smudge

Not much to report this week... still sick.... Did, however, finally get the contract back from the Heather Alexander, so now I've officially got the clearance for her tune. Yeah! Now, I just need to finalize things with the Society of Authors. More next week when I'm feeling better... ...Hopefully....

Sorry no post yesterday. Been sick with a head cold all week and only today did the evil horse-pill like antibiotics kick in.... Boy, I'm now really behind. I'm glad I contacted my publisher and told them I'd be late. I still have those same three pages left to do. But they were really understanding and I'm only going to slip by a couple of days. Mom's still fighting me. I've cleaned her up a lot and the popping is gone, but now I'm wondering if my poses for her standing up are bad. Need to look at her once my brain is completely clear. Trying to do animation when your sick is very frustrating..... Oh, and I don't think I ever posted the completed BG03-- BG03 Complete! No rest for the weary.... BG01MomCompress.mov

--Weekly post, a day early since I'm gonna be gone tomorrow for WonderCon. Arg! I'm really getting slammed this month. Too much to do and not enough time to do any of it. Unfortunately, this means that Stolen Child keeps getting pushed out of the way, which I really dislike. I'm still trying to do something each week. It's the only way this thing's ever going to get done. 'Mom's still fighting me. She's at least not popping as badly as she did before. But she's still not flowing correctly from one action to another. That's all I've been able to do this week. =grr!=. 'Bout ready to delete all the 'Mom's animation information and start over.... . Going to try testing something first before I do that. If it works, it means I need to modify the model's rig (remove the hair constraints and redo them in a separate pose slider). A lot less work than trying to reanimate something that's almost there except for one little flaw. If not.... out comes the chain saw. Yeah, I want this short done, but I also want it done right! I really hate it when projects fight me. I'll try running the test this afternoon, and if I get it done quick enough, I'll post it. If not, I'll post it Monday when I'm back from the con. BG01compress.mov

Hey Guys, thanks for the responses. ...hum... wha... (pulls blankets back over head.... not noon yet, sleep more...) Music's by the very talented Heather Alexander off her first album, Wanderlust. Note to self: bug Heather about signing the final In Sync license contract. Last December? (Insert anime sweat drop here). At the moment it's looking to be fall this year, hopefully. (hope, hope.) Thanks. I know my work has a long way to go, but I won't get there if I don't try. Weekly work post-- Didn't get much time to work on things as I'd like (like I ever do ). Did work more on BG01, particularly the mother who was pooping when she transitioned from kiss the son on the cheek to walking off screen. Now, she'll still popping... just differently. Also got a message back from Mr. Crow. Things are looking up for getting the rights for the EU. We're now at the contract negotiation phase. =wheee= We might actually have things locked down before I finish the short. Back to work for me.... BG01compress.mov

I did, at least, poked at redoing BG03. But I got to stop doing things for the updates the night before, ya know? Need to tweak at BG03 just a little more. The cloud column isn't separating out correctly, and the first layer of water weeds is bending in such a way that the borders (which you shouldn't see) are coming well into view. Gotta stop that. The water looks happy, though! BG03_new_compress.mov

Thanks guys! Time for the weekly update.... I need to get my brain in gear. This week was hectic, with trying to get one comic story done to send to the next artist down the line, starting another which is due at the end of the month, helping a friend try and get his mag together and off to the printer ASAP (with only half of the work actually turned in for it.... ) *and* getting geared up for WonderCon. With all that, I really didn't have enough of a time block to sit down and mull over some of the animation (I need at least a two hour chunk to work on animation). So what did I do? Build a low patch count small Roman apartment building (192 patches).... Focus, Pinky, Focus....

Ugh... No sleep last night... gave up and am posting this early in the morning (for me at least)... might go back to bed once I'm done.... Still poking at BG01. Re-did a bunch of constraints on the 'Father' as well as tweaking with the 'Son', 'Mother', 'Cattle', and 'Calf' to take care of a foot roll problem. All fixed now. Still not happy with the 'Mother's' slam coming out of the kiss to the 'Son'. Don't know if I should poke some more or stick a fork in it and call it done. Might think better if I had more sleep.... BG01compress.mov

Standard Friday posting. Poked mostly at BG01 this week. The Mother was having some transition problems between actions, most notably with her constraints, so I worked on that. It looks much better now. Still need to poke at it some more. Also added in the Will 'O Wisp to the tail end of the shot to help form a bridge with BG04. More tweaking to come! Still need to get back to rigging the Heron. Also, BG04 looks off balance with BG03... Hum... Instead of trying to tweak with BG04, I think I might actually repaint BG03 (the still Island shot) and stretch it down till its equal to BG04's bottom edge. I was thinking about repainting it anyway 'cause I thinking I have a better way of handling the water that would help in the later shot with the trout. So it looks like my decision’s been made on the matter.... Ah well, back to work for me! BG01compress.mov

