Fishman

Not to get too technical here, but shouldn't the top row of teeth be upside down? I know the blood would rush to their heads, but it would make more sense. I guess it would depend on where you need to go with the animatiuon/story, but the upper row could complain about being upside down, etc. Still I like the characters! Have fun, Scott

I was a little worried about improper interpretations of the basic form. I intend to solve this with the addition of a hat. My intent is to put together about 10 seconds of him chasing the dice prior to the opening credits. Just a little workout to hone my animation skills. Not meant to be a defining work. If I was going for more storytelling I would probably develop the character more. I might add eyes, a badge, possible do a character carrying a night stick or with a nightstick as a head. As it is I'm going to rely on the hat and the chasing to sell policeman. Thanks! Scott

Thanks for the feed back. He's not actually tapered, he's bent over slightly (he's set up to be able to bend) I agree that a hat would probably be a good way of making it clear what the character was. I debated brown versus black versus wood grain. Some online research suggested that nightsticks are now black, but I think in the era of "Guys and Dolls", that they were more likely wood and therefore more brown. I think I may try the wood grain. Thanks again. I'll try to post some action fottage of him and the dice as I proceed. Scott

The upper shoulders are the same as the dots. That doesn't look good. I' make them blue all the way up. Thanks for the feed back! Scott

This is the character that chases the dice in my vid. Actually, will when I do the animation. I finally finished the modeling and rigging. Fire away with comments and criticisms. Thanks, Scott

Here's a jpeg. Scott

Here is another view. Scott Dice_Wave0.tga

I don't post much of my work, mostly because I'm not very productive, but here is a character I am working on. He will be chased by another character in a 10 second video I want to put in front of my DVD of my daughter's middle school production of "Guys and Dolls". This guy represents the gamblers (I'm assuming that is obvious). I welcome all comments and criticisms. I have rigged him and teested him with a couple of actions and he looks OK. Thanks in advance, Scott Dice_Front0.tga

Weren't you -5 years old then?

You finally helped me realize what it was that I loved about the look. It is that "Rankin-Bass" look. I loved Rudolph and Santa Claus is Coming to Town. I think that look with the smoothness and other qualities of CG will make for a winner! Count me as a fan as well! Scott

Tom, Please don't hate me! I think that you should work out the problem you have with your characters fingers not curling up right. In doing so you should be able to curl the fingers for the point and also when the robots hands are at their sides you should be able to make their hands seem more relaxed. Also hwne the robot grabs his head it will look more natural if his fingers are bent slightly. Right now it looks like he doesn't want to touch his head with his fingers (maybe he doesn't!) Maybe you should stop posting updates. Us armchair quarterbacks are too willing to comment rather than working on our own stuff! Scott

In order to better appreciate the dance, you may want to light her feet better. So much of the time they are in the shadow of her skirt that you can't see what they are doing. BTW, I love the style of you film. It has a charming miniature feel to it. I'd love to see a discussion of your materials, lighting and composition. But only after you finish your work. Keep up the good work. Scott

Love it! It has a great look to it and you should be proud. I agree that the leg twitching is a great final touch. I do miss your more cartoony cloud, but not enough to say change it back. Scott

Very nice. I like the idea of a character manipulating a refracting ball. Very good looking character. Not a bad idea, perserve yourself for future generations digitally! Scott

Very enertaining. Liked it better without the brain stem. That along with the two lobes in the back is too "suggestive". Lose the brain stem and I think it will be less distracting. Looks like a fun project. Scott

You've really got to come up with a solution to the brain stem problem otherwise you might be looking at an R rating or worse! Otherwise, it is great! It's truly a character (not just a brain with legs and arms). Keep us "posted"! Scott

Got them through my daughter's choral group. It's a bus trip so I don't even have to worry about my car. The hard part will be finding a place to get something to eat, since it will be Mother's Day and everyone and his mother will be eating out. I'll report out (or at least gloat) at the group meeting! Spam, spam, spam, spam... Looking forward to the meeting. Do we bring laptops (if we've got em) or CD's with projects and models or what? Can you tell I'm psyched? I have no one to talk animation with except my 11 year old son. I'm also pumped to meet the legendary Vernon "fill in witty phrase" Zehr! Scott

