Gerry

Really great work, Mark, and some of the most natural looking hair I've seen. Are you doing their bodies as well?

Help us, Robbie Wan Kenobi! You're our only hope!

It also looked like the bones that snapped into place once you've advanced a few frames, were misplaced in exactly the same way in the exported model. Seems like you should investigate why they weren't in position on frame 0.

Hey, this is some great work and nice style! Using the son as a starting point for the dad will work fine, especially if the story involves some common trait they share (much to mom's chagrin!) The only comment I would make would be to add a touch more detail to Latimer's ears. they're looking a little doughy and underdeveloped compared to the rest of the face.

Happy b'day! Guess I missed that in the birthday notices. What's David's screen name?

This is a big help nancy. Sweeper is one of those things I keep meaning to learn and after reading this thread I spent the last 45 minutes or so playing around with it. Thanks for the pointers.

...but Kat's the only one I recognize. Hope you have a good one!

I just got the go-ahead to do a cover story on "The Making of Cicak" for The Cartoon!st, the newsletter of the National Cartoonists Society, for the issue that will coincide with the big Reuben Awards weekend over Memorial Day. And A:M will be getting a big mention!

I really like the look and the stylization! My main suggestion would be to either put a nicely modeled bottle of something 'real' in there, or a made-up product. Finish it! Imagine it's really a print ad for something. Then, the model needs a better pose, more involving, less manikin-like, but nothing hard-sell, just more evocative. It's a great start. That's my "go for it!" list. If you're not that motivated, shape the bottle better and call it done. But I could imagine a whole portfolio of pieces with this look. Depends on how motivated you are.

Thanks Robert! Not all of our work is proprietary. Like the piece I linked to, we often do tutorials for a judge or jury to explain an industrial process before we get to the proprietary information. We have some standard ones like "What is a Pixel?" as a lot of our cases have involved patents on various flat screen technologies. So we create a generic animation that, with luck, we'll be able to use and re-use. The one on industrial insulators is probably not one we'll reuse much! It was pretty specific to one industry and one product.

mark, can't say enough about this. it looks great!

Y'know Brainmuffin did a really fabulous polar bear, maybe two years ago, and really nicely rigged from what I remember, good movement in the shoulders and hips. But then I realized he doesn't come around much anymore.

No, I've got one nice exhibit that I'm pretty sure I linked to here some time ago. Go to http://www.mooneyart.com/interactive/interactive.html, the one on the left is mostly done in AM. it illustrates the entire injection molding process for this particular industrial insulator. it was well-received and actually fun to do.

Same here, I gave up on being any kind of a nerd years ago. I can talk the talk when it comes to Marvel comics but it's all show.

Hi, I'm Gerry, and I'm an AMaholic. ("Hi, Gerry.") My background is as a commercial illustrator, doing a lot of magazine work in the 80's and 90's in the NYC area market, as well as doing a cartoon feature, Mooney's Module, in ASIMOV's SF Magazine in the early 80's, which led to the creation of The Gravity Poster. I first bought v8 after seeing an ad in Animation World magazine in 1999 because it was affordable and it ran on a Mac. Dabbled and had a lot of fun for several years, but was extremely intimidated by the idea of character animation until about five years ago when I decided I had to just get on that horse and ride. This forum is easily the best feature of Animation Master. I'm at my current day job for just exactly six years where I do 3D, Flash and After Effects work for courtroom and litigation presentations. I've got 3D Studio Max on my machine and I really do try to practice and do tutorials from time to time, but when an actual assignment comes in, I just tell my boss I can do it quicker in A:M, and since we're a small studio it's not like my work needs to be handed off to another animator, so they're fine with that. I've done a lot of 3D work here but the best part is the Christmas animations I have done every year since I came here, except 2011 when I was too busy completing my music video, . I asked my co-worker Randy to do the animation (in 3DS Max) but I wrote and storyboarded it and worked with the composer on the music. Although this is the most dysfunctional, mismanaged and alienating office environment I've ever worked in, when work is slow I can spend all day, for weeks sometimes, working on my personal projects. So as much as I'd like to complain, I just keep splining!

Hey Chris, not to interrupt this thread but could you shoot me an email at gerry at mooneyart dot com. Thanks!

Wow, I don't think I knew this! Great tip.

So you're up and running now? Any other hiccups?

This was the Apple Store at about 3PM on New Year's Eve when we thought would be a good time to pick up Vicki's new MacBook Pro. Yikes! Happy New Year!

Hi Astrin, welcome back! I recently calculated that the subscription version comes to twenty-one cents a day, which is as close to free as you're likely to come. So upgrading to the latest version is a pretty easy decision. And back when your latest version was *new*, this forum prob'ly didn't even exist and it is invaluable.

Hey, if anyone here wants to share this on Facebook I would be extremely grateful!

Hey, Jason or someone should help this guy out. Doesn't the activation code come via email or something? Not sure how the discs work, back in the day the individual serial # was stamped in the manual but that's a long time ago.

I think Darkwing meant Dali, like Salvador Dali. I can see it more Tim Burton-ish, though that may be too obvious/cliched. I do like the story premise! I've had a couple of ideas that I have thought about pitching here but they all seem to need more work to be intelligible. I'm watching this thread though!

I see we have a couple of birthdays today, Happy Birthday thekamps and many more! Also noticed too late that Jim Talbot's was a couple days ago, hope it was a good one!

Hi Keizerzilla, and welcome to the forum. Hang in there, installation can be a little bumpy even for experienced users.