jinxtigger

Sat, 03 Oct 2009 00:49:50 GMT

Suddenly a mad fan of Raving Rabbids- after a day working like a nut and missing breakfast, lunch and dinner, I can so totally relate to DAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHH

:)

Ow

Fri, 25 Sep 2009 02:01:09 GMT

So, in a very bikerwalla moment, I did all kinds of things today other than draw my comic, set myself up with some new tools for shading that backfired (the intent was really to see if I could have more convenient stuff to work with, and that part was OK), drew and shaded everything totally wrong, told a music project that I wasn't going to be able to track today, went all day without food barring a PBJ (I think...) and a few crackers, and now find I want to be killed for my sins.

Ya know, it's harder to find anybody ACCUSING me of sins, but I'm feelin' em.

Selfcare severely sucks today.

Time for a taco dinner (some prep is pre-done already) and a video, and then probably collapsing in bed at a very late hour and still setting an alarm- because I swear life worked better when I got up and was a maniac about drawing and cartooning FIRST and then failing to get anything else important done. Now, it's like I'm all 'only weekdays? woohoo!' and getting a million things done that needed to be done for the last year, some of them very important, and then losing my fucking mind over the damn comic.

This is not totally wrong. Nothing else I do has like 300 readers. I just have to get the hell back into a state of discipline about certain things and stop freaking out and being blocked, because my rule is blocks aren't allowed for certain things. And so, when I am blocked anyway, I will always bust through the block- but it's torture.

Either quit completely or get back into the state of productive I was when I was even waaaaay crappier than I am now...

Writer's Block: In a Jam

Thu, 02 Apr 2009 19:13:29 GMT

If you were in trouble or ran afoul of the law, which fictional detective or investigator—from tv, movies, or books—would you want to help you?

View 500 Answers

Nero Wolfe.
No further explanation necessary :)

Sat, 03 Jan 2009 00:22:38 GMT

So tired, trying to force myself to still work more

Tue, 23 Dec 2008 03:58:28 GMT

Also it's the second day in a row www.tallyroad.com has got 1000 hits- the second time, with 250 unique visitors. It seems like the new page design and the added navigation stuff is working for people. I'm still frustrated that I'll be missing (or late) a day sometime over Xmas, but I'll chill out. It seems I want to do that Howard Taylor (Schlock Mercenary) "never missed a day in X many years" thing. But you know, how many people do that to that extreme? I'll do what I can but it's possible I'll miss a day, and if I do I'll give advance warning.

I'm trying a new thing- instead of fussing over pencils for hours, I'm trying out the idea of just inking directly. I did that this morning and was done HOURS earlier than usual, which was a real eye-opener. I might need to work a little looser and just wing it a bit more...

Tue, 23 Dec 2008 03:52:39 GMT

Just got a fan mail for my Airwindows AU plugin work from Nick Jameson.

Who?

Turns out it's the guy who produced some of Foghat's biggest hits. You know- "slow riiide! take it easy!" that stuff.

There is nothing like getting fanmail from a guy who has produced/mixed/whatever music that is part of the soundtrack of your head...

Admittedly when I was growing up I was all about the progrock and didn't know from Foghat, but still...

Sun, 19 Oct 2008 16:20:10 GMT

I've just gone live with a site redesign at http://www.tallyroad.com which removes the text story updates (which nobody was reading, at least nobody who had email and was willing to use it) and puts up a shoutbox and a place to make daily remarks.

I don't know if it's going to get use, but I do have some daily readers (around 20 or so) and maybe I can get to know them a little more now :) I have met two elsewhere on the internet who actually liked what I was doing, so I'll do more of that.

