lighting tutorial

http://www.cgarena.com/freestuff/tutorials/max/light-settings/light-settings.php

STEVE TYLOR  SEBASTYNE  ROCK MUSIC    READ THIS!!!

http://sebastyne.net/rocknroll/whats-so-hard-about-being-a-rock-star/

Hahah, this is an odd thing that popped into my mind trying to explain to a classical music fanatic that why rock music is a whole different thing and how you do need to think about it differently to classical to understand it’s full value. An hour ago I was listening to Pavarotti enjoying every note he produced, cursing myself and my luck for never having heard him sing live, but thanking God for recording devices. After finishing a full concert of the genius Pavarotti, I reverted back to my normal routine and put on Extreme, a funk metal band you may or may not know about but featuring another genius of a different genre and a different instrument, Nuno Bettencourt. Now, having a background in classical singing, I can enjoy Pavarotti to each breath in my body, and know that although I do say so myself, I am only short of training and practise of being equally good singer as him, but I could not be a rock star, because being a rock star is a whole other beast!

Being a rock star takes it all from you. It isn’t enough that you’re a great musician and can produce a sound that people want to hear, there is a whole lot more to it than that. Most bands fail miserably at this task because it is not easy to make this balance, not even Extreme made it. Too much idealism and your record label hates you, too little and rock fans hate you. If you’re too pretty, the guys hate you, if you’re not pretty enough, the girls won’t take interest, and if the girls are not interested, you’re no rock star or might just as well not be, because a part of the deal is that the chicks need to dig ya. You might still fall into the category of a rock musician without the looks and girl’s attention, but no chicks means no stardom. You must be unique to sell records and keep people hanging on, but you can’t be too quirky or the masses won’t know what the hell it is you’re selling. Not only all of that, you also have to do everything yourself (or at least have very good liars behind you) or you will lose the interest of true fans; you have to write the songs, lyrics and music, play it and perform it to perfection, choose your own clothing and be yourself, and if you use external song writers, you better have a damned good reason to do so (loser).

People who do not understand rock say that it is all “produced”, that the record labels have this template that they use to fit a band into and they pretty much take people off the street and make them into stars even though they’ve never played a note before… And yes, there was a band like this, it was called  the Sex Pistols, formed solely in the purpose of selling clothes – maybe you’ve heard of them? Sex Pistols was a novelty, and they sold like mad, because despite all that production behind them, they appealed to a certain crowd, not exactly known for being discerning about their music. Sex Pistols did, however, embody what is so great about rock: individualism, rawness, doing what you wanted to do instead what you were told to do – despite the start of the band, they were a true rock band in the end. (God works in mysterious ways.) Creating another Sex Pistols didn’t really take – Punk became something that needed to be born within the band, not in the mind of a dude who sold ripped jeans held together by safety pins. (Don’t believe this was their history? Ask anyone and they’ll deny it – nobody wants to talk about it.  )

To gain the respect of a rock fan is tricky business. Not only do you have to fill all those requirements; write, create, perform and choose your own clothes and make people love your look, you also have to convince a record label that your music will sell. To convince a record label that your music will sell requires that you fall within a known genre or trend. If you fall too closely into it, you’ll be treated as a copy cat, and if you fall too far from it, no label wants to take the risk of losing money with you. Then we have the problem of the average rock fan; they don’t know music very well. That is a problem because there is only so many people who can put their stamp on your record and convince others that this is fucking rock n’ roll! If you get the wrong people endorsing your band (like me for example when I was a kid, I probably single handledly turned the whole school off Extreme by proudly wearing their T-Shirts, and the fan #2 wasn’t exactly miss popular, either) you run the risk of being known as the nerd band, a chick band or worse yet…. Argh… Little girls’ favourite pop-rock band… Nuno and thus Extreme was screwed, he was just too pretty and too well-mannered to make it. In addition More than Words made them and broke them. Once you acquire a stigma and a box the audience puts you in, it’ll be the toughest job digging yourself out of it. No self-respecting rock fan admits to listening to Extreme without a non-spoken “I know I’m a loser but” in the beginning of the sentence, and it is hard to convince anyone to go crazy at a concert when you have that hanging over your head. They should have done the Miley Cyrus to freak out the little girls, piss of their record label and gain the respect of male rock fans. Extreme fans, especially fans who are also accomplished guitarists are loving it but too insecure to admit they do, because they themselves cannot trust a) that they know enough about rock and b) that they are cool enough to convince others that this is the band to listen to.

Steven Tyler however was right on the ball when he was forming Aerosmith. This band did not shy away from the cold hard fact; to be a rock star, you had to embody everything it takes, and sadly that music, although important, comes only second in the equation of becoming a star. “Fake it ’till you make it” was his motto, although he is one of the few rock stars that never needed to fake it. You get the star part right, and then you get to make the music you want, but if you don’t manage becoming a star, you can keep playing to half-sold out venues until your label drops you like a hot potato. Aerosmith has been at it for over 40 years now and they still, being seniors are wooing the pants out of little girls and making guys want to be them when they grow up. And yet, they run the risk of being too good at being stars, so good that people who don’t know their rock music but want to uphold the image of knowing their rock will fear Aerosmith is only hype and that they were “produced”. Half of them don’t know how to appreciate their genius, but since it is cool to love Aerosmith (or at least acceptable no matter what type of people you hang out with or what age people) they will still buy a record and go see them play live, but rarely do you find someone who will confidently say that Steven Tyler is the best rock lyricist alive, and that Joe Perry is an icon amongst guitar players.

