Gerry

Stian- Very nice work. If I may comment, the opening camera shot makes it appear that the "carriages" are moving and is a little disorienting in the first moments. Other than that the movement in general is a little slow. Sorry I can't help test the particles. Good luck with this, it's a great start.

Thanks Rago. Do you mean do the texture maps with pencil sketches? that would be interesting! I may just play around with that. there have been some pretty cool effects on some tv commercials lately melding sketchy hand drawn lines with 3D models. I had been planning on using photos of concrete surfaces to texture the subway platform, but I like your suggestion. As for the "detailed" head, that's mostly lumpy mesh problems. Still working on smoothing some of that out.

Well seven, all I can say is don't jump to any conclusions about the nature of this critter. I wanted to model a character that would let me get on to rigging and animating without getting bogged down in an elaborate model. So, an alien! If it's any consolation, he probably won't be green in the finished piece. Green was kind of a kneejerk choice (see my avatar) that I've since reconsidered. And I doubt you've ever seen an alien with such bad posture...maybe he's more human than you think!

Thanks for the comments everyone. Hey Brainmuff, I must need to update some info somewhere! I've been in Charlotte for about a year and a half but I thought I'd updated my address in *most* places. In fact I have been to the Renaissance Fair in Tuxedo, but years ago! A sister lived in Warwick when I was a kid and I also traveled through the Sterling Forest area many many times, pre-Fair. I know I've got an old sketchbook with some sketches of the park that I did when I was about 15. I have a distinct memory of trying to figure out perspective at the time. Also been to Nyack for a few gallery openings. Tell me where you saw my old address so I can fix it. Traj, I've already changed his texture but I am now officially between a rock and a hard place with AM. Just upgraded my Mac to Panther and now Classic won't launch, which is fine since I upgraded to get to the OSX version of AM. Now I find that my video card is underpowered, so I am in the midst of a daisychain of updates and in the meantime I only have AM on my Dell at work.

Not much to add Andy. I would say as above that as a test of controls it succeeds, but also has a nice appealing style that suggests stories. I can also appreciate your wanting to do something quick and simple and use those as strengths. That's what I'm trying to do with mine!

Thanks Andy. Here's a sketch of the main setting. I've done a lot of preliminary sketching so far, as well as some storyboards. On this model, I'm still working out how I want to do the eyes, as well as fine tuning the texturing. I want to get a a little more involved with the surfaces than I have in the past. You mean Gumby? I hadn't thought about it but he does seem to lend himself to it!

Here's a first render of the main character for my new short. I did this several weeks ago and now I feel guilty that I haven't done more! Just posting this to motivate myself to get back to it.

Yeah, nice work overall. I like the expressive potential of the mouth, and I really like your approach to the trees and clouds. I might try to make the tree trunks as bouncy/cartoony as the boughs and clouds, but they're nice as is. I am also working on a project with alien/cartoony trees and it's interesting to see how others approach this sort of thing without getting all Dr. Seussy.

This is looking great Jake. Good work! (Probably not the critique you hoped for though.)

Nice Work! The ponytail maybe bounces a bit too much, but hey, a walk cycle! I'm jealous!

Thanks for that link, Rodney. I'm in the middle of a project where the wheel stride length will come in handy. And Jake, your car is looking pretty good! Good luck with getting all the elements to work together.

yeah, the models look great, but the shadows are a little confusing. You've got the hard-edged shadows off to the left, then the soft pools of shadow directly below the heads...or is that an oil leak?

Yeah, unless the brainstem is a part of their logo you could probably do without it. The animation looks great, and the still of the stage set really shines. I also had some thoughts on the arms and legs, but in the end I think it's better to just leave them "cartoon-style" like you have.

Josh, if you get around to it I would be interested in some clarification on that point. Doug, to answer your question (though I don't know which approach will work for your purposes) open your face image in Photoshop. ( If that's what you use. Should be similar in other paint progs though.) With the wand, click in the area you want to be transparent. Make sure it's all selected. Under Select, choose "save selection..." and you'll get a window asking you to name the selection. Call it "silhouette" or "outline". ClickOK. In your Channels palette (usually tabbed with your layers palette) make sure there's a new channel with the name you gave it. this is called an alpha channel! Save as a Targa file. Now in AM the image should be silhouetted, with the background color masked out. You may need to re-import it, but it *should* update by itself. Like I said, I don't know if this method or Josh's will work best for you, but you will definitely find it handy to save Targa's with an alpha channel in the future.

This is looking great, nice natural movements and secondary body language. A couple of things aren't clear though. Is she sprouting a wedding veil and asking for a ring? If yes then its working, but the veil maybe should be more ornate, and maybe she gestures to her hand in addition to holding it out. And maybe eyelashes on the girl to clarify that she's a girl. I know a couple of these things have come up already, so sorry if I'm being redundant.

This still looks great Nancy! It's got a great unified style in keeping with the characters.

Allright! I downloaded Audacity both at work and at home. It looks like a great freeware app, exactly what I've been needing. We're cookin dude!

I was just over there and tried to download from at least three different links and nothing was working. I'll try later from home.

Yeah, this short looks like fun and I really enjoy playing with sound effects. I do need a freeware sound mixer if anyone can make a suggestion, either Mac or PC will do. The one I've been using, a free version of WavePad, has only one track as far as I can tell.

Colin's tute over on the ARM is still a pretty good ear model. So says I. But PS that's some beautiful splinin', Yves. Colin's ear modeling tutorial

This is fun and really looking great. that background still seems dominant. Maybe try reversing the gradient, so it gets lighter as it gets closer to the ground. This may keep it from drawing the eye too much. If you still want some help with the soundtrack I'm game!

Great little demo John. I just got v 11.1 but this looks like a good reason to upgrade.

Yeah, really nice. Too bad they took out the humor! Especially since humor means water, but then that's a whole nother kiosk!

P.S. - there's a great tutorial over on the ARM by Bill Sutton on decaling. Hugely comprehensive, with stepbystep directions for flattening in an action window, making the screen shots, etc. etc. That may be some help.

Wow, good thing you've picked a simple subject to start with! One question I would ask is, is the decal out of place when you do a render either of the model or the scene? I discovered one interesting anomaly on my project, which is that if you just look at the model in shaded view (by hitting "0" rather than rendering by hitting "Q" for a quick render) and if the patch has a curved edge, the decal will look out of place or stretched, like it's being "pulled" by the patch's surface tension, but when you do the quick render or a choreography render, it's actually where it should be. could that be the problem? Another thing to keep in mind (though you probably already know this) is that you don't necessarily have to flatten every section every time. If you rotate the model to where you're looking at the patch(es) to be decaled more or less straight on, take your screen shot, paint on it in Photoshop, then apply the decal at the same angle, it will go on pretty nicely. In other words, you can apply a decal from any angle, not just from left-top-front-side view. I'm afraid I don't have much experience with flattening in an action for the purpose of decaling so I have no advice for you there. I hope this is some help. Let me know.