Anyone who isn't aware of it- my friends list is extensively furry, so you're exactly the people to tell that I am running a furry webcomic called Tally Road at http://www.tallyroad.com DAILY. All the drawing is quickly helping my art grow up, and that seems to be working for people. The story is basically a more comedic treatment of what the original big dramatic story was, and that suits me fine :)

Since my friends list is so extensively furry, I'll mention here what I'm not going to mention directly on the comic page- I am also running a FurAffinity page at http://www.furaffinity.net/user/jinxtigr/ , also DAILY but more flexible and hit-or-miss maybe, which contains artwork also in my style but too adult-themed for a WebMA comic (at least the way I define it). And that stuff is watercolor-and-pigma, in full color. It's getting favorited by people and hopefully will develop into a way that I can not starve through cold winters, because everything there exists as a traditional-media artwork (but tiny- 4x3"!) that could be put on FurBid if I needed extra money, which could end up happening what with this crazy economy and all :)

Investing in artists beats investing in stocks at this point. Sexier use of paper ;)

So this is me checking in even though I'm keeping real busy-

http://www.tallyroad.com for a daily furry comic that hopefully is good to other furries (screw anybody else, frankly),
http://www.furaffinity.net/user/jinxtigr/ ONLY if you desperately seek outright furry porn (of various varieties) because life is too short not to have lusty vixens in it, and comics are not such serious business that you can't corrupt them yourself for fun.

Fri, 10 Oct 2008 18:35:34 GMT

Rather depressed by bad people today. I had a look at Something Awful again, nervously, after a long period of staying away since a guy I respect, Kris Straub, told me I shouldn't really be there since they're not my audience.

I'd turned up with my web comic, www.tallyroad.com and got in a lot of trouble since people couldn't follow the story and were extremely offended at me for trying to make one, and then got in worse trouble when I took some of the criticisms constructively and changed everything around. I kidded around a little like "Hey, I even want to learn from bad people!" and got my ass banned for trolling, as my whole not-flipping-out attitude was taken for a manipulative evil scheme. Then once I'd been placed on probation, a guy was seen talking about my 'meltdown' as if I'd properly had one.

All admittedly depressing, but now I'm struggling with a related concept.

I wasn't sure if anybody was still dissing on me, so I was nervous, but there was none of that- instead it was the usual routine of some things being considered good, some terrible, various complaints, various effusions of knob-slobbering praise, and I was trying to figure out how that worked. What was the distinguishing factor? I think it's detachment. That place likes art where something is shut off. Either characters and stories that are so cool that they're Tom Clancied out, arrogantly stone-cold and scorning you, or stuff that's so crude and awful that it's ironically cool and doesn't care what you think, or stuff where the characters are bad, damaged people harming each other, or stuff that's quite well done but so obviously detached from any personal committment that it's like the creator isn't there, has no agenda of any sort with regard to the art.

It's all cool, it's all detachment, and I really don't think I can allow myself to even have a paw in that camp. It's not okay for me as a person to be living there. I need to be diving into whatever it is I do with the glee of an otter in a mudpuddle, and then I need to be able to handle whatever my needs are around that- because I don't have the option of playing it cool and pretending not to care. If I'm hurt, I'll need to be hurt. If I seek approval and people enjoying art I do, I'll have to seek that... and I have to hang in there somehow during this time (which will surely keep returning) where I feel extremely unwanted and unloved. I have to ride out the feelings and watch for anything I can find- a new friend, a brief compliment, etc- that will keep me going. Gotta let myself feel it.

Wed, 01 Oct 2008 02:49:48 GMT

While I am stil doing daily comics at www.tallyroad.com and daily novel updates, I've also taken on another thing that's working really well.

That's webcomic reviews, and I've done some neat ones. I'm getting some stumbleupons and very impressed comments. It all started with the comic of a guy who's doing reviews himself, and went from there. I'm hoping to get some good marquee comics asking for reviews, as I'm not interested in doing unwelcome critiques when there are people who are asking for them, but I'm also not interested in doing anything which I can't talk insightfully about- I don't do flamey and am not 'John Solomon'.

www.tallyroad.com/tldr/Review-SlaughterUDarkZoey.html - Slaughter U: Dark Zoey
www.tallyroad.com/tldr/Review-EandMu.html - E and Mu
www.tallyroad.com/tldr/Review-OddFish.html - Nobby Nobody's Odd-Fish
www.tallyroad.com/tldr/Review-GilbertandGrim.html - Gilbert and the Grim Rabbit

There should be more coming, I do have a backlog of requests some of which i fully intend to do.

Sun, 21 Sep 2008 00:10:34 GMT

www.tallyroad.com/library.html

Back on the internet for good, years later.

Tally Road now has numerous WHOLE OTHER BOOKS up on the site to read. These books got rave reviews from Miavir's Furry Literary page years ago.

Hope you like them, and they're there for good, so feel free to tell anybody.

