frankm

I'd definitely add my name to the 'totally in - depending on circumstances'. I think it's a cool idea, and if I get any bonus time on top of work and kids, I'd be up for chucking a few hours in if I can be useful. Big couple of 'if's mind you... ;) I get the impression you haven't got anything concrete yet, and that you're trying to create the story together as well - is that right? Have you got any idea how best to organise creating, picking and scripting the story as a group? Or have you got something in mind already? Cheers for the push, good work!

Heh - I like the cut of this fella's jib! Car looks cool too. Is there any way of embedding the mouth into the model a bit more? The rest of it is really nice, but the mouth seems a bit pasted on. Might there be a way of using the grill as teeth or something? What are your plans with these guys? Enquiring minds and all that... ;)

Thanks, dude - and it was more of a heads-up than a complaint. I worked for CITV for quite a while, I absolutely get who pays the bills... ;)

Children's ITV runs a competition every year for the kids to write and draw their own story. From several thousand entries, the winners get their story turned into a professionally made minute-long animation. This year the 4 winning animations were made by some fantastic animation studios, in CG, 2D, and stop motion - and one was made by me and a brilliant illustrator and character designer called Carl Hadley ( if you're clicking that's http://carlhadley.com ). Carl drew the map and the character designs (based off the ridiculously talented 12 year old Ursula's original designs) and all the CG was created by yours truly in just under 4 weeks - so you might notice a couple of mildly cropped corners here and there, but overall I'm pretty proud of what we achieved... ;) All of the animations are being shown this week on CITV, but you can check them out now on the ITV hub at: https://www.itv.com/hub/share-a-story/2a4800 You will probably have to sit through about a minute's worth of adverts first, I'm afraid, but I promise the animations are worth it!

really nice! love the contrast you've added in the updated image between the brightly lit boat and the dark, almost jelly-like water. there's something not sitting quite right with me about the wooden texture at the bottom. maybe it's slightly too light or something? drawing the eye a bit too much? could very well just be me though, feel free to ignore ;) i really like the top-heavy, dinky/chunky dimensions on your boat too. how did you do the water by way? it's great!

lovely jubbly :)

bridge tool in point mode should work (M-B shortcut). Click and drag from point to point to create polys - shout up if that doesn't solve your problem! Cheers -f

five minute cartoon? five minutes? who the heck is gonna have the time to watch a whole flippin' five... oh, wait, it's over? okay, maybe just one more play then... That was brilliant, love it. The look is fantastic, as everyone says, but it was the super-cute animation on the baby trucks that did it for me. Lovely stuff!

that just sounds like a lot of hard work for nowhere near enough appreciation... ...although I guess it would open the door to earning bribes of my own. ;)

well, now I just don't know WHO to bribe...

heh. timed to perfection! Cheers everyone ;)

I did wonder if it might have been from when the site got overhauled. Oh well, not to worry! Cheers for looking into it, all! -f ------------------------------------ Didn't want a flippin' signature anyway <sob> ------------------------------------

Ahh - thank goodness for that, I thought I was being a proper dolt. Mine is the same as ABMotion, with 'Display Name' instead of 'Signature'. Cheers for looking into it (obviously, it's not the end of the world if it can't be sorted - if it's even remotely any kind of hassle don't worry about it on my account!). -f

Sorry, dude, I think I'm being really dense here... I'd already gone through all the account settings and I couldn't find it. I thought it might have been under the 'Edit Profile' section, but if it was then I missed it. I've just been through again and I still can't find it! Could I be a total pain and ask you to hand-hold me all the way to the right section (as one might with a wayward toddler struggling to find their teddy, or a particularly moronic drunk trying to put their key in the lock the wrong way around). There's no chance my browser is playing silly buggers with the site is there? I'm currently on an up to date Chrome.

Heh, cool. Nice timing on the hand-bang at the end - and kudos for cranking the whole thing out in 2 weeks!

Hi Some people appear to have signatures at the end of their messages - I'm probably missing something really obvious here, but I can't find anywhere to add this as a default. Can anyone point me in the right direction? Cheers! -f

heh heh - come to show some work, leave having solved a problem I didn't even know I had yet... cheers, dude ;)

You can turn snapping on, and make sure snapping to points is turned on.

I'm not 100% certain what you're after, Niksay, but have you looked at the iron tool? That averages points out to essentially flatten them. Also, as you say, you can manipulate the axis to the direction you want to flatten your points in, and then scale them down on a single axis, holding shift to snap them to a scaled value of 0%.

What they said - looks absolutely fantastic! What was the post DOF problem/solution? -f (Also, I found your Vimeo channel the other day - there's some phenomenal stuff there too! Really love your rigs and the 2D/3D work.)

Polygons have a front and a back. If you 'reverse normals' then you flip the polygon so that the front is the back and vice versa. 'Align normals' is a command that works out which way the majority of the polygons' fronts are facing and aligns the others so that all the fronts of the selected polygons are on the same side as each other. Not what you're after, I think. Hope that makes sense!

Cool - I love the flying saucer, lighting and all! Can't wait til you get it online. (Soundtrack works really nicely by the way)

Aha! It did look like some had sneaked in somewhere... Good catch ;)

Woah, that's a huge accomplishment. Have you worked with anyone else or was it totally single-handed? Look forward to seeing it when you debut it online (or when you release the teaser trailer... ;) )

This looks great! How long is it going to be when it's finished? And how long will it have taken in total? What are you going to do with it when it's done?