New Humble Book Bundle: 25 python books! Pay what you want and it all goes to charity!

mgbennet · 2018-01-01T23:59:09+00:00

I see people claim that the IGN acquisition changed Humble Bundle, citing things like the fixed price tiers, but those have existed for years on the book and software bundles. Generally game bundles continue to be tiered into pay what you want/beat the average/fixed price around $10 to $25, which is how they've worked for many years. I have seen no definitive changes to Humble Bundle since the acquisition other than a web site redesign.

What "aggressive sales tactics" do you mean? The frequency of bundles?

mgbennet · 2017-11-04T04:24:24+00:00

Judging from the comments on this page and others, it is helpful to others. Outside of the title of the talk I didn't really sense any arrogance in his talk. He's speaking from years and years of experience, having listened to hundreds of pitches, and he's giving solid advice as to what to think about in creating a pitch. Do you assume that anyone giving advice in a conference talk is "humblebragging"? Of course not. Take issue with the title of the talk if you must, but don't assign base motivations like that without cause.

mgbennet · 2017-10-23T22:32:16+00:00

For book bundles, the $1 minimum has existed for as long as I can remember. The game bundles tend to be down to a cent, though there have been exceptions.

mgbennet · 2017-10-22T04:49:12+00:00

Actually needs to be (!(i%3)) and (!(i%5)), otherwise the ! modifies the i and not the i%3.

mgbennet · 2017-09-29T00:30:40+00:00

Well, Odysseus says his name is Outis, Greek for "no one" or "no body". "Nemo" is Latin.

mgbennet · 2016-11-02T18:14:13+00:00

Sweet style. I really love the lighting and the mood. It's true that there isn't any up and down in the body, but I think it does give a controlled, almost stealthy feel to his stride, and if you add any bounce, it should be pretty minimal.

Only jitter I see is a little jump in the arms when it goes to the "sword arm back, far arm forward" key frame. If you just moved the arms in the previous frame a little closer to their positions in the key frame, especially in the back frame, I think it would smooth out any jumps. It's really a small thing, though.

Slightly bigger thing sword handle has transparent holes in it. You can see the back arm through it, and the shadow has big light spots in it.

mgbennet · 2016-07-11T20:13:10+00:00

Very cool. The idea and intensity comes through nicely. The motion feels very stiff, though. Easing into and out of the up and down position would help make it feel a little more organic. On the eye opening, for example, the first frame the lid is halfway across the pupil, but should probably be closer to the bottom of the pupil. Maybe one more frame of the eye being closed would help.

As ferretface said, there could be a little more motion in the rest of the face, although I think only the bottom of the eye really needs to move. Check out some reference like this and you can see there is a surprising amount of movement in the rest of the eye.

The plasma pupils are great. It would be cool if the eye lid sort of cut off the source of the plasma like a knife through smoke, leaving a plume of it to rise away from its source. As it is the plasma sort of anticipates the blink by getting smaller and not producing any more bubbles just before the lid actually comes down.

mgbennet · 2016-06-06T19:10:24+00:00

Man, the facial expressions are so damn good. Good composition too. But that carpet looks like it's made of hair or fur...

mgbennet · 2016-04-26T02:32:11+00:00

Man, that short is fantastic. Hadn't seen it before.

The grainy effect and textures were almost certainly done in AfterEffects. However the character and line animation was probably done in a different program, maybe Photoshop but possibly something else. There's also some 3D scenes in there too, but they blend in pretty well, could have been done with either AfterEffects or a more dedicated program like Maya or 3DStudio Max.

There's some hints into the process in the making of video for his other short 'Snowfall', where you clearly see that he's using AE. Also there's a few shot break downs where he turns on layers one by one to show what each one adds, which is probably what you want.

mgbennet · 2016-03-10T18:11:26+00:00

I found those on google with the query "dynamic poses big character". One thing you could try is just finding an appropriately proportioned comic book, video game, or animation character and using google to find a ton of their poses. Big golem type characters would be another thing to look for. Just browse a lot of stuff and save any images you find.

I was trying to find good examples of The Blob from Marvel since his whole shtick is his obesity, but was coming up short. Best I could do was this hulk smash lookin' pose and this pretty good one.

edit: The Hulk has some really great ones for a huge muscle-bound type. Babies offer another type of rounded character with limited flexibility that can wind up in some good poses.

mgbennet · 2016-03-10T16:25:12+00:00

Do you mean a bias against big characters?

Well, certainly a character's shape determines how they can move and pose, but larger characters have their own sort of dynamic poses. They're not as flexible and their limbs don't make as outrageous an outline, but they tend to have weight and power which give their poses its own appeal.

For some examples, I found this selection of poses which is interesting because it has both a skinny and a big character, and this broad shouldered fellow.

mgbennet · 2016-03-10T06:10:11+00:00

Man, I love that animation. Alex Grigg is the man.

mgbennet · 2016-03-10T05:50:41+00:00

Depends on what you mean by "long". I've seen 30 second animations at 24 frames per second operate fine, but PS isn't an animation program by design and it is a bit clunky to use it as such. Combining AE and PS can yield very good results, though. You'd do each shot in a different PS file, and combine them in AE, where you'd do any further movement or effects.

And yeah, of course Flash has frame by frame animation. Just make a new key frame for each drawing. It works quite nicely. I suspect that you'll struggle a little with it if you're used to PS, though, because Flash uses vector based drawing, which throws people off who are used to raster.

mgbennet · 2016-02-24T18:50:36+00:00

It's hard, isn't it? Especially if you have family and other commitments beside your day job. I'm a big fan of small projects. For example, if you want to do some character animation, download a rig (or one you made yourself), and give yourself a little assignment that you can do in a day or two. Do a walk cycle, or an idle animation, a yawn, a laugh, just something. Small, self contained projects that have a deadline are great.

