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Very cool!

Thanks, Spleen!

Really great work, Stian!

It looks like the camera is moving in the choreography, which might explain the motion blur...

I can say that when I first encountered A:M, I saw the splines/CPs/Bias Handles like paths/points/bezier curve handles that I was used to in Illustrator. That was pretty disastrous for me. I was trying to use the bias handles like I would use the bezier curve handles in Illustrator and the results were *not* the same. Modeling became much easier for me when I turned off the bias. I don't even peak CPs very often. If I need a sharp edge, I just end the spline and add a new spline. With it being non-continuous, I get the sharp edge I'm wanting. Granted, I'm not really doing anything that has ultra-fine detail... nor mechanical models that require extreme accuracy.

It does look great!

Coolness, Gerry! I like the effectiveness of the silhouettes in the "bursting through" shot.

Thanks, Rodney! A few hours a frame (after animating it in 3D) would definitely keep me from ever considering it. :-) Thanks, Jake! You're right about the flag. I had the devil of a time getting that to work, so this amounted to the best I could get at the time. :-) Flemm's ship isn't supposed to be a great ship and the joke is that not only does he only have one cannon (there is one gunport on either side of the ship), but he only could afford one cannonball, so Poco Boco has to dive in and go after it if they miss. :-)

Ha-ha, nice job, Paul!

I'd hardly qualify as a pro, either (far from it!), but with my characters, I found there were pieces I could re-use like the hands, ears and the pelvis area. These could be adjusted to fit other characters. Even my female character has the same hands as the male characters, just heavily re-shaped to make them smaller and thin the fingers. I spent the majority of my modeling time on each one working on their heads. To me, the rest of the body wasn't as important.

Thanks, guys!

A little bit of an update... Not too much progress this week. I was sick the week before last and still haven't gotten back up to speed. Work has also been a bear lately, which really saps what little energy I have up. I sometimes think it would be better to have a job where I didn't have to be creative, so that I could save it all up for my own projects. I also worry that the webcomic is taking me away from the animated version too much, but as it is now, it may end up being the primary thing. It does feel like that sometimes. Yesterday, I was working on lettering some strips for later this month and there's a gag with a T-shirt design. It could have gotten by with just a simplistic thing, but I thought it would be better with a more realized design... And who knows, down the line there might be interest in Wannabe Pirates merchandise, so why not have the design really be worthy of being on a T-shirt? What was different was that I decided to "ink" over a render. I set up Cutthroat Jacques in A:M, got the pose and the angle I wanted, rendered it and then inked and colored it in Illustrator. The results were pretty good. Henrietta has finally made her debut in the webcomic, so I can reveal her model on the website. The only issue is that her costume change reveals plot elements, so I'm not able to show too much of her. I've got a mini-vacation coming up in a couple of weeks (going to Vegas!) Hopefully, that'll wash away some of these blahs and get me back into motion!

The next Wannabe Tutorial will have to wait until tomorrow. I ended up with only a few hours of sleep last night and had to work late tonight, so I'm bushed...

Plays fine for me. It's a Divx encoded file, so you may need to download the Divx codec and install it for Quicktime to play it.

Wow! Can't wait until I get home so that I can watch it properly!

I had the need to put up a new image for one of the webcomic listing sites, so I threw one together. The first one I've done with Mark S.' face rigging!

Hmmm... I've used 14 & 15 with Leopard, but don't have 13 on my Mac anymore. Is anybody else using 13 on a Mac with Leopard?

I've been looking forward to seeing Cutthroat Jacques! He's just oozing villainy! :-)

Sneeze is looking great, Mark! It's really re-energizing my batteries to see these face rigs coming out so well!

That was hilarious!

Which version are you using?

He's alive! :-) Awesome work, Mark!

Either is fine by me, but I would think this topic would be the better place to show off the rigging. Hahaha... I was looking at the Captain Krok model just before my iMac went belly up. (Maybe the hard drive crash was revenge for abandoning him!) Hard to believe that was over a year ago now. This Wannabe Pirates movie was supposed to be "easy." :-)

I've got no problem with that, Mark. Post away! It'd be interesting to see them and I think you're doing some really cool work on this rig!

Avast ye, ya' scurvy scoundrels! Today we *all* get to be Wannabe Pirates!