It's the dancing girl! I was wondering if she was part of something bigger. Nice to see what you're up to. Was this rendered in vue? I just got a copy of that finally and haven't even had time to install it yet. Now that you've teased us, when do we get to see more? :)

Really helpful stuff, thanks!

The votes seam unanimous! Style #2 it is! I'm anxious now to comp them all together with a background to see how it all looks in context. Instead of putting them all in the apartment set, I think I'll use this as motivation to put together my 2nd set, the electronics store where the two on the left work.

Will do! So far I have most of the story written. It's getting kind of long so I don't know how much I might end up cutting out. I've made 1 set and 3 characters so far, but it'll need much much more. I'll be working on this one for quite some time.

Probably much much later ;) I'm still writing the story, and I haven't even started on actual dialog yet! This thing is very much in pre-production.

The cell shader in lightwave is great! Much better and much more customizable than poser's. But, poser is good enough to pull off what I'm trying to do. Don't have pro pack, just an old copy of poser 4. For camera movements, I'll mostly do them 2d style like I did on that darn robot. I'd render the background realy big from lightwave, animate in a big poser project over the background, then in aftereffects I'd move the video layer in a standard size project to simulate a camera moving over a 2d image. It gives a much more cartoony pan that way since the perspective doesn't change. There are a couple parts in this project that will have more involved camera moves, but in those you either won't see the feet so it won't have to line up as precise, or the characters will be flying, so it won't matter.

Yes and no. The room was done all in lightwave. The guy's hair and eyes were modeled in lightwave and brought into poser 4 (the later versions run too slow). The guy's clothes and hair are a standard poser render while the guy himself is from the cartoon with lines preview. I composited it all together in after effects along with some color replacement and lighting effects to make it all fit together like it's in the same room. Believe it or not, this method is actually more effecient for me than trying to do everything in either program by itself.

Thanks for the comments nemirc! I've been playing with the table and you're right, it does look better with less ripples. Thanks!
The guy's clothes and hair are just regular 3d renders with outlines on them, while the guy himself is cell shaded. I like the idea of keeping the guy cartoon looking, but I think the real shading on the clothes helps to add depth to it. I've been expirimenting with these combinations so long that I think I'm just used to it by now. I hope that while watching the animation the veiwers will get used to it too. This one will be a lot longer than the last one since I'm actually writing out a story first ;)

Well, if it is "original" music, then it's not anybody else's, so he wouldn't need permission. There are also a good amount of freeware programs which could be used to make music. www.kvr-audio.com and www.harmony-central.com are good places to start looking.

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

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!)