Roger
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Posts posted by Roger
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Maybe it's only mostly dead. Mostly dead is slightly alive.
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It's not exactly pining for the fjords....
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You're on. One dollar it is
Just to clarify: it has to crack 3 billion by end of February, if it does then you win and I pay you one whole USD. If not, you owe me $1.
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33 minutes ago, robcat2075 said:
Boxoffice Mojo says Avatar has grossed $1.4 Billion world wide thru Monday, Jan 2.
The US take has been a pretty consistent $20+ million per day without a big fall off.
I'm going to project they hit $3 Billion before it falls out of theaters.
They will have to keep it running well into February, then. That would put them at 2.6 Billion if they make roughly 600 million per month. Still won't crack 3 billion, though.
Care to make a gentleman's wager?
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Very nice stuff! The U-boat captain coming up out of the tiny hatch is quite comical. I also like your walk cycles.
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49 minutes ago, robcat2075 said:
Numerous 1927 books, films and even the song "The Best Things in Life are Free" become Public Domain and free to re-use today.
Well at least we are starting the year off with some good news. I'm assuming under the filmed works where it says "now a lost film" that the copyright expired but there is no longer a copy of the film in existence?
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Happy New Year, Rob! Hopefully we will be seeing a lot less demons and gremlins in 2023
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5 hours ago, Fuchur said:
I would say 4/5 stars for todays standards.
I do not see a problem in a pregnant alien woman going into a fight if she, her family and her tribe is attacked by an overwhelming army striving to kill everybody.
It does just not make any sense to not fight in that scenario because otherwise she, her unborn baby and everybody attached to her will die. That she is that effective in melee battles and still able to deliver a supposable healthy child even after getting hit is of cause only possible because of alien biology, but not impausible for a stronge, warrior like tribe alien like she is. It somehow makes sense to be able to do that if they are harder to kill anyway.Best regards
*Fuchur*
Again, it’s a minor quibble and given the narrative they set up for themselves the character’s actions make sense.
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Well I went and saw Avatar 2.
It was honestly better than I expected it to be. I could easily believe every bit of half a billion dollars ended up on the screen. But if they truly spent that much then I wouldn't expect anything less than amazing CGI.
This is probably the least woke thing to come out of Hollywood in a while. There is a strong, pro-family message and the dad is actually a strong dad, not a bumbling doofus.
The female characters are well-written. The only thing I found to be a stretch was a pregnant Navi woman going into battle, but I suppose you can hand-wave that away with "alien biology".
It's definitely a long movie, but it seemed to go by fairly quickly. You will probably need to stretch your legs at some point. Right after any big fight is probably the best time.
They set themselves up for a sequel, so there may be an Avatar 3 at some point.
To recap:
The good: looks amazing. The 3D is well done and doesn't detract from the story. It's mostly a family friendly movie, although the violence might be a bit much for children under 12. It's far less gory than say, The Walking Dead. Roughly on par with the first Avatar, I guess.
The bad: at times I felt like I was watching a mashup of The Abyss, Titanic and Dances with Wolves. The environmental messaging seemed a bit heavy-handed in parts.
The silly: if you want to play a drinking game where you'll end up blacking out or dying of alcohol poisoning, every time one of the kids says "bro" take a swig of whiskey.
Final verdict: go see it, but if you're taking the whole family, maybe shoot for a matinee or skip the concessions. You could easily blow through $100 on movie night these days. Overall, I'd say it is easily 2.5 out of 4 stars.
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3 minutes ago, robcat2075 said:
I'm pretty sure A:M would run on a Microsoft Surface which is pretty light (just under 2 pounds) and portable.
However, I sense the trend for 3D work is more screenspace rather than less. Big giant monitors to have all the control panels and timeline available.
And you still want a keyboard. A:M and Maya and I presume the others favor use of keyboard shortcuts to quickly select tools.
I've thought about getting an old used Surface to use as an e-reader and 2D painter but... I never go anywhere so the portability isn't all that needed.Yeah I'm not sure AM or 3D in general is a good fit for an iPad type device. I guess I'm attracted to the sketching/storyboarding aspect more than I am trying to animate on one. I've got some experience with supporting MS Surfaces through work and they seem to overheat a lot. You are after all talking about a 20-30W Intel CPU compared to a 2-5W ARM SOC. I've yet to see an iPad overheat or break down due to a fan failure.
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Is anyone out there using iPad devices for either 2D artwork or other content creation? I don't imagine there is any way to run AM on one, short of figuring out a way to run a virtual Windows PC on one (not even sure that is possible). So I guess the primary use would be sketching/garage band.
The main attraction for me is the portability factor: no dragging around a 5+ pound laptop, no big power brick. 12+ hour battery life.
A quick search of the app store turns up some decent paint/sketching apps, storyboarding, 2D animation and stop motion tools but not much in the way of 3D.
I mean, it won't replace your desktop but for sketching/storyboard/flash style animation it might not be a bad option.