Whew! Back from the show! It went very well. Showed the animation to the musician. She was really happy with it. Yeah! Got her the contract but didn't get it back by the end of the show. I was running around too much. I have her email though, so if I haven't heard anything in a couple weeks, I'll ping her. Next show on the hit parade... Wondercon! I've got a small table in Artist’s Alley, so if any of you happen to be at the show next month, stop by and say, "Hi." Don't worry, that's gonna be a while at this rate.... Oh, ye of little faith.... I have yet begun to add the embellishing knotwork. When I said that this was a screen test, I meant it. Yet, late at night, I can since my poor abused hand quiver at the sheer thought of that much knotwork.... Ha, ha! More work to post once I recover from the weekend! Thanks all, for your kind words of encouragement and critiques. It's always appreciated!

Posting early 'cause I'm goanna be gone this weekend to the convention, leaving in the next hour or so. Was hoping to farther along on this short than I am, but that's the way things go. I went ahead and compiled everything I got so far so I something to show the musician this weekend. Hopefully I can finally get a signed contract out’ a her. Still no word for Mr. Crow in England about the EU rights. I figured if I haven't heard anything by the end of the month, I'll send a letter. Anyway, this is what I got for a rough edit. The last two shorts of Fay are really old models and test animation that's going to be completely re-done. All other animation while in place, has not been finalized. There are a lot of holes that need to be plugged, but, here you go. the Stolen Child, act. 1 5.3 mg, Quicktime MPEG4 Hope you enjoy, what there is, anyway. (Smudge exits, stage left, like a stealthy ninja. )

The biggest issue I had with the image was with the aircraft itself. Cleanness and light were not the issue, depth of field/focus was. With any object that large, your going to have problems keeping it all in perfect focus (something the computer does so easily) especially when it's moving. My suggestion is to add a dept of field so that the engine of 'the Spirit of Saint Luis' is in focus but the far edges of the wingtips and back tail fins are starting to loose focus. It will also help give a since of motion to the piece. As for the topic relevance, I thought it fit very well, he being one of the pioneers of aviation. I also thought it was a nice departure while keeping with the spirit of the topic title. When they first announced the topic, "Oh God, It's going to be a parade of spandex," since in the American mind right now "Hero" is almost always superimposed with the term "Super" in front of it even if not said. Entrees like yours gave the topic a rather fresh approach. And to be honest, this was a very strong filed of images to go up against. I would not feel bad about not placing in such a field.

Thanks guys! 'Fraid I didn't get much work done this week, due to Frank and Will deaths. For some reason they hit harder than they really had any right too. I did, however, get some organization done for the film. Found a really cool animation production html (TOONTRACK) that, while a bit overkill for 'the Stolen Child', would do wonders for the next project I want to do when this one's over. So I'm testing it on 'the Stolen Child'. Here's the blocked heron shot (as it were). And following is what I've currently got done on BG10 for animation. It's still got a long way to go. I'll be posting early next week (probably Wednesday) since I'm going to be gone from Thursday till Tuesday for the convention. Cross your fingers! BG10compress.mov

Eggprops is Back?! Ya-hoo! (I disappear to work hard-core on my project and a miracle happens behind my back....)

Thanks Flog! Hope your own projects doing well. Weekly Update! -- Didn't get as much done as I would have liked. Did finish animating BG09, threw the partially rigged Heron into BG07 and rendered it out so I had a placeholder until I can get the Heron fully rigged. Setup BG10, but didn't actually get around to animating it since I got busy with other Convention preps (ie lot's 'O matting and framing) then got sick (Baron brought it home, it's all his fault. ). Taking the weekend off to party and then it's back to the grindstone! Weeee! BG09compress.mov

Thanks for the reply guys! The inner lines are part of the texture map (painted at 300 dpi), with the shading being flat-rendered, the outer lines are the toon renderer oversampled to 1440x960. Shadows and backgrounds are rendered separately (at 720x480) then composited in Premiere. I'll change the toonline thickness and bias depending on the shot. Far shots get the default of thickness: 1, Bias: 20; Close ups get thickness: 1.5, Bias: 60, with fudging in-between on a shot by shot basis. That's it in a nutshell, anyway. Thank you! I can already tell, I'm not going to make it, but I'm giving it the old collage try. Actually, no. The black it going to turn into parchment that has Celtic knot work around the panels. The idea is to give the impression that your looking/reading an illuminated page. The different panels are going to be fading in and out with two to four panels displayed on-screen at a time. It's very artsy. I don't have (or know how to use) After Effects. I'm mostly doing my compositing in Premiere since it's really simple brain dead stuff. Can't really use A:M for what I'm doing since I'm really playing around with different resolutions to get my line weights. But except for that, it's all 'drag shot into scene, set transparency to Alpha channel, then render shot'. Like I said, brain dead.... Thanks, starwarsguy. I've always seen this film as an art-film with a story, so setting an art style to achieve is really important. After all, I'm setting this film up to be my real "festival bait". It seems you need to have a film fall into one of three categories to get past the judges for film festivals; Sick and Twisted (ala Spike & Mike's) Extremely Political or Artsy Since I'm not much into the sick and twisted category, and I don't feel like shoving my views down other people's throats, I'd figured my best bet was to go artsy. So far I think it's going to work out just fine. Onto my weekly posting! Got the shot for BG05 done. Yeah! For some reason this one wanted to fight me, but it worked out all right in the end. I'm going to go ahead and get most of the 'Son's' shots done first, since action wise they all link together. BG05compress.mov

