Dhar

Satyajit Sahib, nothing would give me more honor than to be your partner, but more importantly for me is helping you achieve your dream. I am not looking for credits or fame, helping you achieve your goal is my reward.

You make it up to me when I see your fist animated cartoon Which means: giving up is not an option!

Surreal! Very nice though.

Yes. Turn the resolution down to 320X240 and see if that'll do it.

Great start Steve. Looking forward to your video.

A stroke of genius! Now that is a super, duper, great idea! Bravo John!

Thank you for the kind words. This might be a good opportunity to bring to attention to my fellow animators that I personally credit the incredible talent of Louis Armstrong to elicit such positive response than to my meek attempt at relaying the emotions of his piece. We all heard it before that if the story is great then the film will be great in spite of the style or quality that is used to portray it. My film is by no means great, I could have probably used match sticks for this song and still would have positive responses, that's because of the incredible musical talent of that man, Louis Armstrong. The song is the heart and soul of this film, not the animation. The song hit a cord in me when I first heard it. Images poured out of my head as I listen to this song over & over & over. I was moved by its style, lyrics and Louis' voice. And I wanted to share what I was seeing in my head and feeling in my heart. I can tell you that the animation is quite amature level. I know that. And I know that every scene needs tons of improvements. But since I don't have that much exprience in animation, then this film will mark the level that I am at at this time. I honestly did not expect such positive response. I thought usually people don't like depressing songs. People like happy, funny animations, adventures & love songs. But I felt so strongly about this one I had to animate it. I'm glad I did.

To reduce your file size, try these Render to File settings: [attachmentid=21647] [attachmentid=21648] Then check off Advanced > click on Compression > choose H264 in the Compression Type drop down menu.

Thanks again all of you. I'm quite overwhelmed by your responses. It's so encouraging I've already started collecting data for my next short

I didn't know that. The nomadic Arabs would have their camels kneel down to load their belongings or to ride it. In India they have the elephant kneel on the front legs to climb up. This is interesting to imagine AT-ATs kneeling down.

I can't believe I'm actually drawn to this children story Nice work Satyajit. You probably already know about the old woman's curled side hair thingies flickering. Shot 70 Frame 70, Hansel's drop of the piece of cake was missed, probably due to lack of anticipation? Other than that, it's great.

Thank you all. I've said it before and I'll say it again; this the best forum ever, you are my inspiration and help, you guys are the best people. Thanks.

Well, I've been using A:M for almost 2 years now, plus the fact I have had some CG classes at junior college, and 2d animation many years before that, so it didn't all come together suddenly. But I know that if there's a will there's a way. Keep at it, you'll have your movie soon enough.

Thank you all. It is thanks to you that I am able to produce this short. I learned from everyone of you. I am grateful. Dave, since I can only animate part time, usually a couple of hours after work, after I work on my TWO assignment, this project has taken me roughly six months.

This isn't normal at all. Do you see the sound graph in your timeline when you're in choreography window? If you do, then check the volume in your media player. Whatever it is, it's usually operator error somewhere. I'm confident you'll find it.

I'm proud to announce the premiere of my first A:M short. You can watch it in the A:M Films section : http://amfilms.hash.com/search/entry.php?entry=1094

Nice going. For inspiration, I thought you might be interested in what Emile Ghorayeb (character animator at PDI DreamWorks who worked on Madascar among other) did with his Alien queen - at the end of this demo reel: http://www.emiliog.com/images/myanim.mov

That is cool. very nice. You're mean though, why didn't you let her raise it all the way up?

From past experience Rodney didn't mind. He did, however, encourage first timers to follow the exercises in chronological order because each exercise affects the next one way or another. Go ahead and post what you got.

10Mb for a screen shot is way, way too much. Save it as a JPEG then post it. Did you play the movie in QT? I mean close A:M and play QT?

Is your camera Active (ON)? Are you in Chor. window? Are your lights on? Go back and check each item carefully. If you can't find anything, screen capture or zip the project and post it here so that others can have a chance to look at it. Good luck.

Who says only newbies render directly to QT? That's nonesense, everybody renders to QT for the simple reason that some forum members own Macs and QT is an Apple product so they can watch your work. QT is the choice for many professionals. Now to your problem, check to see that your camera is not hidden behind a wall or some obstacle/obstruction.

That commentator sings quite well, I was expecting flat notes and terrible singing like I'm used to when hearing children stories being read, but this one pleasantly surprised me and kept my interes in the movie. (Hey, commentators deserve credit too) Couple obvs., Hansel's walk cycle in shot 50, 56 and 58 need some work, it's too uniform. I think the foot needs to accelerate to the ground as the step is being taken, it will add not only to the believability of the walk but also to the desperation of the situation they're in. Watch Gretel's hair bows in shot 61, start scrubbing the chor. before you get to the scene to allow the Dynamic Constraints to settle before the scene is rendered. Good job. Keep us posted.

If you get a bounding box of your building then you're not in Bones mode, which explains why you don't see any bones selected in your PWS nor can you make it a child of anything. Choose the Bone mode and then you'll see your Base (Root) bone. As for the light, since the light and bulb are two separate models, I can see why you can't make one a child of the other. What I have done was simply constraint the light to the bulb. I hope this helps.

Curiouser and curiouser You're building up mystique for this project, quite intriguing actually. I want to know more about the story. Keep it up dude.