Sun, 07 Sep 2008 04:37:21 GMT

I've just weathered a moderate to severe Gooning, about my strip Tally Road.

Namely, fierce and intelligent critique from Goons on the Something Awful forums. In response to this, I've had to admit that I just wasn't conveying story information enough, especially since I was doing that on purpose- laying a lot of scattered groundwork that would start to make sense as more information came in. But I wasn't able to do it, so I went back and added a 'narrator panel' to strips 1,5,8,12 and 18. (I'm at 24 and 25 comes out Monday)

This sucked emotionally, and I wish I was able to address it more effectively, but on the bright side I discovered that I can do narration and allow a certain Krazy Kat floweriness to the language and actually enjoy it, so it's not like I'm just wedging stuff in to please others.

I was wedging stuff in because I wasn't able to CONVEY to others what I intended to convey, and I'm just lucky that I found a way to do it that I kinda enjoy the look and feel of.

So if anyone ELSE politely gave up on Tally Road because they couldn't follow it, the original idea was that it would become more clear as further story unfolded, but I've given up on that and put in additional information in hopes it would be SOME help for the time being.

This is the new Page One.

MFM 2008 Report!

Sat, 06 Sep 2008 02:32:00 GMT

So, this is going to be very scattered because I could never sum it up. Suffice to say I had about as much fun a cat can have without quite getting laid :)

I was busily trying to get 'Fluffy' in shape for this very long journey, on the whole successfully. Fluffy averaged 30 MPG and on one leg of the journey made 40.62 mpg! This is awesome (y/y)

Down to Vestal to pick up BushyCat, the reason I was driving to Memphis. Bushy proceeded to pour luggage into the car until it leaked out the cracks in the windows, as planned. Fluffy's touring-car springs were able to handle it, though.

Days of driving and staying in motels- the most notable one was the Dead Frog Inn (frogs hop in but they don't hop out!). We had an actual dead frog on the floor. Made for much amusement, maybe less so from the motel manager. I considered this served us right for pursuing Bushy's craving for cheapness.

Pro Tip- you can drive for days and days with BushyCat and have a wonderful time if you simply learn that she is not as yiffy as she sometimes talks, and is never kidding when she warns you of things like not to talk to her while she draws. It's actually kinda funny. I would cheerfully have gone all flirty with her, but what happened instead was a kick-ass platonic friendship based on a great ability to forgive each others' eccentricities, and adult abilities to communicate needs or problems. That's kinda awesome in its own right.

We also stopped off in Luray Caverns and walked through those incredible caves and heard the 'stalactite organ' they had. It was well worth it, very cool. Also, there's a restaraunt called Uncle Pete's that is incomparably awesome on breakfast but lame and sub-Friendly's on dinner, so hit that for breakfast and prepare to be ecstatic :)

The con was great fun for me (I keep thinking of a friend who hates cons so I qualify that, but I know he hasn't the slightest problem with me enjoying things that don't excite him). I held the webcomic panel and though I didn't manage to successfully invite the Carspeckens or Jay Naylor, all of whom were at the con, I actually met each of them separately. I cordially invited the Carspeckens to attend and told them how much I liked Faux Pas, and overlapped Jay's congoing experience in even more interesting ways. The panel was great- very intense and infodumpy as I coughed up everything I could think of that I'd learned from others over the last year or so. It might even have helped somebody, what more could you ask?

I was drawing Daily Kitten on little cards at the con. I'm still evolving that stuff- hot to get a color card scanner now- might be going natural-media with Daily Kitten on a more regular basis if I like how it works. I want to be able to draw at cons, not just on the computer. I've also just discovered that Sharpie Pens are just as nice as nib pens and Black Magic for lines- the Sharpie nib does get cloggy on some surfaces though. Still, I may have replaced my Pilot G2s for paper-drawings with the new Sharpies. Such a cool black on Avery matte inkjet business cards.

