zPixel:

I like the quality I just think the 3d could be better.

i agree. the video quality and non 3d effects are great. the germ characters themselves could be better. not necessarily visually but animation wise. the ones doing the back flip have a weird wobble in mid air(more visible with the one on the far right) seems to be a problem with the rig parent axis or position. it appears to be at the base or lower part of the characters body. such set up's are very bad for characters doing flips and spins.and is extremely difficult to get natural looking spins even for the very best! an easy solution is to just create a null or dummy object in the middle of the character where it can produce natural looking spins and parent the rig parent to that one. then you can do your spin animation from that. Also seems like a default curve interpolation on the hop's, movement and entire animation. the one doing the moonwalk could at least raise the returning leg a bit and not just slide both on the ground in a mop action style. i also don't know why you tried to remove the names on the other brands of antiseptic in post when it would have been far easier to just do it on set. a cheap printer would do just fine. this obviously created some problems when the shot wasn't locked as i see some noisy movement on the labels due to bad tracking. i like the attempt to pull focus out of the back plate to the 3d characters as they fly in. little stuff that help sell 3d in a live action scene. also good move on having a bit of motion blur on the characters as they hop around.  all in all its a good effort. keep it up.

are you serious? no response? is it because its about serious stuff (the election? ). that however doesn't exempt it from exuding some more character appeal as well. for instance the part where the Hausa guy reacts to the Yoruba dud mentioning his wife. as opposed to going straight into the extreme pose, you could throw in some anticipation first maybe by making him face down and to his left with a bit of a wink. maybe even a head shake to enhance the delay before quickly swinging his head back into the extreme. this is a Hausa mans wife you are talking about. it can certainly be a bit more dramatic. here you even have an opportunity to place the cap in a funny position from the head movement to put more money in the pose. i also don't think the ibo guy needed to go "OH" four times. sounded more like he was emulating an ape to me. twice would have sufficed. also,he could immediately come out of the "u u u u" with a raised brow and wider eyes at least which is a common expression when you recall something. these are just a couple of ways i could see you squeezing more juice the animation. of course im talking in an ideal condition context. id be surprised if you had up to two weeks to put this together considering you have most if not all the assets already and this "sharp-sharp" environment we live in. i see characters from the goat trial animation came in handy on this one. great work again and its definitely getting better

i love it. my friend here agrees 100%. well done again

not a bad start. i traveled and didn't bring along my tablet. i might have to use my mouse if i don't get back before i start. see how far i will get with that.

hmm. okx should we be doing this now?  (you know what i mean) i dunno i kinda like the chiseled style of sample 4. so yeah i think i'll give it a shot too.

ugo_2u:

hmmm,  I see you have a point here, but refering to cg talk, ppl were making submissions even without prizes and if prizes is the only motivation then I dont know where graphics is heading in naija,

if you go through the past competitions and challenges on the graphics section. there are always a few that stilll participate even if there's nothing involved out of no other motivation but personal fulfillment and development. but like i said throw in a juicy stake and it will certainly lure out the wolves. and im not talking just nairalanders. there are a lot of great artists out there that aren't even on this forum. you can find so many of them on facebook e.t.c. just  trust Nigerians with awooooooooooof!
goodluck.

i could be wrong but by the look of things, the only way you might float a successful competition here on nairaland is if you actually get what is usually expected of competitions. a Prize! its the main reason why top c.g or graphics competitions around the world succeed like the ones on c.g talk. i mean put something like a powerful p.c, or a huge monitor , a wacom tablet or just anything the really determined artists would really want and trust me you will get some serious competitors crawling out of their shells in no time. i know and no i don't expect you to sell your valuables just for the sake of nairaland graphics forum success. but maybe you could talk to some bodies of the benefit of sponsoring such an event. maybe a big or popular computer accessory outlet about the prospects of advertising on the site as its bound to get attention especially if it makes N.L front page. or even maybe convince some organization or person to sponsor it as part of its corporate social responsibilities and maybe expostulate on how you can empower talented Nigerian youth's, develop the industry or maybe just a bare act of eleemosynary, just something to make it seem a worthwhile venture. i might sound crazy but i don't know men i see the big companies sponsoring all kinds of events (some actually quite pointless) and shows. just as long as you can give them a good reason for doing it. might be a long shot but perhaps not impossible.

may the best group win.

