Thursday, July 20, 2006

REDNECK

Photobucket - Video and Image Hosting

Photobucket - Video and Image Hosting

18 comments:

UbaTuber said...

Nicely done! Great color match, doesn't look like a neck repair job :)

Darkmatters said...

Thanks J! I figured there's no way I'd ever match the color he originally had it... the neck was the flesh color of the face. I couldn't even begin to figure out what colors might have gone into that crazy cadaverous color, so I decided I'd be better off going red. So glad I was able to fix it!

Anonymous said...

Kudos, Mike! Nicely done. :-)

Darkmatters said...

Uh-oh! They've found me. The spambots. They're here. I might have to go undercover for a while. I found like 43 comments by Anonymous in my email today, looks like one on each of my old posts. haven't touched this one yet. I'll try to hold out, but we'll see. I might need to switch on word recognition confirmation.

Shelley Noble said...

I didn't understand what you were showing with Red Neck. I thought it was the next puppet, duh. excellent job on the repairs indeed!

Darkmatters said...

Thanx my peeps!

UbaTuber said...

You have beautiful graphics I have ever seen :)

;)

Darkmatters said...

Why you! I oughtta......


Heh, you got me! I actually came in to see if the 'bots had nested here yet, and I thought they had! Then I saw the username. Unless.... unless.... hey, Uba... are you a spambot?

Darkmatters said...

The three laws of spambotics:

A spambot must injure a weblog or, through inaction, allow a weblog to come to harm.

A spambot must obey orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.

A spambot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.

Anonymous said...

Heh! Asimov humor... My Achilles' heel...

UbaTuber said...

SPAM bot?! No way man, I'm a 100% Grade A Prime Angus Bot. No ground up eyeballs or hoofs here...

And have I mentioned....Darkstrider...that you have beautiful graphics I have ever seen?

Darkmatters said...

Yeah, it seems I've heard that somewhere recently.

And Sven, i don't know if you saw this one when I linked to it on th emessage board, but here's some much better Asimov humor than my pathetic attempt:

Animato

You'll find it a little ways down on the main page (the 3 laws of "cartoonics"). He doesn't want people taking snippets from his site, so I'm only linking to it. This is great stuff though.

mefull said...

Looking good mike, Those Scott heads look ... well Rad dude. :) Seamless repair job to my eye.

So please fill me in on the advantage of not twisting the armature wires together?
I like the idea of the silk thread to bind the wire. Maybe it works because you are not pre-stressing the wire by twisting it all up. I probably missed a thread on this subject over at SMA , but inquiring minds want to know.

Darkmatters said...

Well I suppose it's mostly a matter of preference really. But yeah, it seems to me twisted wires compound stress points and react a little strangely inside there when things bend. For example, it's not very noticeable, but there's what I call the corkscrew effect. If you turn the puppets head one way the neck gets shorter, turn it the other way and it gets longer. Plus it's very hard to tell how long a group of wires will end up after twisting. This way they're exactly as long as when you started out.

I like the way the wrapped wires feel when bending... it could be illusion, but to me it feels smoother. If you think about what happens to a twisted wire elbow when you bend it, it's pretty weird. This way they're all just bending.

And hey, if it's good enough for Misha and Tennessee, it's good enough for me.

I did a little twisting where the tie-downs are though. It seemed necessary. On this guy I'm working out the techniques I'll be using on the rest. I've already thought of an improvement for future puppets. They'll have more mobile rectal tie-downs. Tonic's (short for Catatonic Drunk) is locked inside a solid block of epoxy putty, but the rest will have the ability to swivel. It's alright though - being catatonic, he doesn't really move around a lot.

Darkmatters said...

Just posted by veteranimator Dan Anderson on the message board:

"The best wire armatures use straight strands of armature wire. By twisting the wire you are actually helping it to break."

mefull said...

It seems totally logical to me NOT to twist the wires together.
One would think you are in fact prestressing them and making them weaker before you even begin animation.

You will need something to hold the strands together, I like the silk thread idea.

PS. I have been remiss in thanking you for the linkage!
So thanks for the link from the big skating rink.

menir said...

Hi! Very nice work indeed! I'm a portuguese that works in animation, nice area but not so much work about... Hope to see some animation with that caracter soon. Best regards

Darkmatters said...

Hey, thanks Menir! Your blog looks nice too (can't understand a word of it though!). I'm a big David Lynch fan, I see we have that in common.

There's some of my work posted at my website: Darkstrider.net.