Hi! Here is what my limited imagination came up with right now. Been busy with school and swimming so.... progress is going to be slow but I'll try to make the deadline.
Very basic scene. About 15ish thom models and a basketball.
I rendered it out originally as a PNG sequence because I had a problem with the bump on the basketball and A:M would crash. That way I could figure what frame it was on. Fixed that now. Compiled in AE with a curves adjustment and a slight vignette.
Click to view attachment
Its a hefty file but anything compressed below that looked horrible. (Uncompressed was 261mb)
Click to view attachment
Here is a extra high res grab.

I know its not the best but my imagination is being put on hold for a while

C&C Please!

Photoman

how do you get em t0 wobble and not fall down?

I bet he used Newton physics. You can either set the weight of an object with Newton groups so the base is heavier or offset the center point so it tries to stay up right.

-vern

The "master" bone (For lack of the right word) is set at the feet instead of the center of gravity. I thought it looked cool

Nice one!

Dude, That was just way to cool!
Would love to know how you got the real ball and models together. Some like me are not right bright on how to do it yet.
Any way great job.

very nice ! - nice render, good idea - It might be interesting if some of the thom's end up crushed, collapsed (either with cloth? or manually manipulated)

FYI, as for file size - John Bigboote (Matt Campbell) is expecting files emailed to him, no bigger than 10 mB.

Thanks for the comments ! I plan to rerender as a quicktime movie rather than a uncompressed sequence. I dont know too much about clothe and stuff that seems to be Vern's territory The ball is just hash's built in basket ball material (materials->plugins->hash). I added a noisemap for the bumps.