. nice. significant improvement from episone 1. great improvement in the character acting. i specifically love the energy of adelakun. almost obasanjoish.  of course there are still some issues that need to be addressed (isn't there always  )

though an improvement from the eps 1, there are still some bad curves. you are immediately greeted with this when alhaji makes his first head turn. another part which i didn't pick up as well in the first one is the curves on the lip sinc. particularly when nwosu was speaking. very snappy mouth movement. almost stop motion like.

some slight editing issues. needs to be more coherent

the audio is also a bit of a distraction. needs to be more consistent. the recordings are apparently of different quality and background noise. very nollywood like.

the character's could use some more appeal in their gestures. for this style of animation, a lot of exaggeration is needed to make it work. sometimes they momentarily appear frozen . when they are in shot and not talking for instance.

i think the last thing is adelakun's torso that gets revealed in some of the early shots.fix the clothes or use a more friendly camera angle.

those are the main things i can see that need to be improved. but other than that i'd say its getting there with each episode. its still a very brave effort because i know the resource and time constraints you are dealing with. Hang in there guys. you have covered so much ground already. please keep up the great work.

thanks partner

frankly no.and i am not even based in lagos. gud luck with that.

absolutely right about those silly arms. they were starting to piss me off. ik arms can be such a pain when your character is not leaning, grabbing or pushing stuff. you tend to loose your flow and those organic arcs easily and can be somewhat complicated to work with translation data for swinging arms or limbs in the graph editor. and as if that wasn't hard enough you still have to avoid ik snaps. i just used it on this one because i wanted to evade counter animating him grabbing the sword  when the shoulder moves and stupidly thought i should ik it all the way. im just working on the blend back to fk. works much better already.
  as for that ballerina masquarading as a ninja, he can laugh all he wants. we all know how movies like this end. the soft but good guy always wins  .

final tense moments before confronting the dirty fighting ninja  . finally looks to the heavens for inspiration  and draws his sword!

just starting to smooth out the key poses. as usual love to get your feedback.

aphek:

If I permitted to say anything

are u kidding? of course u are. i was actually beginning to wonder why you haven't commented yet.

aphek:

I feel your timing is askew.Build up the anticipation before the sword swing. Insert a moving hold before the xter starts to stand up.

as usual objective, concise and academic. thanks dud

jidesp:

@xothermik, go-zbuilt?, i dont understand, can you share a link where i can download

you dont have to download. just get your hands on z brush 4. install there should be a go z button which you can set to your application of choice check out a the demo video on the z brush site
http://www.pixologic.com/zclassroom/homeroom/tutorial.php?lesson=GoZ

OKX:

@ xothermik
howd u get the sheen thingy on the blade? blur? twas pretty kool.

i was playing the devil may cry game when i had the chance for most of last week and noticed the effect the character's (dante) sword was creating when he strikes. not only did it leave the classic action game trail but also i noticed that it actually distorts the background image so i decided to try and replicate the effect. i used a plugin for max called ghost trails which is widely used for a wide range of effects from this kind to even stuff like car wheel  tracks on road. its quite handy for effects and motion graphics and even could be wired to a particle system for even more advanced and possibly even scripted behaviors. ghost trails uses splines to generate effects so i had to go to sub-object mode of the blade, select an edge, turn it to a spline and link it back to the sword. i then applied the ghost trail modifier which actually generates a thin flat geometry from the chosen spline. i then tweaked it to get the desired length and iterations as well as animate it to appear when i want. the final step is to apply the material that is capable of warping the underlying scene. i applied a glass like material with a noise map in the bump channel to get a wobbly diffraction. of course you cant see this in the samurai vids because they are just previews. but you can definitely see it in the full render. finally i decided to even add a shell modifier to the trail to thicken it a bit and accentuate the effect. i know you use maya and doubt there is ghost trails for maya but of course there are more than one ways to climb a mountain and there willl probably be something on maya native or plugin to achieve the same. i even contemplated how i could do it in max without a plug in and i concluded that an object trajectory converted to a spline and a plane or any geometry extruded along the path using a world space modifier. probably a bit more work but it should work.

