Hi there - I'm looking for someone who can help me out by doing a bit of Poser work for me. I'm making a little 15 minute just for fun film - a sci fi thing - and don't have the time to do all the Poser work that I'd like in it. (Last year I made a film with the basic skeletons in Poser and I can't spare that much time this year.) What I'm looking for is for a short scene where our heroes fight a big fire-breathing multi-headed dragon. Or one big dragon with a few little ones flying around. So, what I need is the dragons against a blue background that I'll be able to bluescreen out. I can also add the flames myself. It's the dragon that I need someone to do. The whole scene will last probably 60 seconds. I would send you some storyboards showing exactly what actions the dragon would need to do and I'll have the actors work with it. I'd really appreciate any help someone could spare. Email me at rob_hart@hotmail.com if you can. Thanks all, Rob Hart

you might want to ask this in the job forum.

and post your pay rate and sample contract for download

If you didn't need the Millennium Dragon, you could get the slightly older DAZ/Zygote Dragon and the Pose Pack which happened to have over a hundred poses and various animations IIRC. That was professionally done for a children's series and the poses looked quite decent even pulled from an animation sequence. Carolly

I have no idea how much a task like this might cost - or what the going rate would be. Anyone want to chime in on this? Rob PS - thanks for the replies so far!

well I charge $5 a second usually ( well that is the way I calculate the cost, so 5*60=300, but I would prob take some off or add some on to that depending on the complexity of the animation. I did a 6 minute animation in flash that I only charged 300 for cause it only used about 12 different still frames. (it was a presentation, very boring stuff, I wanted to spruce it up more with full movment, but client just wanted it standing there LOL.) The reson the cost is that is cause when it is rendering then I cannot do anything else during that time on this computer.

I also do nto have the mil dragon, but do have 2 sixus1 dragons.

Attached Link: http://secure.daz3d.com/shop.php?op=itemdetails&item=647

Found 'em! They are still at DAZ. For a hair less than $30, you can get hundreds of dragon poses in 23 different animation files. It ought to give a flying start, and save money overall. I snagged one of their pop-ups with still images, but there are other samples at the link. I never saw The Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers, but it was a household word even in households with no children. Carolly

Carolly (or any other person who knows), I've never purchased any add-ons for Poser - only worked with the skeleton who came with it. I've gone to the website you included in your post and I have a totally newbie question about it. After I buy the PR Dragon Animations and the Dragon that is required for it, all I have to do is put it into my Poser 4 and there will be ready made flght paths or walking animations right? (or am I misunderstading the dragon animations?) I realize I can buy other stuff to spruce it up (different textures and such), but those two things (the dragon and the animations) are the only things that I absolutely need? Thanks for your help! Rob

Now, with that Dragon you can also get a lot of freebies, especially textures, but also some morphs, poses, and additional bits and pieces as various modelers have added to make him look more like their idea of a dragon. IIRC, there is even a chest fix and even more pointy bits at one site. Look in Free Stuff here and other places (I got more than a hundred hits here, but maybe half are for the other dragons). Over at the old PFO you might still be able to snag the fractal textures for him. He poses quite nicely. I used him curled up on his back in a nest of books (the REAL treasure hoarded by these ancient beasts) and he handled smoothly even in a non-dragon way. I'm pretty sure that Little Dragon was the one who made him Mimic compatible, but somebody did, if you need a dragon who sings for his supper. (One of these years I'll get that lava shower sequence done... I even have the Devil Duckie to go in there with him!) As to posing him, you can start practicing animation right now before purchase. You have a human figure, any figure, loaded? Go into the Pose Folder under Animation Sets and choose an action such as sneaking or running. See the little number? That is the number of frames in that action. Make sure that you are on frame 1 of 30 (see the bottom of your screen). Choose tip-toe (60 frames). Poser will ask if you want to add frames? Say yes. It will give you a 60 frame tippy-toe movement which you can check by hitting the play button on bottom left. (There are keyboard shortcuts for these, too.) The pull-out handle on the bottom leads you to a graph where you get to determine key frames and add movements together to make a progression (tippytoe to the fridge, then open it grandly, before pouncing upon the tuna salad). This is where you want to have an open manual, and do some experimenting with how you blend movements, starting and stopping points, etc.. The Poser 4 manual has an early tutorial where you walk the clown on a path while his head swivels, and you can try this with a person before having a circling dragon fixate on his target. If you want to render an animation, go up to the top menu and look under Make Movie for various features. I've usually saved each rendered frame as a tiff for a programmer to stitch together (the games industry often uses small looped reusable animations rather than full screen sweeps like in movies), but you can make your own quicktime movie. Rendering at this point will go prety quickly (one test subject who may not even have clothes or textures), but it will be good to get a feeling for the mechanics of it. If you are going to have a human and a half dozen dragons kept at bay, you probably don't want to use a global lighting septup unless you also ahve a hefty computer and a lot of time. That is a lot of calculations! Get the motion down first. And remember that animation is more than kinematics. Give each beastie some personality (the red one is assertive and the purple one is really really hungry but the blue one is cowardly and will only snipe at undefended backsides... that sort of thing... and they will move better under your hands. Carolly