Darkwing

Ok awesome! I'll let you know how it goes then!

No I already have a paypal account, but some sites that allow you to pay through paypal actually only let you do it via credit card through paypal. It's weird but I have come across it before

Thanks! Another quick question, it says I can pay with paypal, but is that limited to just a credit card or can I use money on my paypal account to pay for this?

I help out with the odd VFX bit for a Star Trek fan series called Project Potemkin. Anyways, they're based in Atlanta Georgia I think and I know they were featured recently at some local conventions (some of which I think were primarily Trek cons) so they're definitely out there! That said, can someone still get a DVD and if so, how much?

Yeah. I shoulda bought a pro. Oh well. It's just it's a pretty short life cause I've only had it 3 years, but it deteriorates fast, both physically and operationally

All very interesting. How much did the upgrade cost? It might be too new for my laptop anyways and I did just upgrade to Snow Leopard, so I have little reason to upgrade again so soon.

Ok that is seriously very cool!

Interesting. If I had the money to blow, I'd ditch this pathetic laptop of mine altogether. How does Mountain Lion run on the whole though? ANything stand out to you?

Well, as has been mentioned more or less above, the information is essentially there. So in my opinion, with that in mind, one doesn't necessarily have to be a technical genius to put something like a reference manual together. What they would have to be good at/willing to do...is scour EVERYTHING! Compile everything from the old techref, AMA, Wiki, The Forum and make it concise and easily navigable. I agree, this shouldn't really be so much about the "art" but the technology. In fact TAoAM is in theory about the well, art of animation master. On that note, I kinda always saw TAoAM as the Quick Start Guide that I think Nancy mentioned. Probably, in an ideal world, there would be two editions of the tech ref. One is comprehensive and mind bogglingly long. The other is a quick and dirty jump start on interface, basic modelling, rigging, action and chor tools. Similar to TAoAM but lacking the art element and just focusing on the toolset more or less. Someone also mentioned about people not necessarily knowing what exactly to call something, making searching difficult. I know first hand (as I'm sure we all do) that this can be hard. How many times have you seen something done once, but try and search the forum for it and you can have a doozy of a time locating it. One would hope that with a more logical organizational approach to the ref itself, that one wouldn't need to fully know the correct terminology of something. But if you knew it was related to say materials, then you start by looking at the materials section (which would house naturally all things materials). None of this jumping around stuff that the current ref seems to be plagued by. I think Robert was the one who brought up the interactivity. We have these various pieces of information resources at our disposal (AMA, TAoAM etc) so what we need is some way to fully unify all of them. Each one obviously has their pros and cons, but finding some way of kinda integrating them all together in some fashion could potentially be beneficial. I like the idea of something interactive that can also be easily converted to a book. I know it would be helpful to have what would essentially be a "dictionary of Animation Master" sitting next to my computer. And come to think of it, what I do have is Rogers' book and TAoAM. As great as both of those are, there's still a lot lacking from them. As for the wiki, yeah, I dunno what's up with that. The wiki is probably the best interactive method I can think of right now too, but on that note, I think it would be a good idea to be able relatively quickly and easily, compile it all into book format too. It could just be a victim of all that server stuff Jason was doing there a while back.

o.O This topic exploded in the few hours I was at work! Lots of reading to do!!

I think for that what would have to be done is a couple things. Asking those who know about those features to explain them, second, scour the forum for material relating to it and draw from that and third, use the current tech ref as much as possible. I think the goals here are more to reorganize and add the newer stuff, than to re-write the entire book from scratch.

And Robert, here;s Maya's. I haven't explored it too much, but it does appear to be quite...thorough http://download.autodesk.com/us/maya/2011help/index.html

You beat me to it, I was gonna offer the same! Maybe a joint effort? Would definitely take time, but I think it could actually be a bit of fun!

Has anyone ever thought of just reorganizing it? Also it looks like it's 4 years old, so it's definitely gonna be missing some features anyways

Or sell the animation as an app. Doesn't have to just be a game to be an app, just throwing that out there (probably a lame idea, I've never looked into it )

Well hey, at least you did your research! And that is good to hear that you can sell it! Well maybe your format in and of itself will help then as it's not like "oh, I can just watch this whole thing online for free, why should I buy one?"

Not to be a pessimist, but I wouldn't count on it. I think most fan productions of your nature pretty much only generate revenue via Youtube partnership and that sorta stuff, and even with that I don't expect it to be much. Now I do see straight up donations as something that people seem to be somewhat into. I follow this one production (The Danger Element) and though he will be selling DVDs, what he's done is ask straight up for donations and much like you did with kickstarter, has various giveaways for each level. (posters, DVDs etc). From what I can tell he's generated close to $8,000. Also, I'm gonna admit, I'm biased to DVDs not being a great seller due to the fact that my dad worked for a CD/DVD store for 7 years ago 1.5 years ago, the whole chain shut down. It's not the only one either, the even bigger DVD/CD chains have been and are closing down. So that said, I personally think offering up DVDs as an option is all right, you might get a few blokes buy them but I wouldn't count on them being that big a revenue generator. Also you might run into problems with CBS if you start selling them... just throwing that out there.

What about adding a sort of gassy swirl as well, y'know, from planets and light and stuff being sucked in? Also very cool

This is the thread to which I was referring earlier

There was a very cool thread some years ago about making a black hole, you should search the forum, it might still be kicking around!

I was just looking this up the other day actually. Ever since Snow Leopard, Mac has the option of being either 32bit or 64bit, it mostly depends on if the hardware is compatible. There is some check by going into Terminal and typing some command, but I forget it. Anyways, if your Mac is newer, than you most likely have the option to boot into 64bit if it's not set as the default in the first place. On bootup, I believe the procedure is to press the 6 and 4 keys until the screen goes grey and the swirly thing starts or something. I don't fully remember, but I'll dig it up again. That said, I think AM only ships to Mac as a 32bit version (but then again, maybe it's like other mac stuff where it's kinda like both and runs on both 32 and 64bit, but I really don't know)

Santa vs Ninjas...I like this already!

That is true. I guess in all actuality it should remind me more of my workplace than MST3K

Hehe, reminds me of MST3K a little

Thanks! We're hoping that sometime in the coming months we'll be able to put together more of an actual trailer especially considering that we have most of the voice overs in now!!