sorry it the post is a bit too long.

should be calling u next week on the other thing.

i hope they still dont plan to stick to their january 6th deadline because i dont know how to travel through time in the real world.

still trying to find inspiration to respond to your ballerina ninja

OKX:

how dyu get 2 include the u-tube videos in your post?

go to u tube, below the video window you wanna embed, click the embed button,copy link a long html gibberish that looks like this.

<object width="480" height="385"><param name="movie" value=" 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pDKYPs6jxe8?fs=1&amp;hl=en_US"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src=" 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pDKYPs6jxe8?fs=1&amp;hl=en_US" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="480" height="385"></embed></object>

then delete every thing except the part from the inverted comma before the http to the next inverted comma like this

" 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pDKYPs6jxe8?fs=1&hl=en_US"

then highlight the whole thing and click insert flash button to get something like this

[flash=200,200]" 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pDKYPs6jxe8?fs=1&hl=en_US"[/flash]

finally you set the default 200,200 video size to the size you want for your video. i left the kanu vid 200,200 thats why its small.
thats it u r done. click reply and it should be embedded when the page reloads.


yay i didn't get banned this time stupid dumb bot

jidesp:

are there plugins that can makes me import my maya works in zbrush?

there is go-z inbuilt plug-in from z brush 3 up for maya. its definitely on z brush 4 for maya, xsi, max and even c4d i think. you can transfer models and textures to and fro with a single button click. check the z brush site or you tube to see it in use.

thank God u know. just got unbanned. will post my response later hope i dont get banned for no reason again.

khalil zbr:

10k u so much xothermik; l hope one day i am gonna have the chance to work with u,Lafem and oda great nigerian 2d anim8ors. I believe we can succed in lightin up our screen with Nigerian 2d animated movies if we unite by forming a kinda association of animators." We are almost there"

ok now you are really yanking my chain . but hey i get you. my very thought exactly. its really great to see guys generally stepping their game up by the numbers. i mean it can only be a matter of time before someone with animation enthusiasm and a fat fat wallet sees the potential and packs up all these talent in a pot and make a soup never tasted in this part of the world. till that happens lets keep honing our skills and hope we don't die of starvation before we reach the promised land.

nice attempts khalil. keep it up

@ z pix thanks. always a treat to have a prime drop by. hurry up with the criticisms.

OKX:

Dont let d project gather dust even if it was just 4 practice.
If uv spent time on it, u may as well polish it- dats my philosophy.

thanks okx not a bad suggestion. actually you are right i would make a nice short. hmm.

OKX:

Just downloaded a ninja rig, will play with it n post a clip- just 2 intimidate your ninja wannabe!

OK NOW YOU REALLY HURT HIS FEELINGS  . cant believe u called wussyzuki a ninja. he's a samurai, samurai's are honorable. ninjas do dirty work. he might be a wussy but his body has the the bone structure and the CHI flow of a master warrior! and as his teacher im gonna help him overcome his wussiness and fulfil his destiny .pissing him off has got him more inspired and determined than kanu in a peak milk advert
[flash=200,200]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R30n-ot0Nbo?fs=1&hl=en_US"[/flash].
your ninja warrior is gonna wish he was never born after wussizuki masters and uses the one million dicing technique on him. iki mas!

