largento

Cool! Thanks, everybody! That's kind of what I'm thinking, Vern. Getting a "hind sight" look in hopes of improving for the next work. I think I've gotten far enough away from it now. I'll start a new thread and begin at the beginning and work my way through.

Very neat, Kat!

I really covered just about everything I wanted to cover with these tutorials. (I was really just wanting to pass on the few things about modeling in A:M that were gate-openers when I first started learning.) However, I thought for my own purposes, it might be neat to deconstruct the Animated Christmas Greeting I did a few months ago and discuss what I learned and how I solved some of the problems and what I thought succeeded and what didn't. Would anybody (besides me) find that helpful or useful?

Just a quick note to say work is progressing! I'm almost through with the design for the villain and am still formulating the particulars of the story. One of the cool parts of doing the story this way is that I can do an epic story in a very short amount of screen time. In a way, it kind of reminds me of old Silver Age comic book stories. Back in the day, they would do a huge story that would only take up half of the story pages of a comic. You would get multiple big stories in a single issue. Then somebody decided that comic books should be more like soap operas and now they take the same size story and spread it over half a dozen issues. Not sure if I've mentioned it here, but it occurred to me at one point, that with the entire story being told in rhyme, it would make an excellent children's book when all is said and done! Anyway, just posting to say the project is still alive and kicking and there should be some more stuff to see soon!

That's really fantastic, Paul!

Have you tried it with your new computer? Maybe it will be able to play it with sound now. Kinda' need the sound. :-)

Spleen, don't forget the incredible favor done for you by Xtaz here! There is a wealth of information shared in his video tutorials!

Lookin' good, Mark. The hair is nice and thick. I always wondered about the scale of the follicles. Given his tremendous size, wouldn't Kong's hair follicles be enormous, too? Big enough that they wouldn't blow in the wind? :-)

I'm with Robert on this one. It would also be cool if we could have it in a place where we could show what we're working on.

Just my take on it, Mark. Character-wise they are giant carnivorous gorillas, so I wouldn't want them to look like they spend their whole days sitting around eating twigs. It's a similar exaggeration to Flemm's lower body being so much smaller than his upper half. Rodney, I'm a terrible pat rack, so I do tend to hold onto things, but most everything is digital now.

Thanks, guys! Rodney, gorillas are apes, so I don't think it matters that much. We're referring to them as Gorillas, though. As to how they fit into things, the gorillas are part of the larger "world" of the Wannabe Pirates. Writing is difficult, but it will be worth it. Coming up with the first line was really tough. Lots of false starts. It's still very slow going. I've gotten 8 stanzas of the first chapter done. It is starting to get a little easier,though as I become more familiar with it. After a long session of writing today, I was thinking in rhyme and worried that I wouldn't be able to stop. :-) It really is going to be epic by the time I finish it!

Ken has once again made my day! Here's that next character he mentioned: a giant gorilla! I've stuck Flemm in for scale. This is just too cool! Big thanks, Ken! With your help, this story is going to be big-time fun!

Is their "Active" state in the properties window set to "OFF"?

Nothing to show for this status update, but work is moving quickly! I finished the design for another one of the new characters last night and this weekend I plan to do nothing but write! I'm fairly comfortable with the plot I've written for the 12 chapters, but now comes the fun part: writing them up as one long narrative poem! I'll be refreshing myself with "The Hunting of the Snark" to get the rhythm going and hope that everything falls into place. I'm also going to use Snark to figure out how much I can fit into the 1 minute timeline. There's no doubt that this is going to be a *very* quickly-paced story. :-)

That is awesome! Well done!

Depends on when and where, but I'd be up for it.

Rodney, there's no chance I won't keep sharing progress reports here on the forums! Like this post, for example! :-) KenH has graciously offered to up the quality of this project by lending a hand! His first contribution is the modeling for a new character being introduced in this story, Lenny the Laughing Gull! I love this character and Ken really did an amazing job of bringing him into 3D!

Yeah, Kelley! Really cool!

Thanks, homeslice!

Kevin, I used to get crashes when I first started working with A:M, but as I gained more experience working with it, I learned that there's a sort of right way and wrong way to do things. The biggest culprit for me early on was, just clicking in a bunch of places rapidly: going to do one thing, and then realizing I needed to do something else and confusing A:M to the point that it gave up on me. :-) There are still some things that will take A:M down for me no matter what. (If I try to make a New Filter in the PWS using the drop down menu on a Mac, it will go bye-bye everytime.) There's a kind of rhythm to using A:M that you'll pick up the more you use it and then the crashes will pretty much go away. At least, that was my experience.

Well, after dipping down in the red, my enthusiasm has popped back up into the black! I've laid out the basic plot for a 12-chapter serial that I think will work for me! There are some fun adventure elements I've come up with for it and it will feature elements from the Arthurian legend! I'm in the process of writing it now, which is a special challenge since all twelve chapters will be told by the narrator in rhyme. This device will allow me to keep the pace of the story moving forward and also free me from having to worry about a lot of different voice recordings with all the quality issues that come with this. Ditto extensive sound design and scoring. A simple music track can play under the narration which will suffice. I think this will fit the story very well and free me from having to *show* everything. (Also, it means almost zero lip sync.) My goal is to finish the first 3 chapters before I start putting them up on a one a month schedule. That will give me a 3-month buffer. [EDIT: or would that be a 2-month buffer?] The new story brings with it some new characters and such that I need to model and that suits me fine! At long last, I really feel like the adventure is about to truly begin!

Sage advice, Rodney! Somewhere down the line, I may very well do that. But first I've got to figure out where I'm going. I think I'm starting to get an idea of it. Just have to see if it pans out.

Martin, I'm going to have to go look for that pill. I seem to have a chronic case of it. :-) Chris, I think that's something I'll do on a cursory level, but the Wannabe Pirates can't (and really shouldn't) be taken too seriously. And although we've been introducing things to populate and define it's "world," we're really pushing towards a sort of permanent status quo. That said, I do think the animated version allows for a slightly more serious tone. The webcomic's structure requires constant gags. Plot has to be woven into it, whereas the cartoon chapters wouldn't be bound by that... of course, it would be taking that structural requirement and trading it for another: cliffhangers. But cliffhangers are a great way to build an audience... there becomes more of a reason to come back every time. I just need to figure out a way to balance the results with the effort. How can I satisfy myself and an audience without killing myself in the process? That's where I think the micro-length of them comes in... but can I really make this work in 1-2 minute chapters?

Just an update, although there's nothing new to report. I've been giving a lot of thought to how I next want to proceed. I think the micro-shorts are the way to go, but I'm trying to decide if they should just be random bits or serialized chapters in larger stories. I'm also battling a bit of the "is it worth all the trouble" blues. I think I'll be able to weather them, though. I've come too far and done too much work to just toss it all aside. :-)

Very cool, Mark! You're making me wish I'd been able to rig my characters with this rig!