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Haha! That's awesome, Rodney! Thanks! If my choice is walking the plank or getting thrown overboard, I'm thinking I'm really not such a strictler for tradition. :-)

Have you checked your Normals?

Thanks, Rodney! Hopefully Kidjutsu will take off. I like the idea of there being a hub where kids can go to read comics. I like their Flash reader. Isolating the image from the usual background noise is helpful and showcases the pages well. The navigation is pretty good and I found that the pages loaded pretty quickly. And thanks to Martin, too! I really appreciate the comment on the page!

I uploaded the first volume of The Wannabe Pirates to Kidjutsu last night! Kidjutsu is a website where kids can go to read kid-friendly comics. The Flash reader works pretty well. You can view The Wannabe Pirates book here.

The hair looks pretty good, Paul... and the model looks GREAT! Now you can have Clint tell the Academy what he thinks about them snubbing Gran Torino. :-)

Thanks, Rodney! I'll let you know when/if it goes on sale. ;-)

We've been invited to join a website that puts up free comics for kids. Since it's more geared towards comic books, I've been working on putting together a small book that will reprint the first two storylines from the webcomic. As I've been working on it, it occurs to me that it would probably work as a print version, sized similar to a children's book, saddle-stitched with a card stock cover and 20 pages of interiors. Going to see if I can find out how much it would cost to print. It would give us something to sell on the website and at any conventions we go to. We could also donate some to local libraries. Here's the working cover for the book:

Thanks, guys!

So, it looks like I'm going to take a little side trip before I get to working on the theme song animation. It hardly seems possible, but the beginning of February will mark 1 year for The Wannabe Pirates webcomic! Readers here know that we started it earlier than that in order to build up a 20 strip buffer before we launched, but it was on February 1st of last year that the first strip went online. (The strip that went up this Tuesday was #100!) McCrary and I are discussing a few things we may do to mark the anniversary. One of them, I think, will be a micro-super-short short animation. I'm toying with some ideas, but I'll update here with progress. Another short deadline to tackle! When we do put up blog posts, we do it on Wednesdays, so it looks like February 4th will be the date for getting it finished. It should be fun! Still can't believe so much time has passed so quickly!

You know, looking at your video render, I was reminded of an issue I ran into last year. I had taken a model I created using the Mac version of A:M and brought it into the Windows version to animate and when I rendered it, random patches would disappear from frame to frame. At the time, the only think I could think was that it had something to do with the porcelain material, but I never did figure out what was causing it.

I don't even use projects. I make folders for and save out models, actions, cho's, materials, etc. When I load a choreography, it will automatically load everything it needs.

Haven't started on the other models yet. The weekend got away from me. I did do a new skyscraper ad for the website, though:

Spleen, you could also contact Anzovin and see if they still have any left to sell.

Thanks, Gerry! With the weekend coming, I hope to get the rest of him finished and move on to the next one. I also was taking a look at things and realized I'd never finished the monkey model (I only did the head), so I need to finish that one off, too. It's interesting how doing the webcomic is influencing this. As it grows, I realize that I need to modify things to keep up with it. My first "micro-movie" is going to be what would be the opening titles to the longer "mini-movies." There's a Wannabe Pirates theme song that was just instrumental in McCrary's home movie, but I've written lyrics for it and am going to work with a local musician to get it recorded. I think it will be fun to have on the website and we can use it as a sort of commercial for the website on places like YouTube.

I got a bunch of stuff when I first started that were really helpful! My favorite and number one pick is Barry Zundel's Animation Master Training DVDs. Doesn't look like he offers the DVDs anymore, but you can buy the videos for download here. By far, I learned the most from these. Jeff Lew's DVDs are here. Good action stuff and done in a really entertaining style. I need to watch these again, since it's been a looong time. In the M.I.A. section are: Christin McKee's "Animate!" CDs and Justin Barrett's "Animate a Face!" both from Anzovin and sadly no longer available. Will Sutton's "Decaling/UV Setup," "Smartskin/CP Weights" and "Patch Modeling" that were all very useful and informative, but also aren't for sale anymore. Anzovin's TSM2 was made available for free here on these forums. Do a search for it. For my money, Barry's video tutorials are the best money spent. He takes you through the interface, modeling and rigging a character and animating, giving tips and insights that really turned things around for me.

Thanks, guys! I'm trying. :-) "Swallows and Amazons" doesn't sound familiar, Paul. Should I google it?

Haha, thanks Nancy!

A little more progress with Nash...

Very cool, Eric! I'd wondered what you'd been up to...

The new version comes in two licensing options. A year-long subscription version, which is downloadable, doesn't require the CD and expires after one year; and the CD version that doesn't expire and requires the CD.

A little further along...

I wonder if it would be possible to use 4 cameras, positioned to capture the 4 quadrants?

Thanks, Rodney! I was just looking back through this thread and it looks like the last time I modeled the head of a character was in January of last year!

Great stuff, Paul! I got a big kick out of seeing Alfred E. Neuman. :-)

Thanks, Paul! I did a little bit more on him the other night: I hope to get a bunch done tomorrow while I'm off.