I have been working on this for 3 years.  So many challenges, including a computer crash that lost most of what I had done in 2011.  Laid it down again last year because I couldn’t get my movie making software to render it clear.  That problem was solved a few months ago and I jumped back in to finish it.  It was all done in DS…still some little mistakes in there but I just left them in.  Hope it makes you smile!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DOmKBc4n_Gk

Sorry, no joy here in Germany   :-( 

I think this is an excellent animation and most definitely amusing!!

Some very nice animation, cleverly directed with some strong animation techniques! Very nice work!

Just for better understanding: I can't see this animation because auf copyright reasons here.

I will look into obtaining the rights for use of the song.  I know the process for my own production of cover because I produce and sing also but I haven't ever used someone else's vocal.  Will go do my homework.

Maybe not your fault: The GEMA (copyright organisation for musicians in Germany) is acting sometime very obscure... O.o

EDIT: they are complaining about some music from "SME"

This was great!  :)

I have emailed MPL Music Publishing, Inc. for licensing.  They are the administrator for the song.

Thanks a lot for your efforts

A most excellent piece of work. Well done.

Nice work.  Can you tell us about how you made the video?  What kind of workflow process did you use?  What worked?  What didn't work?  What was harder than it should have been?  I'd love to hear some behind the scene details.

Since I am only doing music videos for now, here is what I do. 

I start with my own storyboard process.  I break down the lyrics in Excel and determine where my scene changes will be.  I prefer to do a change at each phrase in the song.  I also look at the lyric content to see if there needs to be extra scenes included.  For example, in the Hippo video, The change came at the beginning of each song phrase except when she sang: I'll feed him there, I'll wash him there and give him his massage.  There was 2 seconds for feed and wash and four seconds for the massage.  2 seconds is manageable.

Then I go and plan my scenes, making notes in Excel at each phrase of what I would like the scene to look like.

Next, I create my characters.  Usually they change a couple of times.

Once my characters are done, I begin to build my scenes.  I have found that many times what I was thinking changes as the scene is being built.  During this process, I end up having to hunt down items I don't have either in site freebies, like here and on freebie forums like ShareCG.  If I can't find what I want for free, then its time to hit the product sites like Rendo, Daz, rdna and Content Paradise.  I have just finished all the scenes for my next music video.  Most of them are elaborate outdoor scenes.  One garden scene has over 300 objects in it.  I am thankful for DS 4.6 and 16g of Ram.  2 years ago, DS would crash and my computer would hang up.  Now I have the resources to build big scenes.  Even though I have collected ALOT of plants over the past 13 years, I found I didn't have enough.  I ended up going to some of the specialty plant sites, like Xfrog, and downloading all of their freebies.  I could use several instances of the plants and trees by changing their texture to make them look different.

Once my scenes are built, I will bring a character into each one, render it then put the images in order as the will appear.

Then I go back to my characters and work on clothing/costumes.  I usually save a file of each character in each costume.

I usually save the animation for last.  I use every animation resource I can get my hands on.  I hate manually keyframing but will if I have to.  I can tear apart a purchased aniblock and use bits and pieces.  I have Ipi Studio2 with a Kinect so I can do my own motion capture. I use MimicPro for my lipsync and am learning how to fine tune the syncs.  I purchased iClone this year and am running some animation through there into DS.  I purchased Graphmate and Keymate but haven't gotten a good handle on them yet.  Someone from the forums suggested I do my animation in another file and not in the scene so that's what I have been doing.  I create the movements in an empty file and fine tune them.  I save it then merge it into the scene file for placement.

I render the scene to images.  I do this because its easier for editing.  I bring the images into Photoshop (CS6) for edit (lighting, effects, etc) then export it as an mp4.  I have an oline subscription to Photoshop and Lightroom.  Going to play with Lightroom for editing this time around for a dreamy, romantic look. 

Have had trouble in the past with getting a clear final product so I use Photoshop to assemble my clips for the final render.  CS6 has a basic movie editor, certainly adequate enough for now.  I can insert stills for titles and credits then create the final movie.

There you have it!  My basic work flow.

Here is the garden scene I was talking about earlier.

http://i126.photobucket.com/albums/p95/jaebea/02a-GardenPath_zpsfd8754ca.jpg

I thought it was super cute and pretty good for a Studio animation. Animation is tough all around, and there's a few tools for Studio to help, but few that really work well in a production environment. I say this with experience mind you, and it can be done with A LOT of work (as I'm sure you know!) All-in-all, job well done!

When you get a bit more advanced with your video editing, Lightworks is a professional tool but not exactly easy in the UI department save for NLE experts, but it is free at the basic level. There's also a program called Hitman that's a little bit of Adobe-style AE with pretty slick animation doodads and particle sims. Not quite free, but a veritable bargain compared to After Effects. 

My little diddy that took around four months, mostly render time (exporting from Studio's animation parts to Luxrender): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZSal_ah0Iag

Thanks, I love to hear about how people are doing animation with DAZ Studio (and Poser too, I'm not that picky). 

I recently had this long fight with trying to add on some key framed motion to the end of an aniblock.  I couldn't easilly get the characters feet to stay planted.  I fought the good fight and it came out all right, but then I remembered DAZ Studio does have a pinning feature, ActivePose.  It's kind of underused and the documentation on it is very weak.  Had I remembered it (I had seen it before but never really used it much) I could have saved myself so much grief it isn't funny.

I recommend always rendering animations to images and assembling them later.  The way DS does movie files is prone to errors, espcially since some video of windows codecs are flakey.  Rendering to images makes it much easier to re-start a render and to fix things later.

Thanks again for sharing.