Gerry

Happy birthday Mr. Sutton!

Just an update...I've got a full-length first draft all laid out and it's looking pretty good! It's nice to see the whole thing all the way through, it has a great momentum to it and the imagery and transitions work really nicely. It still has some rough spots but I'm hoping to put up a test version for everyone to look at after the weekend. I'll be spending November tightening it up and re-rendering some shots. The plan is to have it done by the first week of December at which point I'll be posting it on YouTube and Vimeo, and wherever else they'll have me!

Nice!

Hope it's a good one. From the little I recall, twenty one was a pretty good year, but I don't remember much!

Great looking character mark!

That's pretty cool but since you're *playing*, maybe make the yellow and red particles not so hard-edged, more like glowing particles or...?

Super nice!

Well this one looks pretty dang good!

Dude!

Hey jweinrub, something that I find often happens is when I create a constraint, it is sometimes created with enforcement set to 0%. Look in the PWS when the constraint is selected and be sure the enforcement is at 100%. Do this with the Animate button off, or do it at frame zero, otherwise you'll set a keyframe on the constraint.

that looks like an educational video on the dangers of tanning beds!

Thanks Chris! I did tweak a few keyframes and got the whole thing looking a little snappier. Yesterday I started building the whole video from the beginning and it's looking pretty good for a first draft. I want to get some nice transitions going as right now it's just cut to, cut to, etc. I've got my co-worker Randy working on some effects shots and I'm going to have him do some nice AfterEffects transitions to sweeten it up. Also, once this vocal segment was in place, I wanted to see more of it. So I may not do quite so much cutting away from it and keep the camera on him. As my wife said, at this point in the video the character really starts to "fly", and he should have his moment instead of cutting away to shots of stuff the viewer has already seen.

Test render of the rooftop singing segment that will make the final cut. Some of it will be more closeup in the final version. I've got the face and hands animated here, but it seems like the more detail work I do, the floatier the small moves seem, especially the arms and hands. But I think that can be remedied mostly by tweaking some keyframes. And btw I got a couple of "boy band" comments about this routine. That...that's a good thing, right? ManonRoof_finalQual_h264.mov

Yves' tutorial was one of my first exposures to the how and why of beveling. Nice to know it's still up and still current!

Hey, you're getting pretty handy at whipping out these little movies Robert! Nicely done and a good bug find as well.

...and stop back here BEFORE you get to the hair-pulling stage next time! Most of these problems are too simple to waste time getting frustrated.

Nice start Mike! Hey, I have a question for you, drop me an email at gerrymooney at earthlink dot net when you can.

The Post-extrapolation options in Robert's video show the same on the Mac, it's just a matter of right-clicking. I've got a Wacom too and I've got the rocker arm set to right-click, works like a charm! In fact in the last couple of A:M versions the stability of stylus support has noticeably improved.

Okay, if that's the case I'll make my suggestion. Once you set the first and last keyframe (zero and 23), on frame 24, set the keyframe to zero, then back to 23 exactly twenty three frames later. All you're doing is manually creating what Robert was setting up automatically. Also keep in mind that you can vary the playback speed depending on how you set the keyframes, it can play backwards, etc. EDIT: Hey robert, I noticed cribbidaj is using v.15. Is that function available in that version? I'm going to check on it on the Mac tonight and I think I've still got older versions installed.

I'm not familiar with that function but you can also just set a keyframe at zero right after the keyframe set at 23, and so forth...Well I see Robert has beat me to it.

Hi Rob, nice to see you back here! We are serious power users of Illustrator at my day job, and I often wonder how I would go about teaching it to someone. It's completely unintuitive and more a matter of "once you know how, you know how". I would have a problem just explaining the text tools to a beginner, and the beginner would have to have a seriously open mind! Probably the best way to learn this or any other app is in a group setting, like a studio or classroom where everyone can swap tips and shortcuts. And I remember a couple of tricks that CorelDraw had at least ten years ago that Illustrator still doesn't have! Still, it comes down to whatever tools you are given to work with.

Okay, finally got one with a timecode. Better late than never I guess! ManonRoof_timecode_h264.mov

Thanks guys. the more I watch it the more I see "puppetlike" movement, so I'm looking more closely at those passages and tweaking keys as necessary. But I do feel like I'm more in control and can inject "personality" without sweating the technical means of getting there. I'm glad it shows.

Thanks for comments and thanks Mouseman for your suggestions. I think I've fixed it somewhat. I've removed the earlier movie and I'm putting a new one here. This is the basic blocking of the entire 53 seconds still with no hand or face animation. Sorry for the file size but I hope you find it's worth it. ManSingsOnRoof_h264.mov

Here's a rough render of the "Man Singing on Roof" segment. It won't all be in the final video; I'll cut to it and away from it, there will be closeups etc. This is just the body so far, there's no hand or face animation as yet. It will also be about 15-20 seconds longer than this. I would have burned frame numbers but couldn't get that to work, but comments are certainly welcome. Edit: Attachment removed