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Showing posts from August, 2011

BADASSERY: Episode 7: SMALL DREAMS

Since I leave on a break in 2 days this is the last episode I'll do for awhile... enjoy my animated mental illness ^_^

Wacom Inkling OhEMMGEEE!

So no more scanning and cropping hand drawn storyboards it seems ^ ^

Badassery Secrets revealed! ^ ^

This is the face of Operative 69 This is the face of Linkoln And this was the inspiration for Montana Mountains 0_0

Super easy basic lip sync with Cinema 4d!

HERE is the file

One for the road...

Episode 7- it doesn't look so insane or offensive here haha I'm going to do episode 7 of Badassery this week then I'm going to bounce out the country for a month as a break and to scout locations for a live action feature I'm developing... When I get back I'm HOPING Endika has some music for me so HSM can move closer to completion... and when I get back like I said I hope to work on HSM but if thats not there... I'll start the storyboards for my next animated feature... Badassery is fun to do but its not my passion... so as a viewer I know when I'm in pre-production on a feature that means I don't put out new shorts etc for awhile... I was trying to get funding for Badassery so I could continue to do it AT THE SAME TIME as I am working on my next feature... I'd have to work REALLY REALLY HARD to do both at the same time... probably burn myself out a bit... and if there's no $$$ in it then I'm not going to burn myself out for nothing

BADASSERY: Episode 6: I'M NOT SORRY

75 shots, 3 days work ^_^

M dot Strange working on Badassery in Cinema 4d

Any animation practice is GREAT practice

One of the best things about making Badassery is that it FORCES me to animate... it allows me to get a lot of practice in... you can THINK about animation... you can READ books about it... you can watch other people do it in tutorials or whatever but to get better at it you need to do it yourself... I've said it a million times before but the best way to learn is through necessity... if you want to learn how to animate you can do animation tutorials and exercises but if you don't know exactly why you're doing what you're doing its easy to lose motivation... So if you want to learn 3d animation I say make a 3d animated short! There will be no "why's" You will be forced to learn how to make a character walk, talk, run, punch... whatever is required for your short to be made... So I'm not like some amazing animator but I can make the characters do what I want in a reasonable amount of time and that's good enough for me to make my films.... So

FUCK the backseat "creatives"!

You may think you KNOW your own potential and you may want others to respect you or value based on your self perceived potential... the key is to SHOW your potential... because if you don't your just another person with "good ideas".... "good ideas" are a dime a dozen... putting them into action and actually realizing them in some shape or form to that they can be shared with another person seems to be quite rare these days... its mostly a lot of this..... Do you think your ideas are better than everything you see? Do you regard yourself as being better than others based on your ideas? Do you constantly complain about things you see... about how they could be "better"? Because obviously you have such amazing taste and talent YET the world has never seen it because its all in your head... follow this path to be a backseat creative and completely FULL OF SHIT! Being a backseat creative is an easy thing to do... I'm sure you can even find other back

My name is M dot and I'm addicted to production 0_0

This is my DRUG I just LOVE producing animation 0_0 I love writing, storyboarding, doing concept art, modeling, texturing, rigging, doing voices, animating, compositing, editing, doing sound design... I LOVE IT ALL 0_0 Because of my addiction I'm even thinking of doing one of the live action comedy feature ideas I've been planning as an animated film... I like challenges and it seems like a great challenge to try to make an entire comedy animated feature film by myself in a month or so... of course it would be crappy Badassery quality but its comedy so who cares? It would also be great practice and tighten my workflow and sharpen my animation skills... I recently bought all of Jeff Lew's tutorials and I'd like to practice that stuff... also in a WHO GIVES A FUCK project you have the freedom to experiment and play... and I've made some big discoveries in doing small projects... I plan to use a new Xref based workflow in my next "serious" animated