“How do you know who is a great rock musician or a band if there are no rules and the beauty can be found in the flaw?” Asked my classical musician friend. How do you know? As intangible as it is, it is measurable, it is there, the thing that makes a musician a musician and a star a star. You have to know which mistakes to make, and you have to be clued in on which mistakes are the correct ones. Rock is half psychology, half music, and people who fall short with understanding nuances of human mind, story, emotion or a note will never become great rock musicians, and they have even less a chance of becoming a great rock critic. If you take rock culture  out of the equation, you have already lost half of the beast and if you bow to nothing but sales figures and your label you become nothing but a plastic copy of those who truly get it… And that’s the beauty of it – no label can put a template on a true rock star. A True rock star can never be produced, they are who they are, whether they were coached to become themselves or whether they knew it to begin with, a rock star is always true to their authentic self that just happens to be a rock star.

(By the way Nuno, I know the thing you don’t know about yourself that you are still struggling to figure out but gaining up on. I’ll tell you, just ask.  )

This is fuse my MIXAMO!

https://www.mixamo.com/fuse

This lets you build characters from bits they have supplied.
Could be a faster way of building my characters for film clips

Another great article
http://mayersononanimation.blogspot.com.au/2014/04/dont-pitch-to-buyers-pitch-to-audience.html

I dont understand how to write a story.
I stumbled acroos the hammock cartoon story, it was a happy accident.

That said, I want to be able to write stories.

What sort of stories Im not sure.

I think the appeal of of good story is its main stream appeal.
That people can relate or understand it.

I think in shapes and textures and dont have that way of thinking.
My way of thinking is very unpopular and is way out of sync with the norm.

I have completed my dance routine in 3d max.
I only need to rernder it out now.
I am quite happy with it for a first off 3d animation.
I wanted to go further than just the normal dance side of it all by using an aspect of the 3d max models which I really dont like, that is the way the figuires stretch unrealisticly so I used this as feature at the end of my routine where the figuire stretches like crazy to the dubstep tune I made.
It works quite well for what it is but I have sooooooo much to learn.

We have been given an assignment to create a 16 second dance routine for an animated character.
The character is pretty cool looking rock dude which I like a lot and the fact its music related is a great help in what I want to be doing in animation for my band.

It is in 3D which is really good too.
I am still a way off from being fluent with these programs as Im not the fastest learner haha but I will get there.
I definatly determined to get this down pat.
This project will be a challenge for also in as much as I cannot dance at all haha so Im going to have some extra learning to do to make this good.
The music will be something I'll make myself so as to be a good first step toward my goal of combined music and animation.

This is a follow up post after completing the Heavy VS Light assignment.
I am very happy with the end product although I felt I was too rushed to get the sound the way I would have liked.
The movement is good and I have recieved positive feedback from veiwers of the clip.
Shane was immensly helpful and insightful.
His observations were spot on and he is able to offer ideas without leaving his footprint on the work.
Which I feel is one of the best qualities someone can have, to be able to offer an  idea based on what the peice needs, without adding for the sake of input.
The sound was done in audition, which I dont like much.
Its not a bad program but from my background in audio, sequncers like reaper or reason etc are much better and have a nicer flow to them.
And while I like what illistrator and after evvects can offer, I hope that I either get better at using them in a natural way or I come across a new way of animating as it feels quite clunky needing 3 programs to make one product.
Im sure Ill get the hang of it though haha :)

All in all I felt I learned a lot from this assignment and look forward to learning more as I go.
 

We have been given a brief to design a 10 second cartoon clip around the HEAVY VS LIGHT.

I have started by researching the meaning of heavy via its dictionary meaning and this choice  will determine the meaning of LIGHT.

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/heavy

I then looked at what is involved in writting a short story, like the Lester Dent Master Plot Formula so I could gain ideas and a format to create a draft from.

http://everwalker.wordpress.com/2012/05/25/lester-dent-master-plot-formula/

From here I moved on to short comic strips to get an idea of condensed and concise story telly based mostly on visuals.
http://timstout.wordpress.com/2011/09/03/how-to-use-3-act-story-structure-in-comic-strips/

I have settled on working around the idea of this dude in a hammock.

1. I will add the appearance of leaves to the top, sides and foreground of the screen.

The "story" will be around rain falling, starting with light rain having no real effect, moving through to heavy rain where the hammock will fill up with water, sagging near breaking point.

Finally there will be a close up shot of a leaf centraly above the hammock where a single drop of water will run down the leaf and fall off dropping in to the hammock.
There will be a slight pause, the hammock will stretch a bit and then break with the water and little dude falling to the ground.
He will sit up right confused slightly, another pause and then more heavy rain falls on him.

my first post here

So my first post.........
This is my new animation blog.
There will be 2 blogs all up as per my animation course.
Its going to take a little while to sort which will be which but I'll get that sorted pretty quick.
Well, thats it for now &)