₦airaland Forum

thanks,i dunno man i think except you get extremely lucky, your best bet is e-bay. you'd find other brands around but i think you'd agree that they are no match for Wacom's technical superiority. anything from intuos 2 and you should be fine. there are a few centers in Nigeria that handle e-bay transactions well.

OKX:
i have a pal whose theory for accelerated growth is to invite a bunch of foreign artists, set up studios and let them churn out stuff.
he favors Canada where animation, for instance, is taught as part of some schools curriculum.
he argues that if u choose relatively young chaps- those AdamuW classifies as wanting to creatively push things, your costs wont be too high, and they are adaptable.
his theory is that the market will be more favorable to output created with foreigners input.
that idea brings up the racist in me, but i wonder if his plan has any merit?

thanks guys. great input, has broadened my views.

i feel it kinda does. the ideah of having experienced foreigners on the local scene to catalyze industry growth seems like a  good one in my opinion. lack of a decisive control over activities in nigerian studios i think is what is responsible for the slow pace of progressed envisaged in the country today. i dont necessarily think there is a racist angle to it but generally someone from a studio in any part of the world where the cg industry is developed and thriving. sloppiness seems to be the main thing killing our studios despite the best of intentions. many people who embark on a project dont even have a proper filing system on their computers to start with and the efforts are very uncoordinated. i know because it was a huge problem in the first studio i worked in although there were very skilled and talented hands. our efforts were not synchronized and a lot of the time you find us doing what we felt we wanted to do and comfortable with and not what is actually best for the project at that point in time. and although we all met at the studio the atmosphere was not a professional one and more of friends who cannot wait for closing hours so they can play call of duty multi player. cg is kind of like a battle sometimes. knowing when, what or where to attack is very crucial and can win or loose you a battle. its only natural to run into challenges in just about any project and when you get bugged down you might waste precious time that you would have used to accomplish other stuff while trying to solve one problem can greatly affect whether your project sees the light of day. there are times you have to retreat and attack from a different angle and then come back to finish that.  this is where i feel foreign hands will be of great importance. their experience will go a long way in coordinating and conducting the talents available into a great symphony. most of us are learning and are merely trying to develop workflows, methods etc. an experienced person from an actual sustainable studio and not just an experimental one will cut out that bug and allow the gear cogs roll smoothly. adamu's years in the uk and his time at an actual cg studio i think is what keeps us going and making the progress we are at EVCL because even though i could handle pretty much what u can throw at me given sufficient time. i know i still need to be managed to operate optimally. and though sometimes i might grumble when im suddenly told to leave what im doing and do something else. i cant help but appreciate the intervention at the end.

thanks gqeen i usualy dont like posting on more than one place but i think i will do it anyway. still got a lot to beef up on but we are getting there. hopefully more to come soon.

if your connection is slow and it appears to be jerking, right click and save to your computer and watch it from your p.c

recently heeded my own advice on one of the threads and started over in classical 2d animation in order to bolster my basic principles of animation by doing classical hand drawn 2d where i would be forced to consciously put in any action without any computer assisted tweening, graphs etc. this is one of the experiments. it is drawn and colored with a tablet. started it last night before bed and finished it this morning when i got up. would upload a bigger vid on you tube later. got a world cup final to watch!

https://spillink.com/preview/46.gif

i always knew u had it in u. see u are raising the bar. im astonished at the improvement. keep up the great work bro

N.B could you please post the images here too next time or at least link it as a picture here like i did. its easy

melvi:
Besides,anime like Naruto and Bleach are very popular and the creators of these franchises are smiling to the bank.If they ever made them into 3d,I don't think it will have the same charisma and look that fans have come to love and appreciate.

i have to agree with this part. 3d evolves too much during production. a lot is even scrapped in the process not always it cant be done but due to deadlines or other technicalities. for example i was flipping through the book "the art of kung fu panda" and almost cried at the juicy parts that did'nt make the movie. tai lung the villain was supposed to have an army and a base and so many nice parts from the original story.and like you stated 2d does have a strange appeal when executed properly. it certainly seems to work better for tv series which  3d has so little success in so far.in traditional 2d there are far fewer technical limitations as long as you have talented animators and sufficient inbetweeners to do the donkey work . i think nigeria will make a headway quicker if they embrace 2d passionately enough and get proper training and resources because there are so many different areas of specialization to get up to speed with in 3d. and any studio to do anything proper and decent must be ready to invest heavily (financially) and push the research development envelope aggressively for at least two years. only then will they be capable of having a sustainable pipeline. even pixar took 4 years to produce toy story 1 and get a decent grip on 3d production. and hey, thats PIXAR!

