I'm glad this isn't a blog or a plog, or else it would look like I never did anything with my life.

I've finished about 3 minutes of a trailer for a TV series, with about a minute left of work to do before I really get into all the written stuff and trying to budget the show so I can pitch it. I won't get too much into it now, but some really early shots of it are on the WIPs page ( it's the cutout looking stuff). I guess I briefly mentioned it back in the last entry at the end of October.

Other than that, I have finally begun to understand Mental Ray. For the cutout project, I bought ReelSmart MotionBlur for AE, and because I had no idea how to just render an object with it's alpha in XSI and then it's shadow, I had to learn all about Passes. A week later, I think I understand everything much more and should be able to speed up my render times. Plus, I can actually have stuff with motion blur now, which may make some of my animation get less complaints about looking like stop-motion (a few people said that about Bill the Warrior).

I also just finished a remake of the old Griff Hagarth poster, with the new character models. I rigged up the bad guy character today, even though he doesn't ever make an appearance in the short 5 minute bit that I'm gonna be working on most of the rest of this year probably. I needed him for the poster, so he got rigged. I also just finished the facial targets for a female character in the Griff universe, and will rig her tonight.

I'll probably do a 5 page comic with Griff, the girl, and one or two other characters to get a better handle on their rigs and on lighting and rendering in XSI. I just don't know if I have the strength to build all the sets and props required.

by Elvis Deane!

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