In my city has a night bar, Crossroads Blues & Classics and they are living a dilemma: some costumers drink so much, and after leaving the bar, turns a terror of the neighborhood. They scream, smash beer bottles on the walls, laugh loud a lot, fight, put the sound of they car this high...
The neighborhood cant sleep and call the cops almost every night. So, the owners ask me for a campaign, with folders and a short animation to put on the big screen of the bar, with some of those characters. The first one is the "Hiena", (something like "Hyennoying")Hes laugh loud and screams like a idiot. Thats the first test, Flash animation, what do you think?

Message edited on: 03/13/2005 07:57

I like your character. It's a very clever solution.

Costumers drink too much? I know we gossip all over the place, and male costumers smoke like chimneys, and we have a bad habit of wearing a measuring tape for a tie, but.... Cute character.

Yeah, Flash is good. You could do a cheep South Park type of animation with Flash. The hardest part will be the lip sync. But in the latest issue of 3D World magazine they are giving away the full version of Mimic 2 for Poser. Perhaps a cartoon rendering and Mimic might be a easier test run?

Thanks, Kolschey an nomouse. The animation is updated, check the same link above. ;-)
InfoCentral, I work for a company who makes material for educational proposal, and do you believe we create almost 20 short animations for video, made in Flash? Well, its not a Disney material, but the kids like and it works. ;-)
Thank you for the sugestion. A animation with Toon is a great idea, unfortunally we dont have the 3D World magazine in Brazil. I hope find that issue in a big magazine store, they import some foreign publications. Thanks!

If cops aren't throwing drunks in jail, I'm not sure how cartoons will help.

If you doing that much in Flash wouldn't it pay to get Toon Boom or Tab?

The idea, SHONNER, is alert the costumers for a descent behavior out of the bar and preserve the peace on the neighborhood. Its about other culture, the young brazilians responds very well to campaigns with sense of humor.

I see other products similar or/and better than Macromedias Flash, InfoCentral. USAnimation, ToonBoom and others. I dont know this Tab. What is it?
Well, theyre not very interest in spend more money in thet year, and I have a good knowledge of Flash. Im suggesting in the future rebuild all animations in 3D, and Carrara is, for now, my best tool for it. ;-)

There is Poser too which you can import into Carrara. I believe the cartoon rendering in Carrara is better then Poser but there is a Poser 6 coming out and that is one area they say they really improved upon. For 2D animation Flash is very good at it. Tab is another 2D animation program like Toon Boom.

Yes, Im wondering about the Toon Pro for Carrara too. I know a plugin for 3DS Max called CartoonReyes (http://www.reyes-infografica.net/plugins/cartoo_p.php) and if you follow the link, you can see how impressive it is. I hope some day Carrara could render that kind of image with the same quality.

I haven't bought toon pro, but if you use the toon pro lighting model, you should be able to get a 1d lightmap effect similar to what is done with cartoon reyes. Only one I'm not sure if it could do would have to be the pics from The Mercenary, look at the eyes, maybe with glow for the white so you don't get shadow on it, I don't know. The comic strips I doubt it could do, but maybe the NPR could do something similar to those. If you want to know how to code a real time renderer like this in opengl, I'd be happy to provide links to both theory and source code.

Attached Link: http://www.s1.hashmirror.com/ftp/VM/GregDemo/demo.zip

This is an interesting program that comes with a built-in Cel Shader. I think the cartoon rendering looks pretty good. Not great, but does look like hand drawn artwork. Certainly not near as nice as Flash though.

Thanks for sharing infocentral. You are right the rendering does come out pretty good. Brian

Thanks, Sardtok. Any information is helpfull. You are helping me and almost everybody here. :-) Im with Brian, InfoCentral. Thanks for share. Im trying this program soon is possible. ;-)

http://nehe.gamedev.net/lesson.asp?index=08 Here's Nehe's code for cel shading, it's lesson 37 http://www.gamedev.net/reference/programming/features/celshading The gamedev article it's based on. http://www.red3d.com/cwr/npr/ NPR rendering theory. There's also a reference to a book that supposedly takes the cel shading further in its NPR chapter, but covers all kinds of real time rendering.

Thanks, Sardtok. Some great links for programming and source codes. I have so much to learn about it...
InfoCentral, Im glad for your help, but the .zip file is corrupted. I try download the file twice, and the same error occours whe I decompress (using the WinZip or WinRAR): the demo.swf file is corrupted. Sorry... :-(

Attached Link: http://www.s1.hashmirror.com/ftp/VM/GregDemo/demo.html

Ok, then try the HTML version.

Attached Link: http://www.s1.hashmirror.com/ftp/pub/movies/wmvdemo.wmv

Or if your on a Windows computer this is a much smaller file and loads a lot quicker.