you are taking the right path.understanding and even mastering the fundamentals of hand drawn animation first is a right step. later on if u choose to use apps like anime studio, toon boom or even flipbook. you would be able to utilize the tools correctly and to their full potential.

melvi:
I have noticed there isn't a thread for 2D animation works or those aspiring to be 2d animators.So I decided to make one.I am currently learning on my own and I gat to admit it seems easier than 3D animation.
No graph editor,no bad skin deformations,no rigging,no tweaking dynamics.
All you need to do is just draw.One can even do explosions,fire,water movements and all.Of course,this is my opinion.

ahem pardon the somewhat long post, it just happens to be a subject im passionate about.
although you clearly pointed out that its your opinion on the matter. i must say i disagree with you on almost everything. first of all there is actually a 2d thread that has been around for a while even though its been pretty dormant with the disappearance of the creator and perhaps one of the most accomplished 2d animators in the country lafem. https://www.nairaland.com/nigeria/topic-71864.0.html 

*2d animation is not necessarily easier than 3d, it all depends on the quality of work you want to churn out. in fact some 2d works can actually be harder to replicate than their 3d counterparts. the animators of the first full color feature lenght 2d animation( snow white and the 7 dwarfs by disney)  had to book themselves in hospitals in advance to recover from the grueling effort  it took to pull it off particularly as the world had far less people with the required skill. this could be an explanation for the far fewer nigerian 2d content than that of 3d which is currently enjoying intrest of many youths ourselves inclusive.

*the top 2d animation applications of today actually do have graph editors.

*they also do have rigging and yes , wait for it, bad skin deformations. although in this case its vector deformation. dynamics are also present.

*drawing is not a "JUST". the top world animators had to learn to draw properly for animation for years. Richard williams the famous and perhaps the most recognized  name in 2d animation today thought he was very good at drawing until he went to disney wizards and was told to go and learn to draw. you would need books to properly understand how to draw and construct characters for 2d animation.it is the absence of this very skill  that has plagued most nigerians who normally cold draw well and attempetd to do 2d animation. it ususlly well not really good and our eyes pick up so many things wrong with it.
computers are changing the way we do just about every thing and 2d animation is not an exception. some of this applications carry very advanced features and so although the final thing might look 2d you would be suprised at what went through the pipeline. you might be surprised to find out that maya has a hand in a harsh looking cartoon southpark! here is a 2d cartoon i once worked on for EVCL and the characters had to be rigged with bones and even inverse kinematics as well as wiring some bones to control others and trust me i had to work at it for a while before i got rid of bad vector deformations and i sill had to use some scrips.  this kind of character setup's are acually called 2.5 d rigging. http://www.youtube.com/watch?gl=GB&v=A4Ou87VtFvM

wish you the best in your learning (we are all still learning) but i must advice you not to take 2d lightly. you will encounter a lot of brick walls but with the right determination. your effort would be well worth it in the end.

cool. cant wait to see the main render. would be a treat if we could get some wireframes and screen shots as well. cheers.

quite refreshing to see a 3d artwork on a thread that was previously known for its 3d content. really nice work kolarewaju its nice to see a 3d artist that has some pride for african characters as most just want to do something that looks , well non african. keep up the good work. i dont understand what you mean by photorealism not going to do justice for what you want because thats what it looks like. at least looks like what you are gunning for. especially since the character does'nt seem to have any trace of being stylized and the proportions are quite realistic. also with the high res photos u used for the texturing.(i think) i think most would agree that this is closer to photorealism than not . but anyway more grease for yer elbow, or shud i say mouse.

justbones:
this is a painting/airbrushing i completed recently

not bad dud. that pale background is kinda annoying tho. give us something better.

chithra:
View these images and please suggest me the way to improve.