I sat in on Artist's Alley, but didn't make back my five bucks. Didn't sell a single thing in fact- it was all little gags drawn on cards, like teeny cartoons. But, at least two-thirds of the people who looked at them laughed at something, and some of them outright said 'hey, these are funny'. This is a good sign for continuing to make comics :)

I played a game with Smrgol called 'Petals Around The Rose', along with a very intelligent dragon furry who was struggling mightily with it. Smrgol now has a new appreciation for devious cat brains- I got my five correct answers immediately upon being shown one roll and told what the number was. Possibly two rolls- at any rate I was like 'mew!' and promptly became an initiate. I don't know what this means other than cats are devious thinkers, but I'm very pleased to have demolished the puzzle so effortlessly :) the funny thing was, the dragon (who was a very decent and intelligent fellow, obviously trying to construct algorithms in his head the whole time) began starting to get right answers when he didn't overthink it. I insisted that he obviously had several draconic brains, and one of them had figured out the puzzle but the other ones hadn't...

I played Who Wants To Be A Werewolf on the last night, and the very first time I correctly suspected a were-hamster by the way he was acting. The next round, I made a fool of myself suspecting people simply because they in turn were suspecting me, and went down in a blaze of epic fail, denouncing innocent villagers left and right :)

The journey home was pretty uneventful. Dropping Bushy off I persistently and gently rebuffed her folks' attempts to feed me dinner- I knew I was returning to my rather isolated life and wanted to hit the road fairly promptly, which I did. There will be other road trips so long as Fluffy is able to drive them, which seems likely. Chicago, Atlanta... splitting motels and gas does wonders for making such things possible, and eventually I ought to be able to work in the dealer's or artist's alley rooms and make a bit of the costs back. Not selling tails though- no longer doing that except for special purposes.

I crashed out upon getting home, had a angst-fest over trying to draw Tally Road for friday after not Wacoming for a week, and having done that (took until 7 in the morning!) I am settling down, doing my con report, and getting ready to balance my checkbook. Tuesday, Fluffy gets some new shocks and struts as a reward, and I'm looking into that color business card scanner, and planning to practice drawing with the new Sharpies more. While I was away, my list rankings for Tally Road went to shit, so obviously the con didn't give me any sort of boost with that, but I'm just going to patiently try to improve on several levels until it's worth people noticing.

In the kitchen, hanging on a phone wire run near the ceiling, is my con badge with its Supersponsor 'VIP' ribbon, and the additional ribbon TygerCowboy gave me (gotta call him and ask how his con was and if he's having a PCD) which says "Plays Well With Others" in a sensuous black ;)

In one sense, nobody got to prove that, but in a lot of other senses it was quite true, and I am essentially content.

Oh, I almost forgot- the morning I left the con, I went for a swim. The pool opened at 9. Er, 9:10. Would you believe 9:20? By 9:25 I wasn't the only one waiting. Finally, a guy showed up, and I asked to have the time I waited added to my check-out time. Got even more- checkout of 1 PM for me and Bushy. Not only that, the other two people (whom I didn't know) also got it. I didn't properly listen and didn't get the woman's name, but the man was notable because he looked a great deal like Jay Naylor- for the very good reason that it WAS Jay. So I got to do Jay a favor with the extended checkout time, and then drew Rairate and Fisk Black waiting by a pool with a 'The Pool Is A Lie' sign on it- took pains to get Fisk drawn basically right, using a Better Days strip as reference- and gave Jay the original inked drawing.

And then found out the artist in Artist's Alley whom I was lending watercolors and ink to was also a friend of Jay's. So I was all kinds of accidentally ingratiating ;) who knew? At any rate, that was a special moment for me because I have this thing- a peculiar ability to make friends with various sorts of 'stars' (comics, furry art, sound engineering) through basically being myself, seeing them as people, and through being kind and nice. It's happened over and over, and it was great to have a bit of that happening with Jay as he's phenomenal and a very interesting person but I think rather private due to lots of people throwing drama his way. No concern of mine- I'm not there to get into a debate or get anything from him other than the nice, sincere 'hey, thanks man!' I got from the gift of that day's Daily Kitten comic original. That was as good as Bushycat saying she didn't think she'd ever laughed or smiled so much on a road trip or had as good a time. Some of these things are just plain good for the soul, here's hoping I have many more of them :)