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I'm just quoting the figure I've heard multiple sources throw around. That it would have to make 2 billion to break even. So that could be roughly 650 million for production, a similar amount on marketing and then 650-700 million as the theater take. So that would be roughly equal to the 2 billion break even point. So I misspoke in my previous post regarding the cost (I was rolling production, marketing and theater take all into one figure) but it is still going to need to make a stupid amount of money to be profitable.
But Hollywood does a lot of "movie magic" with their accounting, so short of actually being shown the books, I don't think we are going to get a clear picture of what the actual costs are.
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7 hours ago, robcat2075 said:
I haven't seen it yet, but someone is going. It's taken in $950 million world wide ($290 million domestic) as of Monday.
If a third of that gets back to the studio then they are probably break-even or better already and they still have one more holiday week to pull idle people in.
Anyone gone to it yet?I'm still thinking about going to see it, I may go Friday or Saturday.
They are not anywhere close to break-even, the movie reportedly cost 2 billion to make. They would have to pull in 3 or 4 billion in order to make a profit, I don't see that happening. They might just break even over time, if the movie can eke out another 500 million before it is pulled from theaters. -
Merry Christmas everyone
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This is a neat short form documentary on the holiday classics from Rankin-Bass:
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2 hours ago, Xtaz said:
I love pastels.....
Very nice sketch.
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On 12/15/2022 at 3:12 PM, Fuchur said:
Mine should still be there ;).
Best regards
*Fuchur*Mea culpa, forgot you have a sizeable number of tutorials out there as well
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Wow that is a lot of articulation. Might not be a bad idea to pick up a set for experimenting with stop motion.
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Here is how you fix Rey, and turn her into a more believable/likeable character:
Keep the early stuff with her on Jaku, that was good. Keep the scene where she takes Luke's saber back at Maz's. In fact, Force Awakens can be left mostly as-is, with the major change coming in the final act. Where Rey goes to fight Kylo though, you have Kylo come at her with a flurry of savage blows. She manages to parry, but only just. Kylo makes one last strike, taking her saber arm off at the elbow and closes in for the kill. Everything appears lost, but you start to see Luke's saber move, and a hooded and robed figure force pulls it, activates the blade and drives off Kylo, scarring him in the process. The character comes to tend to Rey, Finn says "who are you? How did you know we needed help?" Character removes his cowl and we see it is Luke, who says "I felt a disturbance in the force, something I haven't felt in a long time. Come, help me get Rey to my ship, we have to leave before the base is destroyed"
I can virtually guarantee the audience would have lost their minds.
You then get Luke back to the rebel base, where he has a brief reunion with Han and Leia. I would have kept Han around until the 2nd movie, maybe have Kylo try to kill him but he just can't bring himself to do it. This shows that there is some conflict, sets up an opportunity for Snoke to confront him, etc.
Have Luke explain to everyone that he's been in hiding because he felt the presence of a powerful darkside user, and did not want to endanger everyone with his presence. Maybe he had a vision of Snoke while poking around some Sith ruins, and that corrupting presence was what turned Kylo and made him attack Luke's students.
Luke explains he needs to train Rey in secrecy, if they are going to have any hope of defeating the corrupting influence (Snoke).
Luke heads back to his hideout with Rey.
Now here is where you spend nearly all of episode 8 with Luke and Rey, building Rey up. You could even have *shown* that Rey is powerful/unique, by having her heal her arm. Maybe she was fitted with a prosthesis, but it never functions quite right. She is having a training duel with Luke where we can see she is getting better, but Luke uses a force push and knocks her back, knocking her out. Luke rushes over to aid her, grabs her arm and here is where Rey siphons of some of Luke's lifeforce. You can see the prosthetic fall off and her limb starts healing. She comes to and Luke says something like "you are very strong in the Force, I've heard of rumors of those that could use the Force for healing but I've never run into anyone that could actually do it. But you still have a lot to learn, if you want to be able to face Kylo Ren and aid me in stopping this dark presence that has come back".
This fixes a lot of what is wrong with the final act of Force Awakens. It shows that Rey has some ability, but needs a lot of work to develop it. It establishes Kylo as a credible threat. It introduces us to the heretofore unseen power of Force healing, also setting Rey apart as being unique but she very nearly kills Luke accidentally when instinctively employing it, so she has to spend a lot more time learning how to wield and control her abilities.
There's other stuff you could do to fix Last Jedi, but having it primarily be about Rey's training and then cutting back to the other plot with the rebels, would go along way towards fixing what fans didn't like about it. If you were still going to kill off Han, Last Jedi is where to do it. You can then set Rey up for an "Empire" style confrontation with Kylo, but she fails because he gets in her head, trying to seduce her to the dark side. She only manages with great effort to fend him off.
I could go on, but I've already written a wall of text and, well....we got the movies we got. I would love to see the George Lucas cut,of episode 9 that they decided to not use. It would be interesting to see how he would have fixed things. Rumor has it, that it was superior to the edit they went with, but I guess we will never know.
