[MeanPi2]

Interesting. Just yesterday decided to try out animation instead of modelling so this should be..a pain in the rear since this is one of the two busiest months of the year for work. Anyways, I'll give it a go. I'm a better writer then animator so for 3d I use concepts and words. In general the animation so far consists of these ideas (using the monster dialog), a combination of silent movie and the dialog with a combination of stick figures and sorta-real backgrounds. I'm new to animation and think it'd be kinda fun (and easy) to use stick figures with expressions to animate the particular clip.

So as it stands now: Silent film, stick woman with stick dress and stick cop with stick hat and stick notebook and pen. She wanders about her house (ranch style, non-stick) pointing out messes that appear to be results of a burglery. Cop follows, does his cop thing with notebook scribbling. Women turns on the light to the kitchen and is horrified at the sight of a huge turd in the kitchen but not really surprised to find it. Cop raises his hat, surprised. Enter womans dialog from view behind turd looking at her.

The rest I haven't figured out yet. Thought of her minus the cop turning into the monster replying to herself (all hail schyos), threw that away as cliche', the cop replying and turning, and a couple other things. Simply not sure, so while thinking about it made the turd. It's a multi-layered kinda juicy/nutty looking thing and with the surfacing looks like a large turd created in 2 hours that looks like it was created in 5 minutes (you try it! it's a pain). The steam however is turning out to be a problem..

[MeanPi2]

Well this is the start of the kitchen, just threw a bunch of junk together haphazardly to get a feel for the clips direction (wow, that sounds sophicsicatededede..d. Anyways, only thing finished is the turd, the evidence (bad lighting in this shot). The skull (which I stole) is an afterthought, but will make a nice protal that was never planned, and everything but the turd (what little there is) is rough models for reference in size and other stuff I guess. No characters because I searched 'stick figures' on Google and spent hours watching hilarious and ultra violent stick figure flash movies.

[mtmckinley]

try attaching jpgs. Easier to view that way.

[Fallenswordsman]

Well, its a good start and at least you have your initial concepts in your head anyway. The turd looks fascinatingly disgusting!

[MeanPi2]

Jpegs, check.

Fallenswordsman: Thanks about the turd. Actually, it's kinda sick but the same model can be used for an ice cream cone.

Anyways, at aprox 12:05am, July 5th, I was roused out of a nice drunken slumber by illegal fireworks from neighbors who apparently don't know the difference between Fourth of July and New Years Eve. And while trying to pass back out realized a few things with the only one worth meantioning here being:

For someone whose never animated anything except a bouncing ball (and screwing that up), my concept is too difficult to achieve, and too long, not to mention kinda dumb. So came up with a different one. Not really an original idea but doable, more of a 1 room shrink-patient 'time-freeze' situation type deal with expression-driven text sound-effects that would compliment the overall lack of sound. Might even be able to work that turd into it somehow...naaa.

[MeanPi2]

Well, turns out I finally listened to the clips while sober so the concept changed yet again. But it actually makes sense now. The local homeless man is due any day now to take away all the empty beer cans and soda bottles so I'll have room to hook up the Wacom for a storyboard of the final concept without risk of shorting it out. Maybe. Anyways it re-involves the turd and the stick chick. The following pic is the stick-chick, she's for the most part rigged (what a pain in the bellybutton) with weight maps and bones affecting 2-point ploys which was a fasicnating learning experience in total frustration. Her fingers and face I think will be morphs once I figure out how to use those. Right now I don't like her but she's up for critique. Please be mean it helps me sleep at night.

[MeanPi2]

Oops, here's the image:

[Noratio]

Are the sticks where you have bones or are they weighted in groups? She is the most 2D 3D character I've seen. Is the cop like her?

[MeanPi2]

For the arms and legs, the sticks are where the bones are and where the weight maps are. The shoulder point and the elbow point make up the upper arm, weight map and bone. All points in the hand make up the palm bone weight map. The mid-body is a standard pelvis/spine bone setup right up the middle with certian points as weights depending on what the bone does. Extra points were added, for example, along the bottom of the 'skirt' and added to each thigh bone weight map so the skirt deforms with the thigh bone. For now it works but there's such bare and rigid mapping that there's some glitches to work around.

Weighted in groups? What's that?

Dumped the cop, there's only 2 characters now, the stick chick and the turd.

[colto]

umm, how will that work. Who says "I don't think you're crazy." The turd maybe? lol. Or does the chick just have multiple personalities.

[Noratio]

Sorry my mistake, I meant if you had weight maps for only one stick at the time and one bone or many in same line in it. It would have made the sticks stif and given the possibility to reassemble them, like multiple personalities. Now you have many sticks in one bone or multiple bones deforming weight map that consists many sticks. All the same you answered my question.

[Fallenswordsman]

The turd is a character? Now this will be interesting!

[MeanPi2]

Ah, Noratio, I understand now. All the weight maps for the bones have at least 1 point (usually more) of other weight maps included in them and every single point is in one or more weight maps. Total influence control and smoothing from one bone movement to adjacent bones.

I screwed something up with the weight maps after mirroring a hand, but when I fix it I'll post a screenshot of the new character design (she's pretty much a paper stick figure now) and the bone rig including some IK I have little control over so probably won't use. The hands are morphed now (not well, the point order is screwy) and the face has about 1/2 the morphs done.

Yea, the turd is the other line speaker and character.

[MeanPi2]

This is the new stick-chick character design. Had some problems with the poly-lines being discernable without filling in the head with a surface. Kinda like it better this way. The expression is an early test of morphs. The smudge next to the 'nose' is a shadow, forgot to turn shadow casting off for the face parts. With the poly-lines only shadow maps will show the arms and legs shadows, kinda a disappointment. The pose isn't anything, just a test- or perhaps a repressed memory from childhood. Critiques welcome.

[MeanPi2]

This is the basic and bare bone setup. There was IK, but eliminated it completly, wasn't working right. One bone isn't shown, it runs the 'z' axis and connects to the bottom of the rotated 'pelvis' bone in the shot. The 'pelvis' bone was the original root bone for the whole setup, but couldn't rotate it like that without adding the 'z' bone and making it the new root. Sigh.

Well credits where credits are due: The bone rig minus the 'z' root bone are from the book 'Inside Lightwave 7' by Dan Alban, the 'z' root bone was from experimenting with the old bone setup hell that was cobbled together from online tutorials..