Tue, 19 Aug 2008 01:34:25 GMT

I'm trying to work out how I can get a looser process going while keeping the grayscale cel-shaded. I'm drawing destructively over the background. Horribly wasteful. Manga Studio can't fill with opaque greys at all. Will try workaround- B/W layer w. black lines and white fill, greyscale layer over that using the same selection outlines. Faster? Also w. that I can fill specific grey values. Right now all Tally Road greys are ENTIRELY pressure sensitivity. All black or white 'pencil'. This is understandably stressful and time consuming. I am drawing everything while balancing on one foot on a chair of knives :D

On the bright side, I've developed better stylus control than I would have had if I hadn't done a bunch of comics in the hardest way imaginable :)

Mon, 18 Aug 2008 16:10:03 GMT

Updating the Tally Road daily strip, Daily Kitten. Not with a kitten, however- a self-portrait of the artist as a young tiger having a meltdown over preparing for an upcoming con.

I can imagine shocking revelations of exactly why Magarce the little siamese got promised a starring role- though Tally Road is WebMA rated, I am still strangely resistant to doing outright pr0n (as much as I like it) for Daily Kitten. However, if I can turn it into a gag I seem much happier with it...

Beginning to post to LJ again simply because some of the Tally Road pageviews are coming from the one post I made. Hey, if there's a furry audience who's enjoying the comic and they like hearing about it here, more power to you- also this is technically the only place so far that would work like a forum (the comic is NOT big enough to justify its own forum right now).

Trolls perfectly welcome- I am aware of all internet traditions and am not upset that being an obvious furry invites teasing and HAET. More than a year ago I lost my family in a tragic event that won't be discussed further, so I have nothing more to lose, and every reason to not bother ever struggling for 'normal cred' again. Hi, welcome back to my life such as it is, hope you like the various Tally Road comics or at least have fun making fun of them :)

Sat, 09 Aug 2008 20:06:43 GMT

Got airtabs for the car! Also, still working on Tally Road, which is where I've been.

Furry Theme Park Day?

Wed, 16 Apr 2008 01:14:19 GMT

My friend James asks:

"I now work for Six Flags ("Great Adventure" theme park in NJ).

They have been known rent the entire park at group rates to
a diverse (REALLY DIVERSE) clientelle.

Have they ever had a "furry" day at any theme park in the US?"

Good question. Anybody know?

So...

Sat, 16 Feb 2008 03:34:57 GMT

So I might not have animated vixens this time but I've had an eventful enough set of days that I felt like making a journal post.

Firstly, I self-pwned most elaborately a couple days ago, thusly- it was so cold my car was frozen shut. The lock wouldn't work, the actual mechanism was frozen as well as the key part- I couldn't find my propane torch so I'm staggering through the ice and cold to the hardware store in search of a torch, thinking if I heated the lock up it would work. Which turned out not to be so... finally, I hit on the idea someone had suggested of boiling a kettle of water and dumping it on the door. Trala! It worked perfectly, and I zipped right off to the grocery store, where I bought food and cat litter and such things, and came out to discover... that I'd dumped water over my door, and it was still bitterly cold out. Yep! Now I was frozen out of my car ten minutes away from home :D

AAA couldn't do squat but tow me somewhere- they apparently can't heat frozen things. I tried various things like handwarmers available in Ocean State Job Lot, and finally persuaded a nice manager to try heating up water in their microwave, which I then carried to the car in an Ocean State pot, and dumped it over the door. Tadah! Again, the lock released, and after returning the pot I headed home.

All this while I've been juggling things like new product releases, a promise to try porting to VST (ack! it's looking like that was a bad move), a doctor visit, a chimney sweeping, and two different firewood suppliers, as well as more PASS plan chaos- having successfully graduated from disability and got a business running that can cover my living costs, I'm still at the mercy of those people because I don't know how much money they'll want back from their initial seed money. Also, I'm filing taxes and I don't know how much that is either, or how much the accountants will demand- though as far as I'm concerned, I'll give them anything to not have to deal with that stuff. I organize things well for them, hopefully that will be enough.

So today, the firewood came and I also heard back from the doctor with the thrilling news that I'm borderline diabetic, on the 'yeah, you're diabetic' side of that line. Which is both very annoying and a bit of a lucky break, because it means that I've now officially hit the 'quit fucking around with sugar and inconsistent, bingey diet' point in an unmistakable way, and I understand such things.

