Mike Milo’s Journal

Here’s a model sheet of a character for an Animal Planet series I’m working on…

Here’s a rough test scene I worked up to see if my rigging of the Chief was good enough to use for the short cartoon. It seems it will do although I made a ton of mistakes along the way.

The biggest problem I see is the lack of squash and stretch which makes the characters look stiff. One of the main reasons I am having my friend Jason rig the main characters. I’d have him do them all but I can’t afford it right now!
That’s one of the worst things in life, when you have the time do work on your own projects, you don’t have any money and when you have money you don’t have the time because you are wokring. Sigh, it’s a vicious cycle.

Still it’s really cool to actually see these characters coming to life finally. Jason said today that he would be done with the final Planetary Pig and Cosmo rigs so hopefully I will be able to do a nice big scene soon. Anyway check out the scene. It’s over 14 mb in size so if you’re not on Broadband, be prepared for a short wait. It will load eventually.

Granted this has nothing to do per se with animation but keeping someone alive seems to be pretty important. If you’re dead you can’t animate so read this and send it to everyone you know! It could save your life or the life of someone you love!

During a BBQ a friend stumbled and took a little fall – she assured
everyone that she was fine (they offered to call paramedics) and just
tripped over a brick because of her new shoes. They got her cleaned up and
got her a new plate of food – while she appeared a bit shaken up, Ingrid
went about enjoying herself the
rest of the evening. Ingrid’s husband called later telling everyone that
his wife had been taken to the hospital – (at 6:00pm, Ingrid passed away.)
She had suffered a stroke at the BBQ – had they known how to identify the
signs of a stroke perhaps Ingrid would be with us today.

It only takes a minute to read this-

Recognizing a Stroke

A neurologist says that if he can get to a stroke victim within 3
hours he can totally reverse the effects of a stroke…totally. He said
the trick was getting a stroke recognized, diagnosed an getting to the
patient
within 3 hours which is tough.

RECOGNIZING A STROKE

Thank God for the sense to remember the “3″ steps. Read and Learn!

Sometimes symptoms of a stroke are difficult to identify.
Unfortunately, the lack of awareness spells disaster. The stroke victim
may suffer brain damage when people nearby fail to recognize the symptoms
of a
stroke.

Now doctors say a bystander can recognize a stroke by asking three simple
questions:

1. *Ask the individual to SMILE.
2. *Ask him or her to RAISE BOTH ARMS.
3. *Ask the person to SPEAK A SIMPLE SENTENCE (Coherently) (i.e. . . It
is sunny out today) If he or she has trouble with any of these tasks, call
9-1-1 immediately and describe the symptoms to the dispatcher.

After discovering that a group of non-medical volunteers could identify
facial weakness, arm weakness and speech problems, researchers urged the
general public to learn the three questions. They presented their
conclusions at the American Stroke Association’s annual meeting last
February. Widespread use of this test could result in prompt diagnosis
and treatment of the stroke and prevent brain damage.

Well, I started to rig The Chief and it was going well but I ran into some problems. I recently bought a new product called The Setup Machine that Auto-rigs a character because it had Stretchy IK which allowed the character to stretch like in the classic cartoons.

The Auto rig setup that I have been using, Advanced Skeleton, doesn’t have this ability and while it is really cool, I so badly wanted to be able to stretch and squash my character’s arms and legs so I can pose them into believable poses.

I tried using TSM but it’s very complicated and a bit hard to weight the mesh. It’s also hard to position the bones so that you get a nice deformation or the mesh (3D model). Lastly I do not like the lack of controls that you are given. Sure you can push and pull and manipulate everything but I don’tt hink it’s intuitively put together. Then again, having not used professional rigs before, maybe this is how they are supposed to work.

I believe I will go back to using Advanced Skeleton until I can learn more about TSM.

My friend Jason is rigging the main two characters now, Planetary Pig and Cosmo so I can get that Squash and Stretch in them. I can’t wait until he’s done.

Meanwhile we are finishing up Poltergoose models now as well and Boney, Poltergoose’s band leader is built and rigged. Poltergoose’s head had to be entirely remodeled so we could get better deromations in his mouth. the way I originally did it was wrong, and having used SubD’s instead of Polygons, I was not getting the level of deformation on his mouth that I wanted.
The Poltergoose script is written now and the next step is for me to storyboard it. You can read the script here if you like.
More updates soon!

Here is The Chief with his body attached. I’m liking how he’s coming out. Granted, I’m no Madagascar modeler yet, but ya gotta start somewhere. I imght have to actually add some more business for him to do in the cartoon after all this. I’ve got the blendshapes done as well so I will post them tomorrow.

Here’s my first pass at the head of The Chief, Planetary Pig’s and Cosmo’s boss. He’s as you would guess, a real jerk and hates Plantary Pig. Cosmo is his favorite employee but he fires Planetary Pig at least once a day. He sends them on all sorts of rediculous missions from vacuuming a sand planet to selling ice cream on the sun. Not someone you’d want to be your boss. I’m having a lot of trouble getting fur to work on him and likewise the same thing for textures. I simply don’t understand how they work yet, which is why all my chacaters have that soft roundness. I really need some more info on texturing in Maya. Ahh well, at least I can model now. Better than nothing eh?

Thought you might enjoy this interesting prayer given in Kansas at the opening session of their Senate. It seems prayer still upsets some people. When Minister Joe Wright was asked to open the new session of the Kansas Senate, everyone was expecting the usual generalities, but this is what they heard:

“Heavenly Father, we come before you today to ask your forgiveness and to seek your direction and guidance. We know Your Word says, ‘Woe to those who call evil good,’ but that is exactly what we have done. We have lost our spiritual equilibrium and reversed our values.

We have exploited the poor and called it the lottery.
We have rewarded laziness and called it welfare.
We have killed our unborn and called it choice.
We have shot abortionists and called it justifiable.
We have neglected to discipline our children and called it building self esteem.
We have abused power and called it politics.
We have coveted our neighbor’s possessions and called it ambition.
We have polluted the air with profanity and pornography and called it freedom of _expression.
We have ridiculed the time-honored values of our forefathers and called it enlightenment.
Search us, Oh, God, and know our hearts today; cleanse us from every sin and set us free. Amen!”

The response was immediate. A number of legislators walked out during the prayer in protest. In 6 short weeks, Central Christian Church, where Rev. Wright is pastor, logged more than 5,000 phone calls with only 47 of those calls responding negatively. The church is now receiving international requests for copies of this prayer from India, Africa and Korea.

Commentator Paul Harvey aired this prayer on his radio program, “The Rest of the Story,” and received a larger response to this program than any other he has ever aired.

With the Lord’s help, may this prayer sweep over our nation and wholeheartedly become our desire so that we again can be called “one nation under God.”

If possible, please pass this prayer on to your friends. “If you don’t stand for something, you will fall for everything.”

Here is the robot dog that Planetary Pig and Cosmo have to get past on their journey to deliver a package.