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I'll reserve judgement on Avatar 2 until I actually see it. But I don't think it is going to make its money back.
I'll give you that Superman is a bad hero, he's always been way too overpowered.
Luke has an actual character arc. He goes from being an impatient, whiny farm boy to apprentice Jedi in Empire to Jedi Master in Jedi. In Empire he gets his ass handed to him by Vader because he stops his training to run off to save his friends. In Jedi he realizes that force is not the way he is going to defeat Palpatine and redeem his father, so he lays down his weapon rather than kill his own father and potentially become like him in the process.
Contrast this with Rey, who handily beats Kylo Ren at the end of Force Awakens with virtually no training. We are constantly told Kylo is so dangerous, yet he turns out to be a paper tiger. Each time he goes up against Rey, she beats him. You don't see Rey suffer any setbacks or hardships. Rey has new abilities in each film, but we don't get any sense of how these were developed they are just "there". Contrast with Luke, who has a fairly limited set of powers yet is shown being more competent in their use throughout the trilogy.
Since you mentioned male heroes benefiting from magic, how about Bruce Willis in Die Hard? There's no magic there, only a character who is relying on his wits and improvisation in a dangerous scenario and (admittedly) a ton of luck.
If you want examples of well-written female leads, I give you these:
Sarah Connor: she is an everyday woman working as a waitress, is thrust into a dangerous situation. With help from a mysterious stranger, she manages to destroy an unstoppable killing machine mainly by finding the courage to not give up. By Terminator 2 she is a legitimate badass.
Ellen Ripley: She's essentially a space trucker who watches her entire crew be slaughtered, but manages to keep her wits about her and work up a plan to kill the alien by using the self destruct on the ship. At the end when she is in the escape pod and realizes the alien is still alive, she keeps her cool and flushes it out the airlock, despite being terrified.
Clarice Starling: Jodie Foster as Clarice Starling uses solid, procedural detective work to track down a killer. When she goes maverick and tries to bring him in on her own, she is nearly killed. While she does benefit from a bit of luck at the end, it is her FBI training that allows her to capitalize on that luck, and kill the bad guy.
I'm struggling to think of more examples from the 90s and 00s, I'm sure there are some I just can't think of any right now. The writing for female characters really started to take a nose dive from roughly 2010 on.
Yes, there is a lot of hand-wavy "because its magic" business with super hero movies, I mean...how could there not be? Thor is a literal god, after all. But when Thor gets booted out of Asgard, he has to be worthy to pick up Mjolnir again. He can't actually pick it up until he's worthy of having that power back.
Don't get me wrong, I like well-written female leads. I really, really wanted to like Rey. I thought she had a lot of potential for development, but she was badly written.
Rey is an example of a Mary Sue. So is Captain Marvel, and Ms. Marvel, and several more I could name.
What's a Mary Sue? https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/CommonMarySueTraits
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I am beginning to think, with the kind of crap that Hollywood is putting out now, that it is some kind of money-laundering operation. Because I can't think how they expect to spend 250 million, or 500 million, or a billion on stuff the audience doesn't want to see and then make their money back.
Nobody wants to go see a movie where the male lead is turned into a clown or an incompetent dope, or a cherished hero brought low in order to make a new character seem better. Nobody wants to go see a movie where women are just magically good at everything because "girl power!".
Just watching the sort of movies that have been getting greenlit over the last ten years, I can't help but think that this is exactly what is going through the studio execs minds: "I know what will get asses in the seats! Let's ruin the franchise forever!"
So I'm going with some combo of money-laundering, catering to China, or hell even an active demoralization campaign. Because they sure as hell don't seem to give a crap about actually making a profit from the ever-shrinking American middle class.
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On 12/8/2022 at 9:23 AM, fae_alba said:
not sneaky...overworked. Means I am billing over 40 hours a week to clients. In other words overworked and underpaid!
You might want to consider shopping around, it sounds like your company is giving you the old screw-job.
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You think maybe his favorite song is Freebird?
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Your best bet for tutorials online for AM is either the Barry Zundel tutorials that he has uploaded to YouTube, or the forum members here. Rob is correct that any other links to resources that were on the forum have since been lost to time. You might get lucky with using the Wayback Machine on Archive.org in order to go to some specific websites that you may know of, but generally anything posted to the forum is long since defunct or link-rotted.
I believe this is the full list of Barry's tutorials here:
And also, I feel I must recommend Robcat's tutorials, he's got quite a bit of good stuff he's uploaded over the years. Rob also runs Live Answer Time on Saturdays (most Saturdays, anyway, with the exception of holidays) and that's an excellent resource for getting some one-on-one assistance if you're struggling with something.
Anechoic Chamber == Madness?
in Off Topic
Posted
Supposedly that is the attraction behind sensory deprivation chambers. Your mind can't handle being cut off from sensory input, so it starts generating auditory and visual hallucinations.
For a short period of time I imagine you get some trippy effects, probably the reason people would consider doing such a thing. But multiple hours or days of something like that, you'd probably go nuts.