mouseman

Marvelous! I love the transitions in the set! Plus the movements of the characters! Plus a clever story line!

Still running behind. I haven't had a lot of time due to various things, including being in a club (speech) contest and winning it and then going to the area contest and winning that, both of which were unexpected and together have taken more time than I would have liked. Regardless, here's the latest. I tightened things by by taking out another 5-10 seconds. I started on a very small amount of clean-up animation, but it's hardly noticeable yet. There is still a long way to go. Hopefully I will bomb the contest this Saturday so I will have time to finish the bus stop! ChrisDailey_test7.mov

... And render ... Not sure I'll make it. ETA: Will v16 help out with render times? I have a dual core AMD Turion 64 x2 Mobile TL50 (1.6 GHz). Is it risky to switch from 15 to 16 right at the end like that?

It's good you translated that. I read it as "Earth Beer Corpse" Or little strawberry ball. Good thing it wasn't "Erdbebenkörbchen". That would shake things up a bit.

It's been a little while, and the deadline is getting closer! At least I have Thanksgiving on Monday (Canada) which will give me an extra day. I tightened up a lot of things, which took almost 10 seconds out of the length. Then I added a little more action (2nd guy walking out). For blocking, I really only need to add in the last character's reaction to finish up the blocking action. I still think the middle character spends too much time getting to and being on the bench. What do you guys think? ChrisDailey_test5.mov

It's been quite a while since your last episode. Do you have any plans on coming back to these, or are you still on indefinite hiatus? I found them quite interesting and worthwhile!

TheSpleen, very impressive! It's amazing how quickly you can get things done! And you are getting better and better each month!

Incredible! Nice cathedral. Where are you going to park it? i.e. do you have plans for using it in a larger work?

You have a nice rotoscope to work from. How is your project going?

Quite inspired, Wedgeeguy! Well done!

I should have mentioned that in that brief pause I'll be having little hearts floating above his head, right up to where he keels over. So I think the timing I've got will work. We'll see! That will be a smart addition! That's the kind of extra that I never think of adding. You go, Gerry!

Nice staging, and the camera rig adds something to it! Is the cat in the window watching the reaper come in the same as the one that is behind the boys when Lena lifts the elf's head? If so, it might be neat to have the cat jump down from the window as the reaper is flying in and start walking (or even slinking) towards where the next part of the scene is so it doesn't look like he magically teleported. (Of course this doesn't apply if there is more than one cat or if the cat can teleport.)

Great feedback and great ideas, thekamps! Thanks! After watching this one, I was worried about the timing (too slow) and length (too long), as well. I'll wait for any other feedback before saying what I was thinking I might be able to do about it. I was thinking that some voices would make the first guy sound more angry, but you're right ... having some actual behavior showing he's angry would be a much stronger performance.

Paul, Thanks for the suggestions. I had already gone and brute forced it, so I won't be using it for this animation. I would like to come back to this and try those things out in more detail and variation when I've submitted this version. I was getting to the point where I was spinning my wheels, so I had to move on, but I'd much rather know what is going on in such situations! I had my delayed Labor Day today, and got in about 6 hours of animating (at my slow pace!), minus some work emails. Here is a new version with the blocking almost-but-not-quite done. There are a few more seconds left to animate, but I think TheSpleen's question of why the first guy punched the second is now answered! (If it's not, that would be important for me to know!) Although it's not quite the full action, I think it's far enough for critiques and suggestions. If anyone has suggestions on timing or spacing or placement or even plot, feel free to give them now. I have a few self-critiques of my own, but I'll wait to see what others have to suggest. What I have not touched yet: face and eye expressions hands are relatively static any fine animation; it's intended to be rough so it's relatively easy to change walking animation except for planning out foot-falls. (i.e. don't worry about feet floating/sliding on the ground right now) sound; I want to have voices for each of the three characters to give their emotions Also note this is a low resolution render with lots of render options turned off so it would render relatively quickly (it took 1hr:21min:39sec under 15.0j+). ChrisDailey_test4.mov

Hi, Holmes, I tried your suggestions out. I wasn't able to get it to work that way. With the Breathe action above, the Choreography Action2's bones overrode the Breathe action. The other variants had similar problems. But working through that gave me ideas for another approach. After a while, I tried a more brute force method: 1. Moved the model's hip bone everywhere it was exaggerated from the wrong position. Using the channels view helped immensely; I was able to scale the extent of the motion in the X and Z axes to get the location corrected relatively quickly. 2. For breathing, I saved the model as a local model, and then created a pose. I guess that's what I was really doing, but I was hoping to avoid making another copy of the model. So I'm back to making my normal slow progress! Thanks for getting me nudged! Since I worked on Labor Day (which they misspell as "Labour" here), I might take a day later in the week and devote the whole day to the Bus Stop!

I read the first comic from your site (Marina Vonsee Bd 01)! Even with my basic German reading skills, I could read most of it, albeit slowly. I had some problems reading the writing in places, which makes it harder for a foreigner to read. Even with that, it was quite enjoyable! ETA: The third comic (Bd 03) is gives a file not found when trying to download it. Jakerupert & Thefreshestever, I hope the two of you are able to meet up one day in Hamburg! The forums are great, but I think in-person discussions would be even better!

Here's a little request for knowledge/help. I thought that instead of doing the heavy lifting of making my characters breathe, I'd make an action that would be for breathing, where only his back, back2, and head bones move. Then in the Chor, I add that action, and have the ease (or blend?) go from 0 to 40 to 0 to 30 to 0, etc., to get the various amounts of breathing on each breath. When I link the action to the character in Choreography half way through the animation where I want him to start breathing, it appears that a number of his other bones go back to "factory defaults". Namely, this arms are sticking straight out (apparently because Choreography Action 2 forgets that IK Hands is turned on) and the rest of his movement goes far afield of where I had originally animated it. I think the main problem remaining is the second, where the Boris character now moves well behind the bench. For the Shortcut to this "Breathe" action, I have tried different combinations of Blend Method = Add/Blend and Ease and Add/Blend Ratio. All to no avail. I can think of 3 things that might be going wrong: 1. It's not supposed to work like I'm thinking it is. 2. I'm close but missing some setting somewhere. 3. There is one or more problems with the software. Any recommendations would be appreciated. I've attached a screen shot (which was before I figured out that Choreography Action2 was forgetting about the IK Hands from the Resolute Walk shortcut) to show where I've added the action. I've also appended a ZIP file with both before and after the Breathe action additions (one appended with -Breathe) - you'll have to supply your own Extras DVD and project folders (camera_roto and Decals). Thanks in advance! breatheproblem.zip

I just took a look and did not see a "How I Do It" post on the site. Is it somewhere else?

It's very exciting seeing the entries everyone is creating! Now if only I can stop working overtime ...

Looking good! An optional suggestion ... at the very end, there's a little more time between the bottle striking his head and the time when he swaggers and falls, it might be better to tidy it up a wee bit. Can't wait to see the next iteration!

Thanks! That is exactly the question I had hoped people would be asking at this point! I have a bit more animation to create before you find out, but hopefully it will be obvious!

Well done! It's always sad to think how much time you wasted in the past, but good to know how much more ability you have now!

Looking very good! I likey!

I had an hour or so on Thursday to do a little more blocking. Here's an update. 1.859KB ChrisDailey_test3.mov

Can't wait to see more!