smudgedragon: watercolor of dragon cleaning its magic pearl (Default)

A simple, straight up walk cycle of a horse. Yeah, it's not perfect, but at some point you have to stick a fork in it and call it done.

My first traditional animation that I've done in a long, long time. Reminded me very much why I don't work in traditional anymore as my hand swelled up tot he size of a grapefruit while working on this. But I do miss working traditionally. It's good to get back to the basics.

Done in Flash 4 - but using all traditional techniques. Nothing fancy here.
smudgedragon: watercolor of dragon cleaning its magic pearl (Default)
Been working on Longing for Home - still rendering the new starfields. Taking longer than I was initially thinking thanks to the HASH upgrade killing shadow's bug. Having to re render all the original shots as Alpha Mats then composite the stars in over the top. Not a horridly interesting job, and very time consuming, but a simple possess that just needs a little grunt work to complete.

Sorry things aren't more interesting, but someone has to do it. ^.^

Back to the render farm.
smudgedragon: watercolor of dragon cleaning its magic pearl (Default)
Ugh - So I have made the decision last night that after I finish Longing for Home, I'm giving up on Hash Animation:Master.

This was a hard and painful dissension since I've used the program for 10+ years now and I do like it very much, mostly for it's actual animation tools. I have a fondness for limited pallets and tool sets, using skills more than tools to get the job done. There have been great things done with A:M so it's not like it's not capable of reaching that level of existence.

But...

A:M has suffered a lot these past couple of years. Most of it self induced. The program itself is easy "cracked". So much so that it's impossible to sell in the Asian markets due to all the illegal downloads. The bottom "consumer" end of 3D market has also had it's feet kicked out from under it by Blender, an open source 3D program. Combine that with a company attitude (most imposed on it by it's owner) that it *won't* compete with the high end programs because professional artists are "all ass-holes". You end up with a company that has purposefully chained itself into a death spiral.

I've also been really fighting the tools the more complected I try to get with my productions. If it's just a single, simple character or two it's fine. But as I try to get more complicated with what I'm trying to achieve, all hell breaks loose. We're talking full on screaming hissy-fits at Micca. Yes, animation should make you think hard about what your doing. That's much different than sending your stress level though the roof in frustration.

Don't get me wrong - there are some really good people working on that program. They recently did a new particle engine. There fur and hair have come a long ways. So has there cloth. They now have a 3rd party 3D pain program plug in that looks pretty decent too. I, unfortunately, have not had the luxury of trying new versions past v13.

All that, however, does not help the fact I'm seeing less and less high-end work coming out of Hash users. Hell, I'm seeing less and less Hash users all together. The less of a user pool, the less knowledge floating around to learn from. In the end I feel like the company won't be around for much longer. I'm starting to feel like I need to jump ship before the run gets pulled out from under me.

But where do I go from here? The current consumer end is in love with Blender. After working three months in it I really want to drop kick the UI on it's head and shoot my computer. Not really an option. My preferred platform would be Maya at this point, along with some plug-ins and other programs to get my up to date. This would cost me about the same as buying a new car.

I just don't know what to do any more, short of just not trying to do any animation anymore.

Pardon me, I need to slink off and cry.
smudgedragon: watercolor of dragon cleaning its magic pearl (Default)
So as you know, I've been laxed about finishing my animations. A fair chunk of this is due to technical issues. Mainly, my modeling and texture-mapping blow chunks. I keep hitting brick walls. Animation, I am rusty on, but do not suck. Storytelling is my strength and is why I want to animate in the first place. Cinematography is workman-like at best. But modeling/rigging/texturing - I freely admit I suck. And to pursue independent animation, I have to be good at everything. T-T

My latest folly: trees.

I've been up against a wall with trees for Longing for Home. Finally scraped up enough money to try purchasing a tree model from TurboSquid, after it had gone up in price (of course). Nice model, available as a 3ds model which is one of the few things Hash A:M can import as a prop. And you know what? FAIL! First off, the tree was textured mapped with tiffs. Hash can't read tiffs. Targas? sure. Jpgs, you bectcha. Tiffs - right out. And with how Hash wants to process the model into it's system is by having each and every poly on the model have it's own unique texture, thousands upon thousands. Needless to say Hash barfs, for hours on end. Have to kill the program on the process level or the machine just won't let it go, not even to restart. I can load it in without issue without the texture, but cannot reattach the texture when I do so. I'm going to try one last thing, but otherwise, these past two days have been a complete wash.

And people wonder why I don't do more animation....

EDIT: Nope - last attempt... FAIL! =le sigh=
smudgedragon: watercolor of dragon cleaning its magic pearl (Default)
Adventures of Blanc has updated!
Bureau of Mana Investigations has updated!

(Swiped from [livejournal.com profile] tugrik)

This is what you get if you channel surf too fast! ^.^



cute animation filled with action. Don't blink, you might miss something.
smudgedragon: (Anime Smudge)
Yesterday was Lazy-ass day. Spend most of it playing WoW and eating hotdogs and IBC rootbeer floats. Today, it's poking at animation.

Updated film posted on YouTube - Stage6

I cracked down earlier this week and worked on the shot of Rose pulling out the Recorder. While it is still "not accurate" it's at least in the ball-park. I can now comfortably move on to the rest of the piping animation and get that polished up.

Snagged Pat online and talked to him a bit about the star-field. We'll see how things go on that. *hope* *hope*

Also started painting the background mat for the grassy field. 'Bout at the 2/3's mark on that and it's officially in it's "OMG this looks like CRAP" stage. But I've had other painting I've done that hit that and came out A-okay so I haven't written it off yet. ^.^

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