Shelton

I realized that this month is the 26th year of owning and using AM. I bought my first copy in 1999 from CompUSA. From the 6th grade I have always wanted to do animations. I have been around computers since 1977 in High School, and once I got to college I saw that a computer could help me create an animation. I have had Maya, Studio 3d, Infini D, RayDream, Lexicor and one I can not remember from the Silicon Graphics days. But I have always come back to AM. I am hoping once we get moved in the next couple of months I will get back to that dream of creating an animation project. It is funny, as I have been cleaning out for the move I found a render I did of all the characters in Cupids Sick Day and the Coffee Shop. It is crazy how many splines I had on some of the characters. one of the female characters had over 9k patches. Anyway, All of them are my creations except for three which I got off the extra dvd. And I only used parts of those characters. I still have another 20 not shown in the pic that are still being finished. Over the years of had created some 50 +/- characters with AM. Many are not rigged while others are partially rigged. I have about 15 with full rigs and weighted. I have many rigs installed. From Zundle Rig, Holmes Bryan Rig (LiteRig), Mark Skodacek (2008 Rig), David Simmons (squetch Rig), Mack Chappelle's Saucy Rig, my own rig, and of course TSM 2.0. Thank you to all the people who have commented on all the characters through the years and given me inspiration to continue by quest. I will be uploading shortly a continuation of an animation that began many months ago. Thank you Robert Holmen and Chris Daily for pushing me forward and out of my comfort zone. I have learned a great deal about AM and about myself through this process of creating. Happy 26th anniversary to me!!

I have been working on getting ready to move. As a part of that I was looking at computers. I pulled up Cindy from Cupid Sick day. I modeled her 15 years ago. It is hard to believe. In 2012 I re rigged her and the rig holds up nicely.

The Knights Tail story has me thinking its time to get started again. All the rigs are half done. More than likely I will redo the rigs into the TSM2 with some of Roberts add ons. Here is a picture of the team and the only thing missing is Lilly, the damsel in distress.

So i lied. Here is Sir Harold

One more for the day. Archie or Andre, was rigged with TSM. A little more flexibility especially for the bow and arrow.

I found the rendering of Timothy walking. Here is Timothy the Goblin

I have been going through a bunch of AM things the last few weeks. This was prompted by my back up drive telling me there is an issue. I love an SSD and NVME drive but when they start having issues you better pay attention. Anyway, I started looking at all the assets I have modeled over the years. I was sad to see that I have started many projects over the years and did not finish most of them. Some of them include Cupid's Sick Day, Coffee Shop Disaster, A Knight's Tail, Corner Pocket .... Thanks to Robert Holmen, I look at the animating portion of a project differently than I use to. There are a couple of the projects I think I will look at restarting in the future. One of the characters from A Knight's Tail was Willard the Wizard. I really like the character and back in the day I rigged him with the Zundel Rig plus some add on items that I incorporated. There are several characters I used from A Knight's Tail, in the image contest a few years back, Sir Harold the Knight, Willard the Wizard, Tim the Goblin, Archie the Archer and of course Herman the Dragon. Here is a shot of Willard I posed this morning after being snowed in today. Don't be surprised if you see a few more characters over the next few days, along with Han's Flower pickup animation being completed.

Well poses are bascially done, but doing some re-rigging of Hans. So to take a break and rig another character at the same time, I have completed the body and head of Lilly

Finishing the animation. Four new poses coming soon

Simple Pleasures Well I have rendered the animation. 17 cores at 16 passes utilizing 77% of CPU and 38%, running at 5ghz at 39 Celsius, 1440x1080 resolution, 156 frames, took netrender 59:07 minutes. Here is Hans finding something new For those who can not see it on the forum here is the Youtube link PickupFlower.mp4

As I am nearing the end of another animation project I wanted to say thank you to Robert Holmen. During the last several months we have gone through the animation frame by frame. He has used this technique as a teaching tool and have learned so much. I can not tell you how many times I have said wow through the process. Anyway thank you Robert!!

It has been awhile. Thank to Robert for helping get started again. Hans in his new production. More to come.

Finally home after an unexpected trip only to return to a loved one falling. I have reworked Lilly and Kyle. Here is an updated shot

Here are Kyle and Lilly

So I forgot to upload the female I will upload the male tomorrow. Here is Lilly