Gerry

Thanks for your comments. Nancy, I will check their specs before I go any further. But I'm feeling a little out of my depth here, trying to work the Squetch rig without really knowing what I'm doing. I know it's silly to feel discouraged after spending maybe three hours animating but I probly ought to do some of the TAoAM exercises before taking my work public. Or at least try some character animating without a looming deadline. I thought it would motivate me but I'm deep into some heavy-duty Flash work at my day job and have a little difficulty feeling motivated when I get home.

So I've started this and have exactly six seconds to show so far. I'm not sure I'm gonna make this deadline and I'm slammed at work all of a sudden after sitting on our thumbs for six months. I'm not really happy with this but it's a start. lipsynchtest001_h264lg.mov

Hey that is looking great! Great fun idea, nice animation too. Definitely lighten it up and I hope/assume you'll get the rat's tail in on the rockin'.

Hi Jeba and welcome to the forums! Hang in there, some of these finer points take a lot of trial and error. And I am not, NOT, going to make a crude joke about "giving tit a try", it's clearly a typo, I'm not I swear I'm not... but c'mon, I had to at least mention it!

It's a vast improvement over, I think, v13 when I tried dm's, found them difficult to control, and left them alone until a few weeks ago. It's a great tool and actually fun to tweak and experiment with. EDIT: Those plates are beautiful! Nice work!

Thanks Rusty! I did just grab a good poster off the internets, but I've thought about "cartooning" it or toning it down somehow. But it screams mainly because the rest is just line sketches. It'll be more integrated as I go.

spleen, yeah, it's a poster of pigeons, sort of a red herring to set up the gag. Might have a window on the left for him to gesture toward.

Here's a quick storyboard just to see if this gag works. The audio is a very sincere Irish brogue-y monolog and I wanted to give it a twist. What do you think?

I was gonna ask if you meant "definitely" but "defiantly" works too!

Absolutely beautiful work!

Spread out the timing a little bit. Like, the train toot a couple of seconds before we see it, then the cow moo, THEN the impact and boing. Seems like this is all happening at once.

Don't worry about it. I still forget.

The physical dimensions of the model shouldn't affect rendering or screen re-draw. On the Mac you might try closing all other programs, and even closing any A:M windows besides the modeling window. Someone else here may be able to tell you more about this but such a simple model shouldn't be bogging down your machine. Can you tell us your system specs? EDIT: Also make sure you don't have mirror mode on! The "unable to select the entire object" sounds like it is.

last night I video'd myself lipsynching this clip and I must say the way I move is quite a bit different from the way I've animated it! So I'm going to start over and work in a little more detail. I may wait until I create the actual model, or I may continue working with this setup just for practice, which I need badly. Isn't there a story about Abe Lincoln upon meeting Mary Todd at a party, said, "I want to dance with you in the worst way." And he did. I know my animation isn't terrible, but I can see that it's lacking in the crispness that comes with actual animation training. Or to quote "Ed Wood": Investor: Mr. Wood, do you know anything about making movies? Ed Wood: I like to think so!

Nice solution, Robcat.

Thanks Nancy! I may tweak this a bit more and get the face working. This is all just practice, I'll be building a model from scratch for the actual video.

Here's a slightly longer clip, still no face work though. It's looking a little floaty to me in spots the more I look at it. SoloTest_v3_h264.mov

Ya know I just might!

No, he'll be singing the song, just haven't done any face animation yet. I think I will do a longer clip. This went faster than I expected.

I'm working on a new project, a music video for a song called "Cicak" by an American musician in Singapore. this is just a quick animation test using Squetchy Sam and a snippet of the song to warm up my animating skills. Just body animation so far, no face work. Comments if you like. SoloTest_h264.mov

So Stian, what do you do in your spare time?

Mark, you're doing the right thing but I guess you already know that! Walking away from a job can be extremely therapeutic, and believe me you will have paying work before you know it. I could go on but I've just now come to this thread and everyone else has already said what I would have said.

Hi Rob- Welcome to the forums and Animation:Master! I know this app (like most 3D apps) can seem frustrating and counterintuitive at times, and like robcat said most new users just want to see something move! You can do that easily without bones or rigging, but of course the bones and rigging are what real animation (and not just spinning logos) is about. Check out Largento's excellent tutorials in this thread http://www.hash.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=32833 for a super-simple method of learning a little more about splines and cp's. He shows a number of shortcuts and pointers that I didn't even know about after using AM for nearly ten years. Also, keep in mind something I've said in some other threads recently that I've decided to put in my sig: "Learning Curve" is a euphemism!

Don't give up! Like I said in another thread, "Learning curve" is a euphemism!

If you own Animation Master there are libraries of models that are installed with the program. Models made for other 3D programs will be pretty much useless with A:M, plus the models that come with A:M are already rigged for animation. However, one caveat, animating a rigged model still takes a good bit of skill and practice. And welcome to the forums!