robcat2075

That looks wonderful! Great looking characters. Repeats to all the good comments above, especially the "render" quality. The only misgiving I had was some initial confusion as to whether the first voice was the fish's or the boy's. I think this is because the fish is more prominently located and his mouth is more active, drawing my attention away from the boy. It wasn't until the voice appeared "out of synch" with the fish, that I started looking elsewhere for the speaker. edit: and on my mpg player at least, the first frame stays frozen for an instant, losing all motion of the boy's mouth entirely. I think if you could just have the yellow fish not "talk" until after the boy finishes "...good or bad" you could eliminate that doubt entirely. I don't think this would hurt the scenario since "talking" isn't mentioned until the dad's speech. Still, a fine looking shot! How much time to put it together?

Not enough entries? (Does that mean less than four?) I was sure we'd have at least a dozen singing bars of soap trying to upstage each other on this one. That shows how little I know. Fine character! A character like this could be done MUCH bigger in terms of his gesture and acting. Definitely more "snap" and the anticipation that goes into that. I'd also like to see him doing his various motions (like scrubbing) in time to the music to show his enthusiasm for it. There's alot you could do with that. I just barely caught the idea that someone else was in the room. Maybe some different camera work to guide our attention through the rippled glass to make sure we notice. I'm curious about the small scale jitter I see in his motion. What rig are you using? An ambitious concept! It' s easy to sit here and comment on it but I don't think I could have done it in the timeframe allotted for this contest.

Thanks for your positive comments. I made this to send as an "e-card" to friends and relatives, but I don't know that they actually look at it. You can also see productions for 2002 and 2003 I patched it together in After Effects. I suppose most of it could have been done with A:M layers, but I'm more familiar with AE and I needed to do color adjustment on the Christmas tree shot. Also, A:M doesn't give access to the audio compression in Quicktime and I needed that too. Yes, but I grew up in Minnesota. Hideous winters. Hopefully the Animation Showdown will come back and he will have more.

Wonderful Gemfire Robot! Serious shoulders on that guy. I see him battling Joan Crawford for shoulder pad supremacy. She could play the "crush, kill, destroy" part in your movie.

I just tried it but the file that downloaded was only 6K and wouldn't unzip. Maybe the link is wrong?

Those Holiday Memories (2.5MB Quicktime) And a Happy New 2005 to everyone!

Isn't it fun to finally make things move? Now, how about if you rigged it so the stem was flexible and the glass could hop around?

Yup, they're big. And pointy. Very National Geographic.

The concave depression between the eyes is the thing that bothers me most. There really is no creature built like that. Even creatures with protruding eyes don't have a valley like that. I know, you're gonna say "he's a new creature that happens to be shaped that way" but since he seems to follow basic conventions in every other regard (he's a symmetrical biped) that feature doesn't quite seem credible. Find a way to raise that area as a continuation of the bridge of the nose. But for a first character, I think you've demonstrated substantial splining skills. I don't think you'll have trouble making mods to him. By all means, rig this guy and do some animating with him. Making them move is the fun part.

I think the expressions on the green guy are pretty good, although as others already noted, the noses are so big that the eye and mouth work is getting missed. If you were going to tweak it more I'd start thinking about "action and reaction" amongst the body masses. It would be tough to make big arm gestures and still have the torso remain unmoved. Another time the arms will gesture forward... and the torso will go forward too! Not impossible for a person to do, but unlikely. But I think this is a good first lipsynch outing and I look forward to seeing what you do in the future. With smaller noses.

I know not of this hip-hop thing you speak of, however... The needle arm on a turntable is always positioned so that it can sweep across the radius (from center to edge) of the record. The arm you have now would be scraping the needle sideways on the innermost grooves of the record. Rather than trying to literally model the grooves with a bump map (they're just too small) I think a better strategy might be to fashion a decal that would imitate the pie-cut shaped reflections the grooves cause. That's what has always said "phonograph record" in almost any image of a record since... Emile Berliner?

Actually i think i liked the cup feet better. Just smaller. But shouldn't she have six feet? Since you're in school, some sort of school parody might go over well. Like maybe there's a teacher bug and some student bugs, or maybe a bug doing homework... But keep the idea short so you can get it done.

I love the "camera work". Way, way above what we usually see. The way the guy in black flips himself over seemed most improbable, but that's part of the fun of a cartoon I think.

It's an interesting environ. The camera move looks way "too smooth". Maybe music will help. The camera doesn't always seem to be banking in relation to it's turn. Right now the environment is all the same. Is it possible these root things could gradually change in appearance as we get closer to the hole? Darker, lighter... more moss... itchy scalp particles? A lot of your audience will need a reason to keep watching if they all look the same. I remember a "making of" thing on one of the Indiana Jones movies. When they were animating the 1st person POV of the coalcart ride through the coal mine they found that is was way more effective for the camera to anticipate turns than to always point straight ahead on the cart. You don't have a cart here to provide visual cues, but turning the camera more might be something to look into. But I'm eager to see where this is all going!

I like these projects that people do with their children. Lucky kids! Maybe some quarter the animation contest theme should be "Honey, I composited the kids"

I especially like the wrinkly knees. Those help to make it look less CG. I like the whole design of the character, but I don't like the way the face is coming out in the renders. it ends up looking too complicated, because of the way the shade line is so broken. How about good ole' flat toon shading for the face (no gradient)?

Just a general thing... it needs some "keep alive" motion during the "holds" to avoid that frozen-rock-solid look some parts get. But there's some very good stuff going on here!

You're right. I guess as a minimum, the lightning bolts were the wrong symbol. Quick band-aid fix: Thanks, Zack. I may have to cave-in and give him eyelids, too.

This is a "get well" image I made this evening. I was never satisfied with the pose. He's supposed to have a migraine. Any suggestions are welcome.

I like the bodies. How about tapering the legs so they are thinner near the top? This would be stronger "design-wise" , more flexible in animation, and reduce the visual conflict of them not being actually attached to the body.

Since it's an igloo, maybe the walls should be more bluish to suggest ice and snow? What's that on the right? A tree trunk in an igloo? A lava flow?

Darn, I missed the print deadline! Oh, well... How about if her head was on his shoulder? and nudge her torso out a tad. That would get us closer to the () arrangement. Not that that is gold or anything, but I think there might be too many parallel elements right now. Another idea: how about changing the frame from landscape orientation to "portrait". It's vertical composition, a vertical frame would strengthen it.

Looks very cool! the color map and bump map are related, right? Too bad we can't render materials like that once, then "bake" the result on as bitmap textures... that would speed things up, wouldn't it?

I agree, it's a fine looking image. But I haven't seen any yellow pages printing that will do it justice. "Logos" are rarely photorealistic because they need to survive almost any printing process and expecially need to survive conversion to B&W. Color yellow page ads are expensive, too. Successful logos also tend to be very simple in design. I can't think of a successful one that isn't. If you really need a logo, I'd go with something more "design" and less "photo." You seem to have the art skills to do that, this might be the basis for developing something more graphic.

That looks promising! I don't do any facial stuff yet, so I don't have much advice. One thing I notice is that a feature (like an eyebrow) will sometimes travel to a new pose and stay absolutely motionless there, which appears odd. But I think that is something you'd refine out as you made more passes at it. A lot of that wouldn't even be noticed if this were a full body shot with "acting" and all that.