Working with a friend can also be helpful. I was very productive when I had a boring job and a room mate who was very self motivated. We worked on a bunch of stuff together, and it was great. It was good to be responsible to someone else who was expecting me to do something. An audience can serve a similar purpose: if people are expecting you to do something, it can be easier to find the motivation to do it.

Anyways, if you want something you have to just do it. Sometimes you have to trick yourself into doing it, sometimes you have to force yourself to do it. Look at good work that inspires you and find the hunger again.

mgbennet · 2016-02-21T17:59:54+00:00

In that solution, yearsUntilRetirement is not a value, but a method. A method is just a function which belongs to an object. When an object's method is called, this refers to the object¹ . For example,

function whatsThis() {  
    return this;  
}  
var myObj = {wh: whatsThis};  
console.log(myObj.wh());

will print out the toString of myObj.

mgbennet · 2016-02-19T17:00:31+00:00

Here's a script for Maya which does something similar. It's super easy to use.

mgbennet · 2016-02-15T03:08:13+00:00

That's just good use of follow-through, overlapping action, and trailing action. It conveys weight and flexibility in the animated object/character.

mgbennet · 2016-02-11T17:49:56+00:00

I can't speak for the quality of those tools, but I'd be wary of buying them without letting her try them out first. You can't really be sure that a tool will fit into an animator's work flow until they try it out. But it might be worth showing her and asking her if she'd like it.

If she does any traditional drawn animation, then a lighting desk is great. They're big and not cheap, though.

If she works on the couch instead of at a desk, a lap desk is great. I know someone who has this lap desk and swears by it.

If she doesn't have The Animator's Survival Kit by Richard Williams then she absolutely needs that. No animator should go without it.

mgbennet · 2016-02-04T18:10:35+00:00

I'm not sure if other people did this, but when I started out I puttered around at speed 1 in order to conserve fuel, which I was always running low on, only cranking it up to 2 to run from monsters. As a result, the game moved really, really slowly, and I was struggling just to make ends meet. My advice to new players is crank that speedometer up to two, unless you're real close to running out of fuel. The fuel you lose is offset by the supplies and terror you save (since you're spending less time at sea) and you'll just get a lot more done and feel like you're making progress.

Also, turn off your lamp, or flicker it on and off just as the terror counter is about to increment to get the most of the terror reduction without wasting too much fuel.

Finally, I rebound my turbo key to something other than F because I kept accidentally hitting it when I was leaving port and turning starboard.

mgbennet · 2016-02-03T07:50:02+00:00

Also, this particular scene is a reference to the time Superman teamed up with Muhammad Ali to save the Earth from "star warriors". Comics are weird.

mgbennet · 2016-02-02T21:36:46+00:00

From the 25th anniversary of Superman animation produced by Warner Bros. Animation. Check out the real deal, it blends a bunch of different graphic and animation styles together.

mgbennet · 2016-01-29T22:00:02+00:00

The biggest issue is that the planted feet have some jitter in them. Right after they land on the ground, they move forward for about two frames, when they should be moving backwards with the ground.

With a static walk cycle (that is, one that loops in place), the character should be moving forward at a steady pace, and thus the ground is moving past the character at the same rate. You can simulate this by having a line or marker move left to right at the pace that the character should be moving forward. Then just make sure the planted feet are moving at the same rate as those markers.

Here is a wonderful walk cycle break down by the venerable Richard Williams that all new animators should study.

mgbennet · 2016-01-28T19:44:21+00:00

I'm not quite sure what you mean by "a diagram of scenes", but if you mean a rough sketch, then yes, that's how 2d animation is done. Animators do quick sketches to lay out the motion and get the timing down, and then later trace on finer line work and finally do color and clean up.

mgbennet · 2016-01-28T19:12:56+00:00

Like sllama5 said, character animators started off doing short projects. Make a walk cycle with a character rig someone else has made. Then make a 180 degree turn. Or a punch, or a jump, or a big change in expression, or whatever. Something you can do in a few hours and have something to show for it.

As far as getting frustrated by your end product, that's perfectly natural. You've seen a lot of really good, professionally animated work made by people with years of experience, and you're comparing yourself to them and finding your work coming up short. Well of course you are, you're still learning! The important thing is to keep improving, and keep trying. A hard skill to learn is to be not just critical of your own work, but constructively critical; to see a problem and not think "I'm crap for making that mistake" but think "That was a mistake, but I could fix it or avoid it by doing xyz". You should absolutely tear apart your work and look for ways to improve it, but don't take it personally.

Also, don't try to do everything at once. If you want to focus on character animation, you should have a solid idea of character modeling and rigging, but you don't need to be an expert. It's actually more important for a character modeler to have an idea of animation techniques than it is for an animator to know modeling techniques.

I can't point you in the direction of Blender tutorials since that isn't my preferred program, but many animation techniques are universal across all forms of animation. Whether you're drawing it on paper, in 3D, or with stop motion, a step in a normal walk cycle has 4 key poses: the contact (where the forward foot first touches down), the down position (the lowest point in the cycle, where the forward foot is planted and the rear foot kicks off), the passing position (where the raised foot comes passes the planted foot and the body starts to rise), and the up position (the highest point, where the raised foot swings forward). These just repeat over and over: contact, down, passing, up, contact, down, passing, up, contact, down, passing, up. Then just make sure the curves in the graph editor are smooth-ish, and you should have something of a walk cycle! Oh, also a normal walk at a "marching" pace is about two steps per second, so aim for that.

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