Be a SHARK not a REMORA

Are you doing the creative KILLING? Are YOU the one taking the risks? Hunting the prey (new ideas)? Are you a shark? OR Are you latching on to the sharks? Following them around? Picking up their scraps and using them for your own creative subsistence?  Are you a remora? You don't have to be BOLD or BRAVE to be a remora... you only need to latch onto and follow around a shark eating the bits of food from the things they kill... you only need to follow a person around and pick off the bits of ideas and things you want for yourself... Lots of "artists" or "creative" people are REMORA's... there are very few sharks out there... What are you? What do you want to be? Here's a little note from the Wikipedia entry for a Remora There is controversy whether a remora's diet is primarily leftover fragments, or the feces of the host. ^_^

I'm ANIMATED! Look at ME! WooooooO!

Thinking about styles of animation... I've never been a fan of a lot of popular 3d animation wherein every character is constantly moving around all spastically for no reason other than to call attention to themselves and say HEY LOOK AT ME I'M ANIMATED! WOOO! THIS IS ANIMATION!!! When I've read about great actors... many directors have said that they are people you cannot take your eyes off no matter what they are doing... So last night while I was working I was watching HOMEBOY a film from 1988 with Mickey Rourke and Christopher Walken... two GREAT actors... and I was having a hard time working because I couldn't take my eyes of either actor when they were in a scene... NOW Mickey Rourke's character barely said anything and barely even moved BUT his performance was moving and kept me interested... to me THAT IS ACTING... If he was singing and jumping around like an attention whore oozing histrionic personality disorder I wouldn't be able to stand 2 minutes o

Pushing the boundaries of low budget 3d animation

This is something that really interests me as I experiment with production techniques in making Badassery. I think what I'm doing with Badassery is like the equivalent of making 2d animation with stick figures... the technique is very crude and rough because the creator is focused on the ideas and just wants to kick the material out fast. I did the last episode of Badassery in 4 days using only one PC... a workflow that's within the grasp of most people dabbling in 3d animation... BUT many people that are into 3d are obsessed with the vaunted "Pixar Quality" I myself don't even like Pixar style renders or animation... I'm not interested in "photo-realism" or any of that other bullshit either... I just have a bunch of ridiculous ideas that I think are funny and I want to make that happen as fast as I can and for as little money as I can... So lets say you CAN do "pixar quality" on your own today if you have the skills and are either will

BADASSERY: Episode 5: IMPENETRABLE BASS

I want to do this as like a real full length TV show so if you know anyone at Cartoon Network or Comedy Central or wherever please send it to them ^ ^ Or if you know anyone at any major blogs and stuff do a stranger a favor and send it to them ^ ^ Thanks! If you like this... please share it or drop a donation here... http://pledgie.com/campaigns/13952 You can find more episodes here... http://mysteriousdollfilm.blogspot.com/p/film-videos.html

Keep it moving

As 3d artist's we might have a tendency to maximize the production value of every frame we do... what does that mean? Tweak it to HELL and throw on all the BLING so that a single frame takes 25 minutes to render 0_o With Badassery I'm learning to do the EXACT OPPOSITE...how can I make it render the FASTEST whilst still being able to make out the rough forms and know whats going on... Real basic stuff... low poly... no fancy shaders...no SPD... no antialiasing... very few objects in a scene... no volumetric lights... I never use GI or AO ever... So out of C4d each shot takes roughly 5 minutes to render on my single machine.... then in After Effects I just add a bit of a look to it but NO motion blur or anything render intensive so each shot renders in about 30 seconds out of After Effects... Its very refreshing to render stuff so quickly as waiting certainly does kill the flow... I mean the purpose of BADASSERY is to be BAD, crap and cheesy so I can get away with well...

