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No more Randy Newman references.
2002-04-03 08:50:58
EK: No, no, that's quite alright. I'm saying that it's been that kind of week to have those kind of errors showing up. ;)
Although these times are when I wish I had an MD player--it's a 16+ hour drive to Vegas, and in a 15-person van, there's not even that much room to pull out a sketchbook. Maybe I can wedge in a small one, to do my BIG SMASHY ROBOT designs on.
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Shame, shame, sha- "Shut up!"
2002-04-03 08:23:28
EK: Yes. -_-;;
This is what happens when you've been assembling XLR connectors all week, that have been made by a company called "Deltron".
And things wil get even crazier on the two-day road trip to NAB in Vegas this weekend. Yaaaay.
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Let me tell you about the Proto Culture/ if you don't know the culture / here's the whole structure
2002-04-02 20:24:50
Amizadai: Er..that's frightening, as well as being deeply tragic.
I wish I could come up with something heartfelt to say...but our family doesn't have/see many violent deaths. The closest I can think of is my grandmother's brother, who died in the Bataan Death March, or a neighbor in my old college dorm who suicided in his room. :/
I wish I could laugh at what kyburg's posting about...as it is, that's ALL I can sell myself as right now. Hopefully my 3DSmax 4 quick-start book will come in a few days, so I can get up to speed...considering I've learned Maya, XSI, Blender--everything EXCEPT max. :/
I threw up a bunch of old sketches and the storyboards(at http://welcome.to/nowloading) for my two animation projects, just so that inquiring minds can see the train of thought that goes into this sort of thing.
And for those that recognized the title, what album was the song on? I'm still looking for Deltron 3000.
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GRAR^2
2002-03-26 22:27:58
MCWagner: It's not keyframe animation itself that's to blame, it's the lazy sods using it.
See, the defaults are usually to use Bezier curves between keyframes. If you don't go back and tweak the curves, it ends up linearly transforming between keyframes, and generating "floaty" motion by default.
To illustrate: http://gizmatron.mesmer.com/Movies/studmovies/sfrancisCaution.MOV
This was my final project, and was formed from two of the exercises Tony White had us do for his "2D-In-3D" lectures. For the first assignment, we had to create a scene with three balls. What happened in the scene was up to us, but we had to show that the three were different(and not with textures). The first clip was what I came up with; a smart-moving golf ball bounces in, followed by a (slightly stupider) hard rubber ball, and then by one of those air-filled rubber balls used on playgrounds(who comes in like a sumo wrestler). It took me a work-week to make, and most of that week was adjusting the IPO curves to get the balls to have very different movement.
It's entertaining how things never change; Tony didn't know the first thing about 3D animation. However, once we showed him the IPO curves, he grasped the concept right off the bat, and began to show us the varied tricks for getting more "believable" motion, simply out of the curve editors.
Frankly, I don't even notice human animation in 3D films anymore--after the spectacular hype-machine that was The Spirits Within, my mindset is that realistic human animation is still a dream in the future, and I don't pay serious attention to any human characters at all(unless they're intended to be cute, like Boo from Monsters, Inc.).
I'm not a big fan of mo-cap either. To me, it's the added mark that you sculpt the animation to the character, rather than just depending on a precaptured set of movements(plus, since it tends to fall on its face for blatantly non-humanoid characters). At Spirit, a group of kids came in from Digipen to use a magnetic mo-cap system for their game project. I wanted to shake them so badly...but I guess the game companies are using it more and more to pick up the slack in their production schedules. CG-char once noted that mo-cap was "the devil's rotoscope", and I quite agree..
..of course, it makes me look like a hypocrite, since for the past week and a half I've been rotoscoping(in Combustion) a pair of boxing fighters. From grainy footage of FX's coverage of the Toughman Competition. Whoopee. Still, I get a free trip to Vegas for the National Association of Broadcasters convention. Two-day roadtrip! Whoopee^2.
Things did improve today however, as my mighty Photoshop skills were called upon...to put the boss's head on top of a ten-year-old girl's body. If I was getting paid for this, I'd chalk it up as another "workplace horror" story. As it is, once the image is finished, I'll see if I can secretly throw it up on a server to illustrate.
Note the title; my parents have picked up on my buried desire to do a video for this year, and have commenced nagging me(oddly enough, they love what I turn out). Unfortunately, most of my ideas either rely on footage that I can't get easily(Combustible Campus Guardress), or footage that's a pain to get(getting the dub tapes for Birdy The Mighty, and borrowing a friend's capture card). They're even forcing me to listen to Randy Newman for ideas. -_-
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Lupin! Lupin! Lupin!
2002-03-19 21:49:44
EK: That "Readymade" mix rawks. I wish any of the colleges I went to had the quality of radio stations you have. :/
MCWagner: I'm highly in awe that you've sat down and made a thoughtful critique of Heavy Metal from an animation fan's perspective.
I actually found the "extra" segment added to be a bit boring. I should really go back and watch it again; since that was 4+ years ago..
Digital_Sakura: Er. Please, don't try to blindly make a "gameplay" video. I've seen what happens when someone tries to take random Counter-Strike footage and set it to a remix from the Evangelion movie soundtrack.
If you'd like to see what I consider "works", shoot me an email--I can send you a video done with Virtual On: Oratorio Tangram clips that's pretty energetic.
In other news, Mecha has a pseudo-job/internship at Spirit Studios, acting as a network/video/3D gopher. No pay yet, but since the company is producing the background footage/running the competition for the NAB XYZ And You Shootout, opportunities are just around the corner...?
JOURNAL: Mechaman (Scott Francis)
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