Gerry

Well, the concrete floor of the platform is an image I created in Photoshop. I started with a photo of concrete but tweaked it quite a bit. Everything else in the scene is just procedural materials. I'm glad you like it!

Thanks everyone for your comments! Case, not sure what your question is. Which metal exactly? Rob, yup, I need to get some secondary motion going. Unfortunately I tried rigging the character "on the cheap" and it's comin back to bite me! I had to take a break from the rigging so I worked on the meatball and camera work. Dhar, sorry, but don't expect the story to make much sense. It's more of a blackout sketch than a story and I didn't want to get bogged down in character motivation etc. this is mostly an exercise in silliness. I know there are premade rigs but the whole reason I started this project was to learn more about the nuts and bolts of rigging so I'm doing it myself. Of course this approach has its drawbacks. Yesterday I pitched an idea to my boss for our company's animated Holiday greeting and got the go-ahead, so I need to put this project aside again. But the Holiday animation will of course be in AM. I hope to be posting some stuff on this shortly.

Here's a beauty shot of the meatball. Well, "beauty" may be overstating it, but...anyone hungry?

Nice character design, and lots of personality!

Here's another test I did of the meatball of the title (In case you were wondering). this is rough. I want to work on the lighting and camera motion but I'm pretty happy with the procedural "meatball" material I created.

I'm penciling it in. We'll see as the date gets closer but I like the idea.

Here's a closeup render of the same sequence. the modeling problems are a little more apparent here, with some creasing around the mouth and lumpiness in the shoulders. I also want to get the eyes moving as well as some secondary movement in the antennae.

Here's another test. I had to recreate the subway platform since I seemed to have deleted the earlier model, but it needed work anyway. This chor is pretty much just for testing. There's some foot slippage though it's not apparent at this distance, but in most respects I'm happy with this so far. Comments please! Gerry

Nice style to these two. Even this still is expressive.

Hey Dennis, thanks for the tip, that helped me out too! Lori, nice work. I tried this exercise from the book and couldn't find the knee controller, so never got very far with this one. Where are you in NC? We just recently moved back to NY after trying Chartlotte for two years. It just wasn't our speed but we met some nice folks down there.

Believe it or not I'm still working on this. Had some false starts with rigging but now I've got him set up for the most part. As I told Luckbat at our last NYUG meeting, I'm rigging from scratch as a learning experience, and boy am I learning.

Sounds like a great idea.

Great meeting Mike, sorry I had to split early. I hope you all continued to have fun! Nice meeting the "new" guys, too. Gerry

Utterly and completely outstanding. I have to mention that my computer at work currently has no sound so I had to watch it silent. And that wasn't a minus! The story comes through loud and clear and the number of tasty little touches and body language, well, I can't think of any superlatives that haven't already been worn out on this thread so far. Great work, great timing, acting, lighting, great characters. Okay, I'm done. Can't wait to watch it at home tonight.

patrick, this is a really nice piece but there seems to be something strange with the neck muscles. The sternomastoid especially, I think should be more of a straight line from the base of the ear to the pit of the neck. I realize you wanted it to look thick and "sinewy" but I think in general it could be fixed up a bit, especially since the pose and composition frame the face and the neck is an important part of that. Edit--I see this is actually one of Jim's models, so take my comments for what they're worth. Still a really nice piece.

What a fun and wacky piece, Nancy! Great style and fun to the design as well as the animation.

Great personality and exaggeration!

Oh yeah, Saturn's rings! I knew there was something missing. Now that I think about it, though, it's a little eerie that Matt's avatar is....A RING!! (cue music)

Nice family portraits! Speaking of which, are Matt and Dan related?

Hey Dennis- this looks good! The front edge of the ear is a little weird with that ridge all the way around. Otherwise really nice and natural looking. How'd you do the hair? Is that a decal or Hash hair? Gerry edit -- I didn't realize there was a second page in this thread, so my comment was about just the head.

Barring work popping up that weekend, I'm definitely in. Gerry

Really nice work on this, Jin. 10 minutes doesn't seem too bad a render time, but like David said there are lots of settings to play with! As for the crowds, over at A:M films Soulcage Dept. has an amazing commercial they animated for free-range chickens that involves a foot race with a background of crowded "stands" of stacked-up chicken coops, and all the background chickens are animated. It's really incredible but probably more work than you want to go to for this. http://amfilms.hash.com/search/entry.php?entry=1060 I also wouldn't worry about too much variety of color in the crowded stands. A limited number of muted colors for the crowds helps to keep them in the background. I imagine you would want the attention to be on the players. Great work!

Very, er, "experimental" fish there, bub! If you're gonna keep going in this direction you should try some soft-edged stripes running down the side. Those red fins look like naugahyde though. Are you going to keep working on this?

Beautiful work Ken! I hope this is the start of something big for you.

No one's said "spectaculicious". I can't resist a challenge.