Badassery Quota 25 shots/day

So I'm almost done with a new episode of Badassery... It's 68 shots in total and after two days of work I've done 51 shots which is about 4.5 minutes of animation... since I apply a pixel effect in post I don't have to use AA so I render it overnight on my main machine... I'm making this because I have fun doing it and I have the time right now.... and I'm going to use it as a "pilot" to pitch it as a show to a couple networks when I get back in the game as HSM is released... I'm really starting to get the feel of this show and with this episode I'm taking it into strange, disturbing, profane and explicit places.....Because when it comes to animation I just don't give a fuck ^_^

Your not a (Blank) until you do it

Now a days anybody with a DSLR and an NLE calls them self a "filmmaker"... NOW I say your NOT a filmmaker until you COMPLETE your own FILM... until that time comes you WANT to be a filmmaker... There is a sense of pride that comes with FINISHING things... NOW if you wanted to feel the pride of being able to call yourself a "filmmaker" YET you could do so without even COMPLETING a film.... doesn't that kinda dull the whole pride thing? Nowadays marketing has convinced us that we can become things through buying... you can go to Guitar Center and spend $2000 and you will walk out a "musician" because you've got all the gear.... You can walk into an Apple Store and walk out a "Filmmaker"... it all sort of cheapens and bastardizes the arts... I never really considered myself an "animator" until after I completed HSM this year... then I felt a great sense of pride... not really feeling like I earned the title really drove me

The BEST 3d animation training videos!

I'm always trying to learn new things and there's so much to learn when it comes to animation and from all the stuff I've come across the absolute BEST learning material for actually doing 3d character animation is the legendary Jeff Lew's training videos which you can get HERE Jeff is know by the world through his KILLER BEAN films and he's a professional animator by trade... I really liked his Killer Bean Forever feature film as well ^ ^ The training videos are geared towards animating action stuff... you can find lots of training videos on walk cycles or facial animation and other business BUT I hadn't found anything else that was as good for action and overall 3d animation basics as well... The training videos will be applicable no matter what 3d package your using and Jeff is a really great teacher... you can download all his vids for less than $40 as they are on sale now ! I highly recommend them all! There's free samples too so you can se

Use tools not toys

After I finish the next episode of Badassery I'm going to start storyboarding my next animated feature... and I'm NOT going to use an ipad or whatever new toy wannabe filmmakers are flocking too so they can spend more time being pre-occupied configuring toys and NOT making films... When you play with toys like that you become a TOOL... I say we should use the TOOLS not become them because of these toys... what do I mean? Well whenever you start using tools that are more complex than you need for a given task you start to spend more time and energy messing with the settings and crap then you do actually using it for work... so it becomes a TOY... and you become a tool... This is what I'll be storyboarding with... Feel free to use this 2.39:1 template for your own projects! And a normal pencil... I just make a photoshop action so after I scan each page PShop automatically crops and saves each sell as a separate image film... That's the problem with becoming a

The real BADASSERY begins

Thanks to Tim and Chris for droppin some tips in my tip jar ! It helps keep me motivated to spend my time making these short projects so I totally appreciate it! Now I must admit to something... my true ideas are a lot more SICK and TWISTED than what I have put into Badassery so far... BUT in the next episode there's no holding back! ^ ^ So watch out for the next episode of Badassery: INPENETRABLE BASS!

BADASSERY: EPISODE 4: SILENT COBRA SCREAM

Thanks to the AWESOME 17 people who pledged to the BADASSERY kickstarter campaign... I didn't get any money of course since it didn't reach its goal but its good to know some people out there understand that I do have to work to make this stuff and they want to pay me for my work.

Passion with no outlet = chaos

To die inside or to destroy the world around you? That is the question... As I'm watching what's going on in London with the riots... it seems very easy and convenient to just blame the "youth" in saying that they're "sick" or whatever... I was in London a month or two ago and I remember that there just seemed to be kids everywhere just hanging out on the streets... Now I am clearly an adult BUT I never lost my PASSION...I never died inside... and I know if that passion has no outlet..which for me is filmmaking, music, and exercise... than I start to go nuts... I yearn to create chaos... I want to start arguments and make people upset... I want to BREAK I want to BURN... so I can imagine myself being as a 17 year old riotmaker... When I was like 17... I was so angry and frustrated and felt so powerless I remember writing a story wherein I brutally murdered everyone I knew at the time 0_0 NOW no one ever read it and I never killed any of those peo