Looks like some consensus is building for the 14th. I agree with avoiding Mother's Day weekend. I'm already deep in debt to the wife for letting me take my daughter to see Spamalot in NYC on Mother's Day. I think heading to Philly the day before would be a deal breaker. How many of us are we? I'm new, so I have no idea whether we are a band of 5 or 50. No matter, 'm just interested in meeting fellow fanatics. Scott

Looking good. You did a great job of solving the intersecting models problem. Only tweak now would be to have the robot fall just a tiny bit faster after he gets struck by lightning. It takes 15 frames for him to land. That is half a second (or more if less fps are being used). I would think that 6 to 8 frames may be plenty. Since I have been so bold, maybe when you shorten the fall, you could exagerate the follow through action. Have the arms almost straight up as he falls and then bounce pretty good on the ground. Really great progress on this one. Scott

Thought of a title - "King of the Hill"

Josh's eye rig was described in an earlier post. Essentially it is a bone for each eye stretching from the center of the eye sphere to the center of the pupil. Then place a null a disctance from the head, in front of the eyes and use an aim at constraint. Then to control the eyes, you just move the eye target. Make the eye bones children of the head so that your eyes go where your head goes. (I screwed this up once and tilted the characters head and watch in horro as his eyes stayed behind!) Make the eye target a child of one of the bones of the rig (I think even the hips will work) so that it goes when the character goes. Other than that move then eye target and watch the eyes follow it. You can hide they eye bones as you will not be animating them, just the eye target.

I just started reading The Animator's Survival Kit as well and it definitely opened my eyes as to how to structure a walk. You've got a great guide to clean up your walk. As far as rerigging your model goes, do you really have to do that? Isn't your model in AM now? If you add a bone you can place it in the hierarchy where you want it and assign mesh points to it. I don't see why you'd have to rerun TSM. You're not changing anything onn the existing bones, just grabbing some mesh points for the bone you add. I use Josh's simple eye rig and it works great. Minor comments after watching some frame by frame. 1) Frames 496-500 Red's hand goes through White's body and head. I think having Red's hand bend back slightly would help avoid this. 2) Frame 502 White forearm goes through Red's elbow. This is only one frame, so it shouldn't be a problem. 3) Frames 516-517 Red's hand goes through White's arm. That's gotta hurt. 4) Frames 686-687 White's hand goes through Red's hand. The lightning strike is excellent and the fall and landing are very convincing. Keep up the effort, it it really coming together. Scott

Yippee! I'm interested in meeting other addicts and this works well for me. Either of the dates you mentioned would work for me. Center city Philly is certainly doable. (I'm coming from the Allentown area, so about an hours drive. I'm willing to go a little farther afield if required.) I'll keep watching this space. Scott

Will there be a third MAAM meeting? I am interested. I live in the Lehigh Valley region of PA, north of Philly. I signed up for the mailing list. Lat meeting seemed to have been in August. Hope you guys haven't lost momentum.

I have not gone through this rig in great detail, so these comments are not exhaustive, just a couple of brief initial reactions. I am a newbie, so bear with me. I did notice a few things though about his tutorials. (I am using v10.5, so if these comments are version specific, let me know). First off, he starts with the everything bone. My rig on my CD does not have an everything bone, it has a root bone. This makes me nervous about what else may be different. Second, it isn't always clear in his write up which bones get mesh and which don't. The video tutorial is better about this, but they both tend to forget about going into detail about the fingers. I started using the 2001 rig to rig a character I had modeled, but I halted work on that to go to Boot Camp. Once I'm through those exercises, I will return and go through the rig and the tutorials and give a more exhaustive examination (from a newbies perspective) I think once this gets off the ground, this will be a great forum area, like Radiosity and Boot Camp. Scott