Even if I became wealthy somehow (yeah if only!) I could not have sugary strong coffee all the time, which is a staple for me. I'm experimenting with having it black, and with leaning more heavily on 'Splenda' which I don't trust, and planning to drink more ordinary water. Also, I cannot get the 4C green tea mix anymore- not the kind with sugar, I did get a diet kind.

Axing sugar like that (I actually dumped out containers of very sweet coffee creamer, inc. my favorite, 'Amaretto') will absolutely compel me to eat in a more continuous, 'grazing' sort of way as I'm supposed to do. I mentioned the lucky break- it looks to me like my mood has suffered from this condition- I've gone through a lot of stuff hanging in there while apparently in a moderate sugar crash, which makes you cranky and miserable and easily upset. That's no fun so there's nothing like being forced to do things that will help it...

Immediately on learning this, I had to throw about half a cord of firewood farther into my driveway so I could fit my car back in there, and then on into the night stacking one layer of wood-stack on the porch so that even if it snows 10 feet overnight I'll have some access to firewood. So I've done a bit of 'grazing' all through the day on stuff like almonds, peanut butter on english muffin... I'm allergic to everything good and now can't have crazy sugar food so eating is going to become pretty unrecognizable.

I need to get a handle on this, though, because it's scaring me when I can't work very well- it's either insane bursts of effort or being useless, and that screams 'diabetic getting freaky sugar binges and crashes'.

*SIGH* fuckin' life.

However, I've made some progress on the movie script (establishing what sequences will be in there, and coming up with an ending that works) and I got another Disney animation classic (of sorts) to cheer myself up. 'Aristocats'. Which is a crappy movie compared to their best because the villain is pathetic, but Eva Gabor as a posh white cat is gratifying, and I'm sure I can get some character-design ideas from it.

Maybe when I've sorted out the diabetes thing I won't just eat smaller bits more frequently, I'll even post smaller bits more frequently ;)

oh, hi! I'm a pencil test.

Wed, 06 Feb 2008 11:05:50 GMT

Tue, 05 Feb 2008 08:11:22 GMT

So I didn't get to actually animate anything, but I did manage to bring ToonFace to the next stage-

I didn't eat because the program was staying broken for hour after hour- I suppose I'll try to deal with that now. I needed to do something because I'm going to go hang out with the local cable-access video producer guy tomorrow and wanted things to show. It's still all so primitive- but that comes with me trying to do absolutely everything.

If I can do my how-to-use-plugins videos in that TV studio, I'll get a bit more in the way of hardware (lights, scrims and stuff) and in that case I won't have to handle absolutely everything. Could happen. So tired, so much to do...

I think maybe I'll give up on the idea of sleeping normal hours and just take some time to eat a late dinner and finish up my stuff and then sleep in like crazy tomorrow. I hate not being awake for the day, but this is out of control. I hope at some point it starts to translate into making animations- the amount of programming work I've had to do on this little program is obscene, it only just tonight got to where I could save files with the full keyframe data, load character data separately, blank the key data etc. So much time working on file saving that I have no energy left for timing, pose actions, the actual animating. :P another day.

Mon, 04 Feb 2008 07:21:59 GMT

No animation work today- I dug my car out of a bunch of ice pits, and then got hopelessly distracted making notes on how to design aircraft and ground vehicles for my sci-fi world. I came upon some websites that were INCREDIBLY good about that stuff, explaining things about how at supersonic speeds air can flow around corners by getting refracted by shockwaves- things I never knew, sometimes things that would affect my design of stuff for the movie :) so, not totally wasted time, and I've been due for a day off since last week- it's been all day every day since before I can remember.

In lieu of animated vixens, I give you the most outrageous toy in the world- the homemade pulse jet go-kart. I laughed until tears came to my eyes at how awesome and horrible this is. Quite zippy! About 200 db! Apparently made out of stove pipes and baling wire! Irresistible!

Fri, 01 Feb 2008 07:15:24 GMT

The next youtube progress example for ToonFace is going to be really startling. I have to break for dinner (at 2 AM) and put out the trash (fed the cats hours ago) but I've been getting stuff together in a very big way. Items added:

-full body modeling (naturally, I'm using a furry model, but I need to also implement plantigrade legs when I do that

-extra positioning control which moves figures along X and Z axes in 3D space to a defined horizon point, which means I can take a background setting and align the figures with it, and then animate them in full perspective as easily as moving to new keyframe positions- no calculating!

