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I'll try to make it. No promises tho!

Excellent!! Bravo. Very nice animation.

Okay. In my opinion, the logo works just fine as a flat graphic image. You said your task was to "3Dize" their logo. Was that what they asked for or did they say "extrude and angle our logo?" Also, what is this going to be used for? print work or some kind of motion graphic? The reason I'm asking is because if what they wanted was for you to extrude the logo and angle it, while making it look metallic, you succeeded. It works - it reads well, although I don't see how this kind of "3Dizing" works better than the original flat logo, except as an appeal to novelty. I think the first reads better than the recent change, even if the new one is technically more "realistic." But if the task is to create a motion graphic - a brand identifier that introduces the organization to the audience, I think you're missing an opportunity to make something really 3-D and dynamic with the swash and sphere. The logo does a lot of the work already - you can interpret it as a road leading to the sphere or something moving quickly by it. A 3-D voyage or orbit that ends in their perfectly readable 2-D logo just as an example. Lots of opportunities there. I am glad you didn't use the earth for the sphere. I'd rather see something more abstract personally.

At 640x480, it was around 1:35 - 1:40 with z-buffered shadows. It averaged 40 - 50 minutes when I turned on raytraced shadows. I have a 3.2ghz machine so your numbers should be better.

The expressions are just about the same as the last posted .prj file. As far as animation is concerned, I just added some asymmetry in the last pass. I just wanted to make something that a newbie could open and start messing around with right away without having to navigate a more complex project. Maybe next year, as people start getting the new CD, I'll start making some phoneme/facial expression libraries and encourage other people to do the same. Maybe make a repository of actions. But that's for another project. As far a body, I did make one for him but I'm not giving everything away! Thanks for all of the great comments everyone. It's 100% royalty-free but I'd love to see/hear about any project he ends up in, modified or not. And if you see anywhere improvements can be made, let me know. Maybe I'll make a v3 if Anzovin's head maker thingie hasn't put me to shame by then. Enjoy. I just did a render with (1x) raytraced shadows. Render times went from about 1:40 to 50:00 but they do look better. Multipass with multiple rays would probably rock but the render times would kill, I think.

Well, here's the final for the 2005 CD. model and textures QuickTime render Did some decaling but nothing like what I had in mind. The sliders that change the face shape will have to wait for another CD. Hey - you get what you pay for. I added some more poses to move the mouth up, down, left, right and also angle. This will help break up the symmetry in the poses. I also added phoneme sliders if you want to use dopesheets. Anyway, thanks for your comments and enjoy. I hope people find it useful and/or informative.

Very nicely done. My only complaint is that as a teaser, it doesn't do its job for me; it doesn't leave me wanting more. It looks more like a technical piece from the Discovery Channel than an entertaining film. A couple characters interacting would be a lot more interesting and (depending how well it's written and animated) make me want to watch more. But if it's not a real "teaser" per se and you're just showing the A:M community the work so far, kudos. It's looking great and I can't wait to see more.

Looking good! The only thing I noticed was his nose. It looks a lot rounder than the Pixar model. There's a closeup pic here of his face.

I hadn't planned on it since I never use them but if people think it will be useful, I will. I'll mess around with that and see how much I can fix without screwing up the already made poses. I've been having a lot of luck with that so far. Yes. As I stated above, I plan to add a texture. I'll also make a grid texture like William Zandoria did for the Balrog in his UV tutorial. That way, you can create your own textures without having to do the whole unwrap thing.

beta 0.4 project render Added a couple bones for the head and eyes so I can test more realistic action. Added "fat_face" pose to make the character fatter. Other minor tweaking. I think my new plan is to add some sliders that change the shape of the face so it can be easily used for other characters. We'll see how that goes. I'll also do the face mapping I mentioned in the above post. ** edit: fixed link to project **

project render Some slight mods. Mainly the teeth/inner mouth. I also added some groups for the eye. I plan to add some more groups and clean up the groups folder. As for the hair sliders -- I don't see that happening. I tried a few things but they either didn't work or slowed the project down to an unuseable crawl. So instead I may do some UV mapping and make an easy template for you to make your own face map. Anyway, if you find some time to mess with it and have some better settings for the hair, let me know. Two problems I'm having are ( a ) I can't get a nice, non-uniform specular highlight, and ( b ) there's some funky artifact in the back of the hair. If anyone has any fixes, it would be appriciated. Oh - one more thing -- I was trying to gat the hair to change stiffness over the length of the hair (i.e. stiffer by the root and less stiff at the tip). Is this/should this be possible? I couldn't get it to work.

