Darkwing

The great thing is that there's resources such as Skype now that would allow for real time lessons and whatnot.

As I was reading your post I couldn't help but think of Axanar and then you mentioned it. They got something really incredible going on. Next pay cheque I fully intend to support, especially after the 20 minute prelude they released. Sorry for the OT

This is all really fantastic advice and I highly appreciate it! It's late so I won't make a big long post, but it's quite obvious to me that my expectations are very low haha. You guys are here spewing numbers like 20 bucks an hour and I'm here thinking I'll be lucky to get 20 bucks for a project. But like I said, this is all just in a consideration/fact-finding phase. Just a way to make a little money on the side of my (minimum wage) management job. Like it's not even a goal for me to start up a full blown business. Spent my whole life watching my parents fail at that, but I'm at least interested in the prospect of new challenges. Again thanks for the advice so far! Like I said it's late and I'll re-read everything with a clearer head in the morning!

Ah! Very clever thinking! And as I understand it, if it's not an "official" business, I can do it all under the table. Unless by some miracle I make more than I'm expecting, in which case i can claim it at year end as other income.

So over the past year or two, I've started volunteering my services to some fan productions. So far it's been a great experience and I feel a sense of accomplishment as I'm now completing projects on a very regular basis. Now I'm considering expanding that practice into something that might make a few dollars here and there. I by no means am looking to quit my day job. Rather, make a little bit of money on the side doing what I already do in my spare time. Thing is, I'm not really sure where to start. Also I'm not entirely sure how to best "get my name out there" so to speak. I'm not looking to do big things, rather target smaller groups that need a bit of work done here and there. I have started work on a website which you can view at www.dwflash.com. If anyone has any advice or pointers or anything, please let me know. Likewise, is this viable?

I find it helps when you have to do things for other people. Whenever I do work solely for myself, it rarely ever gets completed. But if I have a client, then that almost always gets completed haha.

Same for me

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What is this sorcery?!

Whooooooaaaaaaaa!!!! Crazy awesome!

Sorry Robert, I missed your post! From what I understand, the bulk of the audio that was recorded ended up being too poor to salvage. Windy day or something I guess. Randy also likes to push himself to try new things and ADR is his most recent self-challenge.

Happy birthday Gerald! Thanks for all you've done over the years!!

Thanks! Haha yeah, that would be a tricky and interesting challenge! I'm slated for one more vignette from Season 2 which is purely space effects, so back to the poly world on that one. Then I'm slated for two vignettes in Season 3. I'll have more composite work in Season 3 as part of their main set is now a CG component that I have to build and then integrate into the footage whenever it appears. Then I have a big one. A full blown episode near the end of season 3 which has approximately 26 VFX shots of all sorts. Everything from space shots, to composite work, to CG set work (though my brother may paint that set and we'll just use his matte). Then there's going to be more creature work in I think Season 4 which is partially filmed now. Though I think it's actually a mechanical creature, so that should be fun! And in between that, i'm getting a video game ready for public beta testing and working on special effects for a Star Trek group based in Newfoundland! And when I'm not doing that, I'm helping to manage a movie theatre for 35 hours a week So busy busy busy haha.

Thanks!! Here's a (quirky) behind the scenes vid I put together regarding the creature effects for this ep! DkwyDKdJvRA

It's finally been released! The most recent vignette from Project: Potemkin. This features an alien creature which I had to build, rig, animate and composite into the already shot footage. Many thanks to Robert, Rodney, Mark and a few others for helping out with advice on this one!! [vimeo]98791336[/vimeo] http://vimeo.com/98791336

Thanks guys! Those are all exactly the type of things I was looking for! I figured it was high time to start learning some of the more conceptual aspects to CG work. Payday is Tuesday so I think I'll order a book then, perhaps Digital Lighting as I've been taking an increasingly higher interest in lighting these days. Feel free to suggest more books too, I only said 5 just to make you guys think about it for a few minutes Hopefully in time it'll be able to be more than 5 books that I order haha

Hey all! I've been progressively trying to get to the point of being able to do freelance work to some extent (I even made a website!) but I still feel like there is much to learn before I'm ready. Certain concepts I've gotten pretty solid (with much help from you folks!) but there's always more to be learned! Anyways, I was wondering what the top 5 books are that you might recommend for doing CG work. It can be ranging from any topic from lighting, to animating, to modeling etc. Just what are the top 5 books you think anyone like myself should read when doing this sort of work? Thanks!

So for the first time in ever, I have a pretty decent PC. 3.5ghz Intel i7 quadcore, 16gb ram, 2gb nvidia graphics card. So how come my render for AM still takes 5 minutes? And I'm not rendering anything all that intense BTW. Furthermore, when I pop open task manager, it's only using like tops 15% of my resources. My PC is set to high performance and I gave AM realtime priority in task manager, but that hasn't caused AM to use any more resources. Is this as good as it gets for AM's processing power? Or am I missing something (cause I don't really know much about getting a computer to run at peak efficiency)?

Here's a quick animation of the cape. It's better than before but still not working the way I expect it to. cape.mov It's not falling the way I want. I want it to be more like this: http://trailers.apple.com/trailers/wb/batm...s/Batman_02.gif https://encrypted-tbn1.gstatic.com/images?q...NiXwyN9c2LjvYTw Any thoughts?

Thanks! Also, I'm having some problems with my cape. I've increased the density of the mesh which has helped quite a bit, but it's acting like sheet metal more than anything. The problem is that I can't seem to find a good middle ground. I need the fabric to be loose and light and bunch up when it hits the ground instead of bouncing back up. I'm finding if I make it a loose fabric, it does all of this jittering and bouncing when it detects solid objects. Where's the middle ground in here?

Thanks! Here's my prelim work on the cape. I'm going to try something a little differently than I have been.

Ah, thanks, seems to be working now! Of course needs a lot of tweaking!

Thanks Rodney, I'll try those out later tonight. I have a question though. I started to work on the cape and went to simulate it and it fell off of batman. So I cracked open TAoAM and in that tut (back in v13) there was an ability to add a custom attached group or something, however, in v17 this no longer seems to be the case. So how do I make Batman's cape stay attached around his neck?

Yea Gerry, I'll probably have to go with a decal for the symbol. Anyways, I managed to get some more work done on him. His utility belt is modelled as are his, well I'm not sure what they're called, the things on his forearms. I still need to do more work to his jaw and cheeks and still need to tweak the legs. Then all that's left is hands, boots and cape! I'm not entirely sure how I'm going to go about modelling the hands and boots though, they could be a bit of a challenge for me.

I broadened the neck some and then made a new symbol (which took longer than the last one for some reason). Anywho, here it is. Also, I haven't touched the legs since the CFA so the knees for example are... not right Also it looks like I messed up the curvature of the neck a little. Will probably work on that tomorrow.