amarillospider

Hey, I like him, lots of character! I second a call for head mesh. -Alonso

Thanks everyone. Steve your right about the hands on the fight scene. Actually I was lazy (which is really dumb on a demo reel) and I was just using hand clench pose sliders I had made instead of actually positioning the fingers. YOur right as well on that push off from the chest, not enough weight emphasis. Rob- Yeah I was pleased with that showdown entry and excited that I could actually use it in my demo. I'm still working on my acting skills, learning how to have a character emote and be believable and match the emotions of the voice actor. (I'm sure this is a long long learning path ahead of me) John - Thanks. Is it a good thing that my motions are smooth and have a similar look, or does that mean that I need to very the texture of the timing more (smooth in someplaces, snappy in others?) Thanks Jessh About the lizard guy. It's interesting that you all liked it. I thought it was pretty good but I was really beating my head against the screen with it trying to get a good transfer from my run cycles to my ride cycles, with the jump in between. In the end I felt I hadn't quite nailed it because the weight transfer doesn't quite work during the jump. In the end I think that mainly I slowed down the lizards cycle right there, which doesn't really accomplish what I needed with external weight pulling it off balance and then swinging all around it, shifting it's center of gravity all around. That part always bothers me in that clip. Thanks for all the encouragement guys -Alonso

Hey Rodney thanks for the reply. You're right I didn't ask for crits, silly me! Please anyone have any comments or crits on any of my stuff shout it out! I'm self taught so I'm not sure what bad habits I've managed to teach myself, so I'm craving that outside eye. Hey Rodney, what is it about those to pieces that looks more polished? (I've stared at them all so long I can't see them (except I'm starting to finally see some twinning in the fight scene) So yah, comments and crits greatly appreciated. -Alonso by the way I think I fixed the direct link.

Hey everyone, I'm pretty sure I haven't posted this before. (sorry if I have) Anyway, I completed a demo reel some time this summer. I was trying to get my foot in the door in animation, mostly I was targeting game shops. Never really got much response but I think a lot of that had to do with not having a broad enough application range (didn't want to uproot my wife) Swing by my site and check it out. All CG animation is done with A:M. The reel is also broken down into the individual clips for the bandwidth challenged Direct Link 6MG MPG -Alonso

http://www.animationcoop.org/ Have you seen this site. Basicly a bulletin board for people to come together and collaborate. Similar to the collaborative forum over in CGTALK but a little more clear. Maybe we could use the animation co op as a model. Maybe Hash would be willing to host a similar "buletin" board. Mentor's could post when they have a project that they would like an intern on. Posts would include a timeline, and expected hour commitment a week, as well as what kind of work the intern/apprentice would be doing (ie mostly animating, mostly modeling, mostly everything). Also, if the Mentor wanted to: posts would include a little synopsis of the project to entice would be apprentices. Apprentices would then apply to the mentor, (maybe just an email, maybe a link to previous AM work) and the mentor would choose the ones who they felt would be most useful and best able to benifit from working with the mentor. The bulletin board could also be used by those who don't like the mentorship idea. It could be used as a place to connect with other Hasher's and create a collaborative project. People could maybe put themselves on a list stating what skills they have and what kind of project they'd like to collaborate on. Farstar Productions has managed to create a pilot colaborating online, they might have some advice and warnings about online interaction. -Alonso

Hey Raf, Looking great! The sword flip might feel off because it seems to spin around the center of the sword, and most swords center of balance is much closer to the heavy handle, meaning the center of the spin is not the center of the sword. The rope on the second one passes throught the column. How big of a project will this be? Can't wait to see more, how soon will you finish it? -Alonso

Great look! The clothes all are so dark that I am losing a little the limbs in perspective. Aside from pushing the color another idea would be to have some ties, or lace, or slashes, in the shirt that would come out as contour lines. You could also push the sides of the goatee further along the jaw line a little. And I think you could get away with a little more tapered neck (to distinguish the head from the neck) if you wanted. But this guy is so graphic that we really need to see him moving to get a better idea of what's working or not. Like it so far though. Very Dread Pirate Roberts -Alonso

Hey SpaceToast, I just took a look at the images for this project. They are really amazing! I was just wondering how you have gone about getting this look? You said you were using glows, are you using them on everything? Is it coming out of A:M's renderer this way or are you running it through something else after? Can't wait to see the finished short! -Alonso

Hey Smudge, I'm not paying super close attention to the versions but I do have a suggestion for skirts. I've been playing with a short with a character in a about a knee lenght skirt. Experiments so far seem to indicate this will work. What I did was select all the cp's that are part of the flowey part of the skirt, then I extruded those, and scaled them out, and then hit the delete key. This gave me from every cp of the skirt an anchor point. I then attached all these anchor points to my leg bones and left the actual skirt geometry cp's unnatached. Then I used a cloth wizard on the geometry cp's. It worked okay, I'm sure if I play with it I could get it behaving pretty well. www.dinocarl.com Dinocarl's the one who came up with this idea. And then Kricket's got a tutorial on lag constraints that I'm thinking I might adapt to get the flick on the bottom of my skirt Kricket's tutorials Hope those ideas help. -Alonso

Sorry, can't make it. I'm headin out to Maui this weekend Hope someone else shows though. -Alonso

Oy Parlo, You've probably already though of this, but I thought I'd mention it. In your fingertip example you said you key the scale of mouth corner bones to make them keep their proportion. It strikes me that the 'ol toon eye trick would save time for this. You know how if you want an elongated flattish sphere for a toon eye you model the eye as a sphere with a parent bone from the center of the sphere, then in a pose you change the scale of the bone to get your toon shape, and now when you move the pupil bone (starting from the center also) in an action the pupil slides along the new shape of the eye. If you make a parent bone with all the head bones as children, and scale the parent bone in a pose (Probably your rig pose) then all of the children bones (like the mouth bones) would stay on the surface without having to key scale changes. (I'd probably make a temporary sphere a child of the Parent bone so that in the pose I hae a better since of where I'm scaling it to.) Did that make sense? You probably already thought of it anyway. Anyway, like your characters, they are so lively. -Alonso

Oy, I live in Santa Rosa, bout an hour north. What would we do once we met? -Alonso

Hey Victor, Congratulations on becoming a Dad (soon)! That "offsping" poster you made is great. All those bones in the face are scary. It must take a while if you are controlling them all with pose sliders. You probably already know it, but Bill from Anzovin studios posted a little mock up of a Jason Osipa (Stop Staring book) style face rig in these forums a while back. Playing with it I've got my snarl, smile, eek, frown, motions all in one control thats easy and flows between them well. The eyes remind me of Jeff Smith' Bone comics. Its a nice touch that they turn into little u's when they close. Keep it up, you're always an inspiration. One day (way in the future) I'll catch up with you animation wise. Good luck with the new little Navone -Alonso

Thanks for telling us about this contest. I've entered twice now, I'm learning a lot working under a deadline, its fun. Anyway my entry was #7, here's the link for anyone wanting to see all of them. http://www.digitalrendering.com/forum/view...ad.php?tid=3077 I did mine all in A:M as well. I really liked the look look gesture and then the subtle grab and hide in yours. -Alonso