Don't be a gear WHORE oR

Know anyone who has 6 different camera's, 10 different lenses, 3 lighting kits and only shoots demo reels he passes of as "films" and is accepted as a filmmaker? Know anyone who has the newest version of every creative application ever made, yet they create nothing except "tests" and is constantly updating said applications? Know anyone who is always TALKING about making some film etc but uses a lack of GEAR as an excuse as to why their not working on it today? DON'T BE THAT PERSON The technology is just a TOOL... you can dig a hole with a shovel or a fork... yes one is more useful BUT you can dig a hole with both... When you want to make a "film"... that means you have an "idea"... and your supposed to use your CREATIVITY to make that idea a reality by any means necessary... IF you are passionate about it... if you lack passion you will become a gear whore. All the companies that make film gear and the like will LOVE you becaus

START THE RIOT

i MAp the Strange Future to 2013

So I'm about to jump on a new schedule that I just planned out that takes me to January of 2013... NOW some might say "don't try to do too much, too fast" BUT this schedule was created based on real production experience by my own hands...dependent on ME... so I now know how long it takes me to do things... it's not "wishful thinking" or whatever as I'm not some rookie whose never finished any projects before... NOW I know there will also be some "BUT WAIT?! WHERE IS HSM?! FINISH THAT FIRST!!!" So I will say that as of right now I have done EVERYTHING that I can do to complete HSM... I'm just waiting on the music... when I get the music I will finish it... right now I have 1 hour and 15 minutes of the music and that much of the final is finalized... the final film will be about 2 hours so when I get the rest of the music I will finalize the film... as far as when that is I can't say as I'm not the one doing that... BUT there i

Saturday night production pipeline!

It's Saturday night so what else is there to do but go to the cafe and outline your new proposed production pipeline for use with Cinema 4d 13 and the updated xREF's ^ ^ So the new way I'm going to do things is outlined in that crappy foto... after the animatic phase I will create proxy versions of all the characters/sets/props etc and START production with those proxy models... while using the OpenGL hardware renderer to render those shots which is realtime or close to it with most scenes using proxy objects... then as production goes along I will work on finalizing the real models... BUT I could even finish production and still not have the final models... then once animation production is done I'll have the whole film with a locked edit as I will be editing the hardware rendered shots in the offline edit... then I can finalize the models and they will automatically update in all the scene files since I'll be using xref's... All the sets will be Xref's

Cinema 4d 13 is the one for filmmakerS!

The new animation tools and ESPECIALLY the CMotion system coming in Cinema 4d 13 is going to be AMAZINGLY useful for animated filmmakers... Here's CMotion in action in the hands of an animator and NO KEYFRAMES were used 0_0 c4d R13 + cmotion + builder + biped cycles 01 from Pete Circuitt on Vimeo . The CMotion system seems to be PERFECT for me because I already do a lot of procedural animation using Vibrate tag's, Xpresso, Mograph, and a few other tricks... but this system is BUILT as a PROCEDURAL CHARACTER ANIMATION TOOL so yeh its SUPER DOPE! AND there's a new Character tool which is pretty much an awesome AUTORIGGING system... it has presets for bipeds, quadrapeds, spiders, birds and MORE... I'm not even joking! It even has an AUTOMATIC walk creator which is CMotion then you can tweak the walks to your hearts content.... another it does that is VERY useful is that it will automatically make the character walk along a path at the correct speed with NO foot sl

New Rabbit Junk music video by M dot Strange 2011

Artist: RABBIT JUNK Song: What Doesn't kill you will make you a KILLER http://www.facebook.com/pages/Rabbit-Junk-official/290591267768 Animation and all that by: M dot Strange http://mysteriousdollfilm.blogspot.com Production time: About 6 days Software used: Zbrush  Cinema 4d After Effects Premiere Pro Hardware used: i7 920 16 gb ram 460 gtx