OKX:

i guess u still intend to tweak a bit.
a few slight adjustments on the weight shift at the start- when he lifts one leg, the weight should shift slightly to the other leg, and it should prolly flex a bit.

spot on there on the weight shift thing. it was an area that was a breeze to do for me so i barely went back to refine that part and it registered mentally as a q.c passed part. dont plan to do too much more on this one as im just practising probably just fix that starting part and move on to something new.

OKX:

loved his expressions, seemed suprised that he was the one weilding- and that kinda changed 2 new found confidence at the end.
were those the xpressions u were gunning for?

pretty kool 4 a nites work!

yeah about the expressions its kinda a similar vein. but in my head i was imagining he was on guard duty that night and he was hoping he wouldn't have to finally use his katana being a,  well wussy. however he heard sounds of someone or something right ahead of him lurking behind the bamboo bushes. when his demand for the intruder to come out peacefully and identify himself wasn't heeded and the sound kept approaching. he -in panic- summoned all the courage in him and slashed blindly through the bamboo chutes at the approaching sound only to find out much to his relief that it was just a squirrel ( do they exist in japan?  . whatever!) .
seems a bit long huh but as you know these kinda things help when you are trying to build character. of course i made it all up as i went. an yeah it took up most of the night i must add. luckily had no early engagements today.

anything you say Prime
[flash=640,480]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=De7uTUofVg0?hl=en&fs=1"[/flash]

k that. bumped into it once on you tube. looks very professional. scared to download it as i will pretty much be obliged to learn it and embark yet another arduous learning curve 

Hello everyone. happy new year. i would like to share my latest insomnia project . last night was looking for old useless stuff to delete of my drive and dug up a model of a samurai sword i did way back following a tutorial when i was learning basic modeling. i decided to play a bit with it with the low max rig. i originally intended to do a mean cool samurai but in the process of adding appeal, i started to really have fun with it and thus our fierce cool samurai ended up as a wussy fraidycat

[flash=640,480]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pDKYPs6jxe8?hl=en&fs=1"[/flash]

would love to hear  your criticisms and comments.

The name kinda rings a bell. will google it.

melvi:
I prefer the frame by frame animation box in Photoshop though.You can convert timeline to frame by frame animation.Makes arranging layers with reference to frames easier as well as timing.

yeah i had painstakinly juxtaposed the layers and set their timing manually in the timeline mode only for me to suddenly discover the frame by frame display mode which is quicker though not too good for scrubbing. was gonna flesh out the stick character after getting the performance going but changed my mind. waiting to see your next clip.

hmm intresting. took some time to experiment with photoshop's animation capabilities. i decided to do a quick runcycle comprising of just nine frames total to get a better idea of the workflow involved as i felt i wouldn't be in a rightful position to judge it and well i must say its ok. i still feel though like its just a graphic program bending itself to be an animation program in which case i must say is its weaker function . i mean if it was that great many of the big production houses would have picked it up by now but i haven't heard of any studio using it for tv or even feature length animation and not coloring. at least as far as i know. i guess that is just an issue of preference but i'v used about at least five 2d apps and photoshop's workflow for me is the least intuitive. a skilled user will still get the job done and even rival the best but i feel it just lacks the efficiency and speed other softwares have primarily because it like building an animation app on the foundation of graphic app. there are bound to be some circumventions to preserve other components of photoshop as opposed to a software that was totally designed to achieve one purpose. of course when it comes to the coloring ability no one  is particularly confused in that area. and i dont think it offers necessarily a significant advantage to animate and color in photoshop when you can just renderout an image sequence to import and delicately color in photoshop. afterall in a typical production animating and coloring are totally different facets (even departments) of cartoons even though in this part of the worl we are forced to do everything by ourselves due to lack of proper budget. i will still play around some more when i have the time and feel like it to see if i will actually reverse myself. in the mean time lets keep the fire burning.

@ cgking yippie kai yay! your long search for v ray is finally over. (almost two years i think)

CGKing:

Although their stamp always appear on my render.

probably beceause its a trial version.