pixelmech

Ok I think I'm about at a version one here. I added pedals, finished (for now) the grille, added speedometer with decal (not quite done) and some misc gauges. Still no materials yet but I'm fairly happy with where it's at. Shouldn't I be able to drag multiple instances of my model into chor and then change each individually? Color for example? Wasn't working for me.

Ok, redid the grille - I like it better but the background should be dark, not red so it might be hard to see. Added the steering wheel (upside down gotta fix that). Haven't played with materials yet but time to take a break!

J, there are some bevels, yes - take a look at the WF. I added the seat and the...ugh...grille! I hate it Josh! ROTFL. I have to figure out another way to do it. I do think I want to render it in 3d style not toon after all. That will give me a chance to play with materials. I like that flat almost plastic/plastic foam look you sometimes see. If I could get that I think it would be neat.

Thanks guys. yeah, plain old white is the ticket. He's supposed to be wearing a kind of maestro/dinner jacket, haven't gotten to that yet. The tricky thing will be moving his eyes - he has no pupils!

LOL Josh - I think I have an idea how to do this one! Thought about doing the toon render too, here's a quick one of the side. The other view didn't show I have the foot area carved out already too. I curved the back part as well, it wasn't supposed to be straight across like that. I have a better idea how to do the wheel rims too.

Thanks Josh I appreciate that. There's a lot of good teachers here in the forum! I tell you the more your model, the more things come to you as well, experience is a good teacher too. Here's the cover of the book. Definitely a fleet! Red, blue green ones...should be fun. In the book there are bunches together. I can't believe you guys never read this book! Commies!

Ok, I don't know how I got started on this late at night, but we were reading Go, Dog, Go! It's always been one of my favorite books when I was a kid and I loved their cars. I thought it might be easy to model so here is what I came up with. First time playing with materials too. I'll want to play around with it some more later, make some rubber for the tires, seats in, steering wheel and grille, few other things. C&C welcome

Neat!

Updated face - I added that extra spline. The hook I had there was rendering as a dot in toon mode which was annoying. I'm working through the 3Dartz tut now and adjusting his splineage to get ready for the joint set up, but I'm wiped out now!

Thanks Josh. I just did a quick toon render to see what it would look like - no idea how to set it up yet. But you are dead on about the shadows, good point. Definitely Steamboat Willie era. I'm not sure which way I want to animate him, but it would only make sense to do it toon wise. I'm just now adding what I think were two missing splines on the bottom part of the mouth that I think will help. I think that is part of my problem with the pointy old man chin. I'll post an update later.

Body

Good idea Josh. I ended up doing that, plus trying to add some kind of chin because it was looking like an old man! While not 100% successful, I think its better. The face needs lots of tweaking. I basically stiched the whole thing so no wonder. I got the hair on there, now all as one piece. After this post I'll attach a full body render with a test toon render. I'm not so sure about the shoes. I've struggled with their shape over and over (I've remade them twice). Comments and crit at this point sorely needed! Tom

Dude that is starting to look seriously good! How about an update on the wireframe? Windshield looks great.

Thanks Martin That's the plan anyway!

And here's the model so far.

Rotos - not much to work on but I had to draw it from one or two shots I found on the web and a couple of downloadable toons.

This is a new character for me to learn and install the 3dArtz rig on. I took the rotos from an old 30's character "Tom" from "Tom and Jerry" (NOT the mouse and cat!) Anyway, I've really been struggling with the head. I redid some things based on Josh's suggestions but I have a couple of issues (aside from general tweaking needs). - Note the open 6-point patch. I'm at a loss how to finish this part of the face. It's the last hole in the face. - He looks like he has no chin! It's tricky getting a 2d into a 3d mode sometimes and he seems to be not translating super well (the head at least). Certainly part of this is my (lack of) skill. The hair is only I start, I need to add lots of the cycliders to make the scraggly looking hair. I'll post my rotos in the second post. Any help is appreciated! Tom

LOL Fuchur, I remember the Coca Cola thing too - maybe that is why I did it. Glad you liked it!

Thanks - well I don't know how far I've come, got nothing done yet in AM Looking back I wish I had taken more time setting the key poses and doing the inbetweens. I do remember being under a time crunch (most likely because I procrastinated) and it was a big project. IIRC there were 300+ cels to draw, ink and color. The backgrounds are horrible too. It's just all part of my thing where I rushed through everything in school - man if I could only go back now! I'm going to try and clean it up somehow, I'm just not sure how...

Hey, I never thought of redoing it -- hmmm. My skills have a LONG way to go though before that happens. Still, it's a thought. Frankly some of it would be a lot easier than drawing it all!

That was an attempt at being innovative or something, I don't know. I think I figured it wouldn't be as noticeable as it was ...oops!

I finally got my 15-year old reel back from the guy who transformed it to a DVD-ROM AVI for me. Let me just say that upon further review - this isn't as good as I remember! Anyway, I promised I would post it so here it is. I did this in 1990 in my senior year at Columbia. I do remember it being a lot of work, the total time of actual animation is about 17 seconds, BUT much of it is reused/flipping cels and so forth to avoid doing too much work so the piece suffers from that. The actual animating of the duck is not too good either! But it was fun - and a lot of work - to do. In 15 years the film really suffered pretty bad. The color is all washed out and there are lots of artifacts and so forth. I have QuickTime Pro, I was thinking of downloading a trial of After Effects or Premiere to maybe tidy it up, but not sure if that would help. The film is 7.56 MB, I suggest right clicking and save it to your hard drive. Enjoy! http://www.pixelmech.com/rev/no_honor_small.mov Tom

That helps Colin thanks I have a lot of reworking to do. I noticed you made the wheel without tread. Did you figure that the detail was not necessary? Nice because it keeps patch count down. I still can't quite tell, is the wheelwell attached to the wheelwell trim and the front bumper? Looks like it is. Tom

Awesome Colin - thanks! Frankly for a mechanical model I like the idea of separate pieces anyway. Things just seem difficult to get to flow into each other, like you can do with a character. Of course, I'm no pro modeler so maybe it's me

Very good so far! I'm very aggravated that yours is so much better than mine. I am now telepathically sending a virus to your PC ::mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm:: So there! In all seriousness, how will you build in the wheelwell - separate piece?