!

VI. Shot 3: The Turnaround This shot was intended mostly as a setup for the gag where Flemm fogs up the window. (A sequence, that would end up being abandoned!) Since I already had him turning his head back to see behind him, I could get away with going to the 180 and have him fully turn around. To help with animating the turn, I took some video of me doing the action. For just this sort of thing I bought one of those little Flip video cameras. They are relatively inexpensive and it worked great for what I needed it to do. I did not intend to use the video as a rotoscope, but just to see how my legs moved. As such, I never exported it to my computer and happily deleted it from the camera once I'd finished. :-) So, no embarrassing video of me pretending to be Flemm. :-) Even though Flemm's feet weren't visible in the shot, I wanted to do the turn correctly, so I did animate his feet and tried to adjust his weight accordingly. I even added some movement to his sash. I rendered it out with an alpha channel for the window panes and added in the snow and exterior in After Effects. I like the energy that this shot adds. I haven't done a whole lot of "big" animating, so this was a hurdle for me.

Thanks, Katt! In this case, I was using Photoshop to build the inside of the fireplace. Since CS3, Photoshop can have video layers, so I could put everything together there and then export video of it. Here's a breakdown of the layers for the fireplace interior: 1) The simple art I made in Illustrator and brought in; 2) I added the fire video I created in After Effects. It's on a black background, so I set this layer to "screen"; 3) An adjustment layer to add in orange; 4) A duplicate screened layer of the fire video to bump up the flames; 5) Another adjustment layer to adjust the color balance; 6) The foreground grating. Once I had it looking the way I wanted, I rendered the video out of Photoshop to individual frames and then brought those frames into A:M to stick on the 1-patch model in the fireplace... making it sort of like a television. I'm sure I could have done this in After Effects, too, but I felt more comfortable in Photoshop at this point.

Ben, if it's helpful, you can check out some simple tutorials I made awhile back (in comic book format) here.

V. Shot 2: The Fire is So Delightful This was a big shot. First I needed to model the interior of the house, keeping in mind what I needed it to do functionally in this shot and upcoming shots and yet, not killing myself. I had more time than I did in 2007, but not *that* much more time. One of the things I knew I needed was something for Flemm to knock over during the "lights are turned way down low" shot, so I came up with a little 3-legged table with a vase on it and placed it along the wall. I also created a couple of paintings to hang on the walls. Because of how I'd set it up in the first shot, I needed Henrietta and the fireplace to be on the right behind Flemm, not the left, like I'd storyboarded. The lyric here was a contrast to the first lyric, and I needed to show that contrast. That the fire really was delightful. I partly did that by lighting and ambient color. To transition, I started with Flemm looking off to his right and used Depth of Field to give the fire and the rest of the room a soft focus look. It also served to give Henrietta an introduction. With her back to Flemm, looking at the fire, I have Flemm turn to his left and back towards her and the fire and then animate the depth of field changing to bring the fire and Henrietta into focus, while taking Flemm out of focus. Now we see why the fire is so delightful. :-) The fire was a challenge. My first thought was to use actual video of a fireplace and I even downloaded an HD video of such from a bit torrent. It wouldn't really work, but it gave me enough of an idea of what it should look like that I was able to fake it. I drew the layers of the hearth in Illustrator and then exported the file with layers into Photoshop. In AE, I created a fire animation and exported that and brought it into Photoshop. After some trial and error, I was able to assemble all the layers to get the look I wanted and rendered the video out of Photoshop. I created a model with just the one patch that would be placed into the fireplace model and set up the video to display on it. I did so in a pose, so that I could adjust it with a pose slider. I played around with the lighting and color of this shot a couple of times to try to make sure that it felt significantly warmer than the opening shot in the snow. I was really happy with how this shot came out. It would have been great to have had some furniture and more things in the room (I had intended to have a Christmas tree, but didn't have time), but I don't think it takes away from it very much.