It's a prety simple plot of the guy and the girl trying to sneak past the robot to escape. The backgrounds were created in lightwave and then "cartoonerized" using the photoshop poster edges filter. The people were done in poser 4 using the cartoon with line display setting. It was all composited together in aftereffects. The sky in the background is simply a photograph of the sky that scrolls by slowly during each shot. Even though most of the elements were done in 3d programs, the overall look has a real 2d feel to it, especially in the panning shots.

On my monitor the characters look a bit blurred. Is that due to the JPEG compression used in these stills, or is that in the final animation? Any estimates on when this will be finished?

I used motion bluring on the poser figures, so when I take a still frame it looks blurry, but it looks pretty smooth while watching the moving video. I just work on this in my spare time, which I don't have a lot of, so I have no idea when it will finally be done. Hopefully soon!

OK. That makes sense. I don't generally associate motion blur with cell animation so it looked a bit odd. However, now that I think about it, it could be very cool. Please keep us posted on your progress and if you do little test animations feel free to post links so we can see how things are going!

Attached Link: http://www.infinityminusone.com/sneak.mpg

The web page says I don't have permission to veiw this content. I think you need to host the video somewhere else, or change the server set-up. :D

Ack! This server is at a friend's house and he lets us host our stuff on it for free. Sometimes he changes stuff and forgets to tell us about it. He's out tonight so I left him a message about it. Hopefully he'll have it fixed soon. All of the files that were already uploaded work fine, but the new stuff I upload doesn't work. Oh well, try again later and it might work. I'll post again when I hear something definite about it.

Attached Link: http://www.infinityminusone.com/sneak.mpg

Attached Link: http://www.infinityminusone.com/sneak.mpg

Well, I have to say that I got a couple of laughs out of this one. Nice concept although I think I have to get used to the cartoon motion blur O_o Question. Is it me or you forgot to put the sound? Because I didn't hear a thing!

it's still a work in progress, the final product will have plenty of sound effects, music, and dialog. I'm glad you liked it!

I liked it! I'm looking forward to seeing/hearing the final version! :D I could see a LOT of foley effects really enhancing the final cut.

I look forward to the full sound version. It looks like it'll be a fun story. And the motion blur turned out fine! It looks like you've got Gimbal Lock on the white character ( a byproduct of the walk designer) where the legs kind of jerk real odd while walking. I don't remember what the fix for that is. Does anyone else?

When I first animated the robot walking I noticed that the leg was popping to the side. I was about to start trying to smooth it out the hard way when a friend of mine said he liked it, and suggested just putting a funny sound effect every time it happens and making it a malfunctioning robot. I liked the idea since it not only takes a lot less work, but also makes it look like I did all that extra work on purpose ;)

OUTSTANDING! I love that, and it'll work in this context.

Attached Link: http://www.infinityminusone.com/guyhandtest.mpg

Give him long hair and a guitar and he could be Keith Richards. [grin]

HAHA! he does look like he is air guitaring! It's funny, one of the projects I want to do one day is an all animated music video of a band playing live. Maybe I can reuse this animated pose? ;)

Attached Link: http://www.infinityminusone.com/tdr.mpg

I actually took each of the 21 shots into aftereffects one at a time and added all of the environmental effects as post production work. I think it gave it a better overall feel. It also makes it look a lot less poser-ish :)

I'm eagerly awaiting the audio as well!

Attached Link: http://www.infinityminusone.com/tdr071005.mpg

I made a slight update. I fixed the overall contrast, touched up a few movements, and made the signiture at the end look more like my own.

Attached Link: http://www.infinityminusone.com/tdr080305.mpg

Yes! Yes! Yes! It really adds a lot to it. Just as a quick note, I love the font you used for the titling. However, it's a little difficult to read in the credits. It might help to add some horizontal space between the letters. Of course, that assumes your final movie will be these dimensions.

I agree with Bobasaur. The credits are a little difficult to read. However this is outstanding :-D The mute version was good but this one is a killer.

Attached Link: http://www.infinityminusone.com/tdr081205b.mpg

Attached Link: http://www.kevinhammer.com/animation/tdr.php

Very cool. The audio and visuals work well together. I can read everything. I noticed on thing though.... "Copyright" is spelled incorrectly at the end. [Yikes!] I'm a Mac guy so I don't know if there are any variations on this but on the PC at my office if I hold down the "Alt" key while typing "0169" on the numeric keypad I can get that circle-around-the-C symbol for copyright. Also, when are you going to continue this? Do you have a full story planned out or was this ultimately just a stand-alone learning/practicing excercise? I noticed other 'in work" items on the site - are they the continuation of this story or something new for us to look forward to? More! More! More! Gimme! Gimme! Gimme! Ah, the price of fame. ;-)

Oops! I've always been a bad speller. Why doesn't photoshop have a spell check? ;)

I actually didn't even have a story for this part until I was halfway done. It started just as a rendering test and I got carried away. Now that I know what I'm doing I'll try to make some more once I figure out a story from here. The main problem is that the robot was downloaded from the free stuff area here and is only for non-comercial use, so I can't sell the animation. Not very motivating.

Edwin's Disc on the site is a new monstrosity I'm starting to get into. This one I'll be working on for quite some time. I'm actually scripting it out and storyboarding everything first before I start animating. I'm still working on the story's end, but it could end up being between 30 mins to an hour long! I'm doing this one all in lightwave with all original models (mostly very low poly, yay for cel shading!)

Woohoo! It's finally up in the animation outlet!