-inertia on all body parts as well as facial features. Notably, rump, belly and chest ;) this software WILL be able to do nice, normal, sensible animation, and I'll be using it in that capacity. However, there is great danger of progress examples featuring pneumatic vixens :D

Actually, wrong word. That's air, and though this modeling is capable of that too, the emphasis is on MASS in motion.

So, HYDRAULIC vixens.

I think things might get a little wacky when that stuff hits youtube... the cat, as it were, will be out of the bag.

Thu, 31 Jan 2008 21:48:35 GMT

It is INCREDIBLY hard to parody modern 21st century pop idol PR nonsense. I mean, REALLY hard to come up with anything no matter how over-the-top that isn't liable to be immediately overtaken by real life.

I've still managed it :) just a bit of interview with a PR flack that's meant to be sort of background noise for a movie scene. I can't wait to do something with it. Anybody who listens sharp enough to pick out what the 'radio' is saying will be pretty speechless :)

Tue, 29 Jan 2008 07:02:18 GMT

Okay, this rates an AHAHAHAHAHAAAA! of glee :D

I've been coding all day on AU plugins, doing stuff that was useful to have- and putting off something on ToonFace that felt like it was going to be a pain, or trouble-prone, to do. Finally I settled down and wrote a bunch of variations on this:

TestPictureItem = GetFolderItem( Left( BackPictureItem.AbsolutePath, len(BackPictureItem.AbsolutePath) - 9) + format(Scrub.value,"00000") + ".png")

Horrible looking, and it's not real quick to evaluate, either. What do you suppose it does?

I don't know if I mentioned that I had a backdrop for ToonFace where you can load a thing and then do the animation and keying against a DVD-sized picture? Now it automatically handles IMAGE SEQUENCES in the exact same format that it itself produces- and any other format so long as it's a .png file. (I might make it even more flexible if I feel like it.)

It worked first time.

Toonface now automatically loads up any other layer you like that you're working on, and more than that it automatically loads THE FRAME corresponding to the one you're on. So you can animate a character with keyframes, load the output of that as a background, and animate a whole new character interacting directly with the previous one, exactly as it will appear in the final composite. As you step forward or backwards with the up and down arrow keys not only does your character animate to the keys, but the background animates along with it.

ahahahahahaha! hahahaha!!!!!

I'm actually not sure if any other animation program even DOES this at all, even the silly-expensive ones. I am SO going to be selling copies of this at $60 :) and I'm gonna make budding animators very happy.

Shit, this will even do Roger Rabbit stuff. There is absolutely no reason you cannot turn a DV clip to image sequence and animate it at 29.97 fps. This shit is OFF THE HOOK man :D and same as the Roger Rabbit, you don't have to have the camera fixed, you just have to match its moves with your keyframes. OMGWTFBBQ-o-scoping :)

I'm off to tell the author of 'Pencil' about it in case he'd like to incorporate the feature into his program (which I use)

Sun, 27 Jan 2008 03:53:13 GMT

Well, I'm not totally satisfied with how this went but I'm learning. This is the first lipsynch test. Hampered by the absence of any actual LIPS to synch ;)

You can't see it, but the inertial stuff is better. More bouncy.

Perkyfox! toomuchcoffee!

Sat, 26 Jan 2008 07:12:24 GMT

_I_ am not the perky fox. This is ;)

I'm glad I got some progress in on this in spite of the audio gear distractions. This is using a feature called inertia to produce weight behind the character's cheeks, ears and nose tip. It smooths out the extremely overcaffienated motions, which should help a lot on things like sudden moves, fast speech sync etc. The neat thing is that this is very helpful in animation, but in concept it is totally mechanical- in fact it's being done in 2D, because things moving on the Z axis won't look different anyway. To keep this in mind for traditional animation adds huge realism, but it's very challenging to think of all that. With this, it's completely automated :)

This is an area of CG animation called rigging, and it's definitely fun. I'm basically trying to do a terrific rigging program except it's devoted entirely to 2D traditional animated output. The program barely knows it's doing 3D, in fact.

I also added stuff like buttons to key the entire face at once, made the spline button the default so you can hit return to get it, and increased rendering speed by a factor of 15 by fixing a silly mistake :)