I'm having some problems in my life so I can't really spend time animating. Although i thought i could.
I want to make stories faster.

So this is wahat i want to do.
Full camera animation  BUT for character animation do semi-animation.

With semi-animation you would pose at frame 0 for example , and then keep that pose for about 4 or more seconds, then change the pose。

So as you can see, is not fluid animation but if you create a pose change every 4 or 6 or 8 or 10 seconds.. Still it can look like animation.

And you can make a story.
Moreover, the fact that     camera animation will be full smooth fluid animation, that helps.

Would people be ok watching this type of animation?
By people i mean my family and friends, who i will show it too.. but in general, would people think this is boring and stupid or would they be interested if there was a good story?

Rhat sounds like some of the old cartoons that were more like a set of flashcards . It can look ok .

 Check out AfterWorld. It's done in Poser. Got picked up by a real distributor and they got a TV deal in Australia. 

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zy9v7etZG74&feature=fvst

](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zy9v7etZG74&feature=fvst)Also my own animation techniques, though relying on cel shading, allow me to tell stories very fast with decent quality. Check out my reel here.

Comic books do that type of animation too, although with even fewer images.  I can't remember what it's called, but it's basically the comic book frames with voices and sound effects.

Quote -  Check out AfterWorld. It's done in Poser. Got picked up by a real distributor and they got a TV deal in Australia. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zy9v7etZG74&feature=fvst

This is animation? It's just a bunch of boring lap-dissolves. And this got picked up for TV? Sheesh.

 Some people really do believe that story is king I guess. Also remember the 2D hand drawn Broken Saints series, which is done in a similar style of still images with dissolves etc., got picked up by FOX and was very successful on DVD.

have you seen exodusthree
http://www.exodusthree.com/episode1_high.html
I really do like this type of work,
may have a go one day

 I have never seen that one. Is there only the one episode? Seems like a good idea. Since it says copyright 2008 I expected there would be tons of stories by now.

Why wait to have a go at it? If you got Poser and want to do it, why not just start now?

Quote - have you seen exodusthree
http://www.exodusthree.com/episode1_high.html
I really do like this type of work,
may have a go one day

That's exactly what i want to do.  : )

 You know what they say. Don't try to build a wall. Just lay one brick as perfectly as it can be. Before long, your wall is there.

I

I've been using Poser to do this anime style stuff. It can't be beat! With all the content out there you can be creating whatever kind of show you want, right now, and you only have to take each small step at a time.

Hi Teruchan
do you have a link to your work as it looks very interesting

 Well there's my reel here:

http://www.studioartfx.com/Animation/Animation.html

And some of of my newer stuff can be seen in this intro video:

http://www.studioartfx.com/

My previous works are published by TOKYOPOP on the DVD Anime: Concept to Reality. You may still be able ot find it on Amazon.

That's some very fine work there, Teruchan.

 Thank you very much. Poser really changed the way I approach my work and greatly increased what I believed I could do. Also the wealth of content made a huge difference.

Your very welcome. It's obvious that you put a lot of time, effort and love into your work. It really gets my goat when so many people bust their humps to do good animation only to see a glorified Powerpoint show lauded as some kind of great work and given a TV spot.
Mediocrity truly Rules!

I have decided to do my animation this way.. Except mine won't cross fade .. it will just snap change.
Because of many reasons

1. Faster, can do a whole story in a day
   2)getting a fluid animation correct can take you years if you're amateur and just clumsy. I won't get nothing done ever in my life
   3)The story is most important not  fancy graphics. I mean, look at books, people love books and they are not animated

2. By doing SEMI_ANIMATIOn, you can still get animation. so why the need for fluid full animation.

By the way SEMI ANIMATION( as i cal it is in the form )   A            AB
where A and B are poses. A stays for a few frames, with no change, then  change to B

And semi is only for characters. The camera will move fluidly

I have wasted alot of time trying to plan a fluid full animation but that's just worthless, in the end...it owuld just be cheap not perfect animation. So why waste my time?
Leave that to the animation studios that have tons of peple working together. There, fluid animation is effective with team work.

for one person, full animation is too much. especially if you have CARPAL TUNNEL SYNDROME and are clumsy also. So I could careless about doing full fluid animation. Semi-animation and slideshows are better

@josterD: I've seen 'semi animations' and they can work well - go for it

JosterD, the key is to know what you really want to do and then do it. Don't spend a too much time planning it or thinking about it. Just start. You can fix it as you go along. Too much planning and you may find reasons not to do it.

Also make sure **you really love it. **Whatever style you choose, be it motion comics, semi animation or anything else, it is going to consume a large part of your life. Make sure you love **every second **of doing it and you cannot fail.