(posting when I shoudn't be....) I'm really looking forward to this one, John Bigboote! It's nice to see it all coming togeather. Good luck on the render. ps. It's Keith Richard's B-Day tomorrow (12/17).

And here's the other shot I got finished. *Do note, anything within the black field (of both shots) is going to go bye-bye once it's matted out in the final edit. BG04compress.mov

I do too.. Thanks for the encouragement, thou, starwarsguy, ypoissant. Standard Friday posting today. Got the Trout done! YEAH! He was easy. Got him built, textured and rigged all in one day. In order to make a considerable stab at making my deadline, I'm avoiding working on the heron (since it's fighting me and it's only really used in one shot for act. 1), using the old Will 'O Wisp model (which I need to redesign) for blocking and basic animation, and going ahead and animating what I can. I've already got the first two shots basically done, and am in the middle of shot three. Oh, and I finally heard back from Mr. Crow about the International Rights to the poem. He thinks that there shouldn't be any problems attaining the rights and now it's onto monetary negotiations. Joy and rapture..... BG01compress.mov

ARG! Heron rigging fighting me! Which is really stupid, since he modeled and textured up so nicely... =grr!= I'm going to take a break from him and model the 'Trout' and get this guy out of the way. He should be simple enough. Famous last words.... I've also started animating, but I'm feeling the pressure since the show I was trying to get the first act done for is two weeks earlier than I expected. Don't think I'm going to make it. But I have to do the best I can since the musician who did the music's going to be there and I can finally nail her on the in-sync license. At lest that's my goal.

Weekly Friday posting! Mostly spent all week modeling the 'Heron'. Next week is rigging the bugger. Checking my time, I'm starting to panic. It's December now, and I need to have the first act done by the end of January, and I'm still modeling! Arg! I'm gonna disappear off the board for a bit (except this topic) so I can focus on getting this done instead of surfing the web. I'll still post here on Fridays since it's helping me keep on track. Panic! Panic!

This is really reading quite nicely. Something's bugging me about the hands (and arms), though. I keep felling like after he picks himself up off the ground that they should dangle to his sides for just a moment before being pulled up into the nervous-sneak mode. Just a thought, anyway.

Yeah, posting the list really emphasize where I'm at. Kind of scary. But, it also reminds me how much work goes into a project like this. It also reminds me on how slow I really am when it comes to modeling and rigging... This week, I get to report that I've accomplished.... ABOSULTY NOTHING! Between preparing for Thanksgiving and php web-coding I've had no time to work on the film. =Bleh!= Next week should be better. I'm still aiming for the end of January being the completion date of the first act.

Oh, this is looking good! I'd love to a more finalized render. MORE! MORE!!!

Thanks, starwarsguy, hypnomike! Miracles of miracles, I got the calf completed in a day. With this done, my current model list looks like: Fay -- DONE Son -- DONE Father -- DONE Mother -- DONE Sprite 1 -- DONE Sprite 2 -- DONE Will O Wisp -- DONE <--Start Over Buttery Spirit 1 -- DONE Buttery Spirit 2 -- DONE Grey Herrin -- Not Started Highlander Cattle -- DONE Highlander Calf -- DONE Mouse 1 -- Not Started Mouse 2 -- Not Started Trout -- Not Started Chair -- Not Started Table -- Not Started Stine -- Not Started Dirk -- DONE Staff -- DONE Of those, I only need the 'Grey Herrin', 'Trout', and 'Will 'O Wisp' done so I can start animating on the First Act. So close....

Thanks! This guy's suppose to be the little creep-a-zoid of the film. I'm glad to hear that the design and motion of this fellow is coming across to other viewers. Posting early 'cuse I've got to do web updates anyway... Got the 'Cattle' done (including a final pose render)! Got the design for the 'Calf' done! Got the final pose render of 'Buttery Spirit 02' done! The rest of this week is gonna be spent tracking down a visibility problem with some older models and php coding on the BackBreaker website. Hopefully, if I get a chance, I can start of the 'Calf' model too, but I'm not gonna hold my breath. Upward and Onward!