https://spillink.com/preview/13.gif https://spillink.com/preview/16.gif

Waiting for your valuable suggestion.

i think they are quite good https://forums.cgsociety.org/images/smilies/thumbsup.gifand i think you actually have a talent for this. dont let the lack of comments on this fourm discourage u. its kinda a habit here.
i think you just gotta work a bit on edges and borders and nail the ones that need to be crisp and sharp be just that and the same for the blurry ones. i see some smearing on the monsters beard or what ever it goes for u get the ideah im sure u get what im talkin about. try to be a little more patient when painting and try to put in more detail. do one or two of these a week and you will be amazed on how far you'll go. jus make sure u keep improving.

thats absurd. and the moderato couldnt let us know? i was starting to think i imagined the last four days. anyway i earlier on posted an animation test i did last sunday. some saw it and even replied cus i saw some notifications in my inbox even though i never got to see them cuz the went down with the server. wud appreciate it if you guys could comment again. for those that didnt,it was originally the simple scene i set up for the challenge. its a driving scene and its the character that almost knocks down the main character. apparently i didnt finish that but still played around with the scene. here's is the link to the scene preview

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JMRa8GxJDcA

Is it just me or did some posts vanish from this thread?

hmm a t rex. quite a gargantuan distraction  .  anyway like my comrades pointed out a bit of a problem with the walk cycles but the main qualm i have is the t rex jump. the velocity curve is a tad bid too uniform. and there wasnt enough recoil on impact to exude a convincing impact. but overall i'd say its a nice piece. my best part was the pole hit. i see u didnt let your fume fx and dreamscape skill go to waste on this one . i use max 2010 too and dont seem to have any issues with the max rig on this end. yeah also nextime conform with the rules of the thread and supply w.i.p's as it unfolds and not just finished works. we are rying to learn from each other's successes and mistakes.

proportion kinda off, mic is too small. could easily fit into his mouth like a lollypop.

Recently saw some bruce lee clips and was totally inspired. originally just wanted to do an illustration to try to do a sort of caricature of him and get a particular shading style. but couldnt help adding a little animation and sound. like i said the character was originally set up for just a still so the animation is kinda basic. plus the whole thing was done in one day.

case u didnt know  click on the bruce lee.mp4 link to download and view animation.

yeah lets have a valid link please. be nice to see what u guys are up to.

ok then ill get bak 2 it as soon as i can.
my character was fuming on his way out of the building

yeah u still gotta do ur part tho. if we dont who will?

quite a disapointing end to a challenge with a very enthusiatic start. the last 2 days of the challenge and not a single post or wip's on the thread, was all the discouragement i needed to carry on with something else. guess life gets in the way sometimes.

and finally for now.

tried out some new actions for my character. the walk cycle now has more shoulder movement to emphasize comfidence as well as some added hip movement. i think it generally better than the last and this particular animation he's kinda brushing his chin checking out his world and feeling kinda badass. i sometimes do several versions of the same basic cycles. this way i save out the animation and pick out any of the single or multiple movements and retarget e.g just a hip or finger movement using motion mixer within max allwoing me to further offset, overlay and tweak the timing. on the final animation i can then even import these animations on an animation layer and play around with the value to give it more or less of that motion and perhaps bake the whole animation when im satisfied with the result.

experimenting with alternate walking styles. you can still ignore the swinging arm for now other c&c are welcome

finally got some time to play with my character again. didn't do much. just added that double bounce i mentioned earlier.  don't worry bout the arms i still haven't worked on them yet. still the initial block pass plus i accidentally had the reference coordinate system set to view rather than local while working in perspective so its kinda spooky.

looks like a real mumu indeed.

hi guys sorry no update from my end. my fever took a turn for the worse . seems to be subsiding now. hope i feel well enough to get back to my character tomorrow.

thanks! lets hope its a chain reaction then because u work was what inspired me to start.

at this stage all that needs to be done is add the remaining subtleties like finger movement and and the things that feel your character should display in the walk. i still have one major part to complete the walk cycle which is going into the curve editor to refine the curves and timing even better so as to give the character more of an organic feel. i might even give him a double bounce to display his happy mood and maybe some more swag (i hate that word!) thats all ive done for now i will post more stuff when i make modifications.