Quote - It really gets my goat when so many people bust their humps to do good animation only to see a glorified Powerpoint show lauded as some kind of great work and given a TV spot.
Mediocrity truly Rules!

That's a pretty unfair assumption to say the least.  The 30 Days of Night franchise was started with a single written page.  That changed into a written script, that changed into a comic book that was adapted to the screen.  The production companies are looking for ideas and there is no need to pack your ideas into fantastic animation and FX.  Most of the time less is more.

Quote - I'm having some problems in my life so I can't really spend time animating. Although i thought i could.
I want to make stories faster.

So this is wahat i want to do.
Full camera animation  BUT for character animation do semi-animation.

With semi-animation you would pose at frame 0 for example , and then keep that pose for about 4 or more seconds, then change the pose。

So as you can see, is not fluid animation but if you create a pose change every 4 or 6 or 8 or 10 seconds.. Still it can look like animation.

And you can make a story.
Moreover, the fact that     camera animation will be full smooth fluid animation, that helps.

Would people be ok watching this type of animation?
By people i mean my family and friends, who i will show it too.. but in general, would people think this is boring and stupid or would they be interested if there was a good story?

I think this is a great idea and I thank you for pointing it out.  Doing things this way limits the risk of pulling your hair out over Poser's animation tools.

Quote - > Quote -  Check out AfterWorld. It's done in Poser. Got picked up by a real distributor and they got a TV deal in Australia. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zy9v7etZG74&feature=fvst

This is animation? It's just a bunch of boring lap-dissolves. And this got picked up for TV? Sheesh.

Animation of any kind is "About the Story". If it tells the story, it has done it's job.

Sometimes less-is-more, but usually less-is-less. PowerPoint shows are BORING, whatever the content. Of course, with the current state of television "content" and "entertainment" pretty soon, we'll be waiting in anxious anticipation for the 24 part series of  "Ass" on the extra-bigass screen.

Welll skuts.

I'd rather complete 50 semi-animation movies in 1 year than have 1 full animated fuly rendered one in 2 years that may suck. hehehe

think about it

Quote - Sometimes less-is-more, but usually less-is-less. PowerPoint shows are BORING, whatever the content. Of course, with the current state of television "content" and "entertainment" pretty soon, we'll be waiting in anxious anticipation for the 24 part series of  "Ass" on the extra-bigass screen.

That is your "Opinion" and you've every right to share it and have it, but please, don't confuse your opinions with facts. What you've been calling a PowerPoint show is certainly not a PowerPoint show at all. When was the last time you watched a Power Point show with moving camera angles, dialogue and a plotline? A lot of Manga and Anime' has used similar animation techniques and gained quite a large following.

There's room for everyone in this sandbox and going around poo pooing somebody else's efforts to produce what you don't like is counter productive. If you don't like it you certainly don't have to watch it. Maybe you could show us your own one man animation act.

You are absolutely correct. It is just my opinion. Even Plan 9 from Outer Space had camera angles, dialogue and a plotline. Does that make it any good?

If you'd like to view my own pitiful attempts at film-making, you're welcome to visit my youTube page www.youtube.com/misterskuts

I started an on-line comic that I was going to do with panels and word balloons and onomatopoeias everything and when you clicked on the panel, it would play a small animation. But it ended up as a fully animated movie. (see my signature if you'd like to watch it)

In the end, I agree that the overall presentation doesn't matter as much as the story does. However, bad presentation can detract from good story and a good presentation can compensate for a bad story. Just look at Avatar. :)

Nice job. Terrific use of dramatic lighting and dynamic cloth.

 Pretty cool. I just watched both parts on youtube. SO how is it going with publicizing your work and getting an audience?

It's slow. I animated part of the first "The Shadow" radio play and that has more than 10,000 views but other than that, I mostly get around 500 views. I could spend more time talking them up on the net and other places but to be honest, I'm much too busy actually animating to do that. I am sending "Blue Defender" out to a few tv networks to see if I can't get it picked up by one of them.  Not holding my breath though. I'm also working on a feature length movie (2 minutes down, 88 to go!) that I am going to look for a distributor for. There are a few that work exclusively with independent films.

Also been looking into buying promotion. There are some sites that promise X number of views on YouTube. 100,000 views costs like $250. They have lower values that I may try first.

In the end, I hope for word of mouth to spread more than it does. No big deal really. More people have looked at the least of my animations than ever read a story I wrote. I do it because I love it. If I can get rich and famous for it so much the better.

Quote - Nice job. Terrific use of dramatic lighting and dynamic cloth.

Thanks! There was no way I was going to do a superhero animation without dynamic cloth. And the lighting is not actually volumetric. I used a cone with a shader to fake it. MUCH faster render times. It's not perfect but close enough for my budget and time.