Just so that you don't have to necessarily download 70 MB to see what program it is. It's animation master, and I've tried contacting them about getting a student license for it here in Norway, as I've wanted to try it out and get my hands dirty with it. (Supposedly great for character animation, but not so good for other things, and it doesn't have very good export/import features, but still there's a lot of great stuff made with it.) www.hash.com is their website, the hashmirror sites are their file servers where they keep projects and video tutorials and such things. (They have a very good community website: amfilms.hash.com )

"...but still there's a lot of great stuff made with it." I have to agree with you; it's always good to find out as much as you can about any area you are involved in or getting involved in. If I had known that 3D was going to involve so many different programs and cost so much I think I might have picked a different hobby (nay). As they say: once a hobby, now an expensive addiction. You start off with one application and before you know it you have a couple more your working with. I think a great number of us here use several different modeling programs. As a matter of fact NewTek has started a MaYa forum on their website because they said Lightwave isn't the only program their users work with. I agree. "you don't have to necessarily download 70 MB to see what program it is." Ahh, but you do to see what it does! I think it is a great demo. You get to see what other 3D artists are doing. Sit back and watch a large amount of the gallery artwork and some fine animation work for inspiration. If nothing else it's worth the download just for the entertainment value. One of the features I like about 3D world magazine is the included CD which showcases a animation or two someone has done. Everyone of the videos I have viewed has inspired me. Perhaps this is why I choose this as a hobby. I love to see animation. Whether it be mine or others. Enjoy the demo...

Yeah, the demo is great. I've downloaded loads of stuff from hash. Everything that has been shown on TV from the amfilms site for instance. All the milestones things all the way back from the amiga days, and several of the cel-shaded movies. http://www.hash.com/products/am.asp This is a good page on the site for looking over features and such.

The amfilms site is GREAT! I checked it out last night. The cartoon films are awsome; a lot better than what they show on the demo and I thought that was pretty good. I would say now, after seeing several of then that I still don't think the results are better then Flash; but it sure is close. I relly liked the film Bardot in the Anime catagory. Thanks for sharing about the site. I missed that one.

Man, I love the demo! One of the most impressive features, in my opinion, is the copy and paste reversed frames. Its so simple, hes animate the walk cycle of Homer Simpson in seconds! Thank you, InfoCentral and Sardtok! Speaking in animation, any of you two watch the new animation at the Blur Studios website? Its called "In The Rough". Fantastic!

Attached Link: http://www.grutadaonca.com.br/noviski/malafante.html

Here is another character for the "drunk conscientization campaing"(???):-( , from the Crossroads. Its the "Malafante", unfortunally doesnt have a transalate for English. But in Brazil we call "mala" (bag) every annoying person. Its like a heavy bag full of crap and you has to carry-on. Mixing mala+elephant we create: "Malafante"...(its disgusting, I know...)! :-P The "Mala" is the kind of costumer who likes to put the sound of they car this high after leave the bar. Thats why hes dancing. Im modeling the car and the body right now.

He looks like a real jerk, looking forward to seeing it with the body... ;) So it's not related to the latin malus -a -um, which means bad or evil?

There it is. The jerk is complete now. ;-) No, no relation with the latin word. In Portuguese "mal" means "bad" or "evil". "Mala" is bag. "Mala" in Spanish means "bad" too, only in the female. Thanks, Sartok!

This is the guy who is going to go outside the club and start yelling in the street?

And malo would be masculine for bad in spanish right? Mala=BAG while Mal=BAD Adding an a exchanges the D for a G... Hmmm... Cryptic... Looks good, I like the cartoony proportions of the legs vs. the upper body.

No, InfoCentral. Thats the guy who is go out of the bar and turns the stereo of his car very loud and/or accellerate de engine, make the tires scream, etc. The yelling one is the "Hiena". I want to create another one, for the costumer who drinks a lot and becames a "macho": starts to fight with anyone, with no reason. We call them "Pit-Boys", a variation of the pit-bull dog and "jiu-jitsu-fighter-richie-boy-do-you-know-who-my-father-is?" kind of people. The image above is the model sheet for the client approval.:-) Muy bien, Sardtok! ;-) The bad part of the story is animate the nose again. I lost the animation to finish the model. Thank you both!

Looks great! Very nice job. That's what I like about Flash; the colors come out so intense.

The ad should show a cop beating the drunk and/or annoying fellow. The point will come across better.

Attached Link: http://www.grutadaonca.com.br/noviski/2d.html

Yes. No doubt, Flash is a great tool. The link shows a character of the one animation. Using the Preston Blairs traditional animation you can reach some decent results.

Finally, I fisnished the modeling of the characters. Now its time to modeling the background (some "cartoon city at night" style) and, the animation.