Thanks! Feel free to hide the group "cap" for this: That reminds me, the hair isn't a part of the main head model - it's a seperate mesh "skullcap" so it can be easily brought into other characters. It's made up of the groups "cap" and "side."

I finally freed up some time in my schedule and began updating the "Ed's head" model for the 2005 CD. I wanted to share my progress and get feedback as I went so here is the first update: project render (the animation is horrible but that's beside the point) My goal before submitting the final model is (as well as general clean up) to include some sliders for the hair style. I have no idea how hard this is yet but I guess I'll find out. But if there's anything else you think might be helpful, let me know. I'll see what I can do before the CD is mastered. BTW, I did the hair after reading through the excellent Colin's Loft Cooper hair tutorial. Go through that and play around with this model, I guarantee you'll be adding hair to everyone. Thanks Hash for such a sublime implementation of a cool feature!

The co-producing team of Frederator Studios and Animation Magazine is happy to inform you that Day Off the Dead has been selected to appear in the second epsiode of the Nicktoons Film Festival, airing on Nicktoons Sunday, October 31th, at 10:00pm (ET) / 7:00pm (PT). Encore presentations include: Monday, 11/1, at 1:00am (ET) Monday, 11/1, at 10:00pm (ET) Tuesday, 11/2, at 1:00am (ET) I also hear it's been selected as one of the films for Spike and Mike's animation festival. DayOffTheDead.com

What codec did you use? I'm just getting audio on this computer.

It turned out great! Congratulations.

Amazingly adorable character!

Nice work! Definitely a clean and unique style. I think one thing that would help make the poses read better would be to differentiate the color of the shirt/pants from the belt/sash. They're too similar right now and I think the body shape will get lost in all but the most extreme profiles. If you wanted to keep the color scheme, maybe broader shoulders and a narrower waist would help. Just some thoughts. I can't wait to see what you do with the animation.

Excellent work, Zack! Great job with the model and documenting the process.

Nothing new to add - just want to say that's a great and creative use of hair! Some people would complain until they're blue in the face that A:M needs a lightning effect or it's useless. You found an effective and flexible solution. I salute you. My only other comments (the plastic material and the dense mesh) were already covered. Hope to see it animated!

Awesome job. I really love how this is coming along. I'd love to see what it looks like with some kind of radiosity or Sky Light rig. A couple nit-picky points: The reflections seem way too high and too sharp. If you're using version 11, definitely check out Reflective blend, Reflective filter, and Soft Reflections. Also, I can't believe I didn't notice this but ever since someone in another forum pointed it out, I can't help but to see it. The spacing of the first fret is way too close to the nut. There seems to be a little bump in the elbow bevel. I can tell that's probably a very difficult area to get smooth. One thing about those reflections - they can tell more about the surface integrity than the surface itself can. That's why I never use 'em.

Hey Vern, If you're not already familiar with his work, you may want to check out Joseph Campbell. A good place to start would be his book The Hero With a Thousand Faces or the DVDs Joseph Campbell and the Power of Myth or Joseph Campbell - The Hero's Journey. He spent his career comparing and contrasting the mythology of various cultures throughout the history of mankind to learn universal truths about us humans. Jews and Christians were certainly not the first people to tell these stories that teach us about ourselves. Straying off-topic, but Campbell is a great read for anyone interested in creating original stories.

Cool character! Looks like he'll be a lot of fun to animate.

Mainly, I can't get a good feel for the body shape - it's very black. There are some definite slopes in a strat body (at least mine). I mentioned the slope by the right elbow on the front but also on the back by about where your gut is, it's indented as well although more rounded. At that point, the side of the body is only about 1/2"-3/4". Also, are there fret dots on the side of neck? I can't see them. Believe me, these things are very nitpicky and I wouldn't even suggest them if you hadn't done such a great job already.

That cracked me up. That and the fact that the emoticon at the end looks a bit like your avatar.