I've done stories on paper with implied animation( if you know what i mean: like if character jumps you draw one pose of the jump but then you draw previous point in time of the jump by making lighter and lighter drawings of the figure) and those stories have brought happiness to many people that i know.

I'm not gonna spend tons and tons of time making full animation when i can just be efficient with semi-animation.

drew good for you. nice movie but that doesn't mean that i"m stupid because i do semi-anim. I have alot of stories in mind. i want to make as many as i can. 50 or 100 and more coming as i age.

Quote - You are absolutely correct. It is just my opinion. Even Plan 9 from Outer Space had camera angles, dialogue and a plotline. Does that make it any good?

Funny that you mention Plan 9 From Outer Space. Yeah the story is really bad, as is the acting and set design and production. But it was soo bad that it ended up becoming a "Classic" in the genre of "B" movies. So if you're going to go for bad, go all the way!

Quote - If you'd like to view my own pitiful attempts at film-making, you're welcome to visit my youTube page www.youtube.com/misterskuts

That's really quite impressive for Poser. More impressive that it's the work of one person and not a studio! Just animating that many figures in a scene means you must have boocoo's of memory to work with and is amazing. As good as it is, though, some of your figure animation leaves much to be desired and detracts from the feel of the storyline.

Just a few things that detract from your animation are the stony facial expressions throughout, the opening scene in the street where your two figures standing on the side of the road are standing stone still and very unlifelike until you get their closups and some very jerky inhuman body movements typical of Poser when importing BVH on the bar dancers, little things that make big impressions in a full animation. I loved your rain and the attention to the droplets hitting the pavement, however they were very noticably only in one small area of the scene which detracted from the effect completely.

So the question is, do you want to spend even more time fixing all the little details you missed or would you consider telling the story with a more stylized semi animation and have the story be the star?

 Keep in mind, everyone, that it really depends on what your goals are. If you're trying to attract the attention of Hollywood or like-minded investment so that they can license your story and put a huge budget behind making it "properly", then semi-animation can be great. Even a novel can be great, as we have seen many novels adapted into huge movies recently. And, of course, there's comics and graphic novels to consider.

My goal, however, has always been to create the final product. Not trying to attract Hollywood, or any other body, to take my story and run with it. I look at technologies like Poser for their ability to give me the power to make the final thing I want to make, right now. Also know that Broken Saints, while not 3D, but hand drawn, effectively used semi-animation to create an epic which built a huge web following. Their final product attracted Hollywood, and Fox bought it and, aside from putting some larger known actors on the voice cast, sold the semi-animated epic they created on DVD. It sold over a hundred thousand copies form what I hear. That guy went on to do bigger things for major studios.

So what is the goal of your project? Mine is to create the actual final product that will sell. I've done this successfully and have attracted a major publisher before. This is why I love the anime style because it is the perfect hybrid of full and semi-animation and has proven itself effective and successful in the worldwide market.

I agree that a lot of my figures move like they've got a load in their pants. Lately I've been trying to concentrate on facial expressions more than gross movement. I figure I'll get the hang of it sooner or later.. As far as story telling, I usually proceed until I get bored or disgusted, then move on to another idea. One day I may actually finish something.

Quote -

drew good for you. nice movie but that doesn't mean that i"m stupid because i do semi-anim. I have alot of stories in mind. i want to make as many as i can. 50 or 100 and more coming as i age.

Never said you were. If I came off that way, I apologize. Do do what works for you. I think "semi-animation" is perfectly acceptable. At one point I had watched all of that one series mentioned here that got picked up by TV. Other than getting picked up before me, thus making me envious, I have no problem with it. Enjoyed it in fact. Had an interesting story and was what made me think about doing one like it. I will check out yours when you have something to show. I try to watch all the animations made in the poserverse. Can't say I've finished them all once I've started, but I do give them a chance. I think the poserverse needs more animators and storytellers to help overcome the stigma that it is only capable of rendering half naked chicks with huge.... swords.

Quote - I agree that a lot of my figures move like they've got a load in their pants. Lately I've been trying to concentrate on facial expressions more than gross movement. I figure I'll get the hang of it sooner or later.. As far as story telling, I usually proceed until I get bored or disgusted, then move on to another idea. One day I may actually finish something.

LOL! Boredom is the enemy of every writer! When you get to that point. Go out and refresh your batteries doing something fun in real life. Let the project rest and simmer for a while. Then just check in on it from time to time to see if you have anything new to add. Never just abandom them. Let the story and your brain rest, then go back.

Facial expressions in Poser are definitely work. A good randomiser script will help you create some good starting points to work from.