Darkwing

OK, here's another try at it. This time I made him swing his legs out in front of him and then arced his back backwards and then forwards, more like he's jumping in mid-air. I think he still needs a harder landing and that my timing is off some. I also expect his right leg to be further back so that he can have balance when he lands. shot5.mov

I always use the white timeline, less confusing for me (insert sheepish emoticon here). As for the key framing, yeah, they're all on the same frame. I quite dislike keyframing which unfortunately is the whole methodology behind animation in general. But yeah, so basically don't make him his feet straighten out for the landing so close to the ground correct? Have more space between him and the ground so that when he "falls" there's actual shock for him to absorb, thus the knee bending action

Landing's always the tricky part they say shot4.mov

yep...my memory is just that bad

oh and who's that character you used, is it one of yours, or one that comes with AM, cause it's a nice character that might be good for these tests due to having certain appendages that thom hasn't

Dang, well, yeah, you're good. Motion and general animation technique is something else I'm trying to play with in these tests, I can do it with real life actors, not so great with the CG ones currently, but I'm trying So, all the advice you guys can give will be appreciated!

Something I continually have trouble with is blending two actions together. For instance, if you look at this vid closely, after the strut, he snaps into the take off position. I've tried the Blend and Add options for the action in the choreography but with no success. What exactly should I be doing to make two actions blend into each other?

yeah, that's sort of the effect I'm trying to mimic. I need to speed up his take off, it has to be like a bullet of sorts. Soon time for some telekinesis stuff

So I'm kinda fiddling with superhero type effects and currently I'm working on flying! shot2.mov

Well I enjoy these too. Always nice to start the day off with a laugh. And they're getting really good too. The slapstick style humour is well done and the banter amongst the characters is great. The whole holo-message bit was really funny. Keep it up!

well, i was what, 16 when I first started with AM a few years ago. Aside from dabbling with Anim8or first for a few months, I hadn't done anything 3d animated. Nearly four years later, I still feel like a beginner. I've learned a lot and can do a minuscule amount compared to what everyone else can do it seems, but it is a program that would be good for starting people out I think. The concepts are fairly basic and easy to grasp hold of, but yeah, learn a lot before you start teaching because it will get overwhelming fast!

looks great, makes me wish I had all that nice software, but alas, I do not.

looks a bit Buster Crabbe Flash Gordon to me

Actually, strike up, except really really quickly

drag and drop is all that there is too it on a mac. could you tell me though, are you able to read newly installed fonts on your AM?

yes, you also missed the bit about giving me money

well, i'm not using streaks, the streak method was just killing my processor. It's just simple blur particles with an extremely low initial velocity. My frames are now over 20 min. The whole reflections on things kinda kills it! by my calculations, I still have approx 15 hours left to render and it's been rendering for over 7. This will be my personal longest render, I'm surprised I've had the patience so far! but so far it seems to be turning out all right. no, if i put more time into and stuff like you guys would, it could look more real and whatnot, but for my purposes, it seems to be doing just fine

So, here's my flame. I used normal particle sprites. In this pic, my match is in motion so the flame streak is longer than if still, but it seems to be working fine. It's still rendering out the scene (now taking over 15 min a frame)

tis animated, it's a producer label. I;m thinking I'll scratch the reflectivity on the flame, but it will still be silver flame

looking at your flame test, that looks like it could work, i'd just need to spread it out and change some of it's attributes. i'm thinking the reflective bit may not be necessary

i don't. see it's for a stylized logo I'm doing, so imagine like Silver Surfer's texture except as a flame

because my flame has to come off of a particular object (3d text and other things) plus my flame ultimately has to be silver and reflective too

So something I'm trying to do is make flames, something like this: I figured particles wouldn't give me the random shapes I want, so I'm trying fluid. Now fluid might work if I could add turbulence or something to it, because currently, the particles for fluid are too round and not wavy like Fire.mov If anybody has any insight or ideas, please, post!

I was attempting something a few years ago with flash, using image sequences as my MCs and whatnot and it can be done. The downside is that it guzzles up space more than using the vector tools of flash. I can code AS2 but I do not have my own copy of flash and haven't used it in 8 months. Taking a game on is a bit of a time consumer too. When I did some game work with flash, I literally spent 3 years on one game that I didn't finish cause I ran out of access to flash

this definitely fits how I imagined the character as well. About your animatic, I been meaning to write, got a few things to point out that I noticed, good and bad, but all in all, it's really making headway