I bought a Graphire 4x6. It may seem small but it is perfect! Comes with a two button mouse, which is great. I switch back and forth constantly. I love the two button mouse with AM, I feel like I am on a PC! . No more holding the control key!

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Oh man! The liger!

Unofficial scientific name: Panthera leo/tigris

They are real creatures. In captivity a lion is mated with a tiger. These creatures are bigger than both of their parents. They are HUGE.

"The liger is a hybrid cat that inherits most of the strengths of both parent species and is larger than either."

A liger has the mane of a lion and the stripes of a tiger. Pretty much the way I drew him. I left out the spots though. Apparently lions have spots that become more pronounce when hybidized with tigers.

They never exist in the wild since the animals habbitats don't overlap.

There is a liger named Hobbs at the Sierra Safari Zoo in Reno NV. An average siberian tiger, the biggest cat in the world, wieghs between 400-600 lbs. Hobbs is nearly twice that!

Here are the combos produced and the different names:

male lion + female tiger = Liger (usually sterile not always)

male tiger + female lion = Tigon (usually sterile not always)

male tiger + female tigon = Ti-tigon

male tigon + female ligon = Tig-liger

The comedy potential of this character just makes me laugh! I mean think of the possibilities! Imagine a situation where he has to explain his family tree or his siblings. Imagine the other characters making fun of his name, or his ability to reproduce... hee hee... poor Larry.. hee hee.

One idea I had was to have a childrens show segment where all the characters talk about their families to the kids watching... when it is Larry's turn... well... it gets extremely complicated, confusing and embarrassing.

p.s. I have a friend involved in local theatre who has volunteered to do some of the voices. I also am trying to score some free studio recording time from a friend who has a home/business studio.

I have a completed script for a very short episode one. Maybe 2-5 minutes tops. I love it! It just cracks me up.

What is so great is how simple the characters are. I already have happy bear boned and almost rigged. He is so simple in structure it is very easy to rig. The most trouble is all of the hair of course.

Vernon "!" Zehr

Thanks for the comments!

Actually the director, producers and other "suits" will never be seen. I like the idea of these characters always being off camera or only dealt with by phone.

The only additional characters I plan to create for later episodes (if they ever happen) will be the guests on the show and possibly an office secretary (agnes).

I have several episodes (short, 1-2 minutes tops, if that.) written. A few of them only have two characters interacting.

This first episode has all the characters and will be the most difficult to animate. It is very short but has a fair amount of fast dialogue happening quickly with all the characters in shot.

My favorite idea after the first episode involves:

Happy Bear, going to Happy Gopher's house so they can go for a walk through the enchanted forest.... the problem of course is that Happy Gopher has a "guest" and would much rather be the "Lucky" Gopher than go for a walk "through some stupid, wet, dank, bug infested, enchanted forest".

Most of this episode has Happy bear talking to the closed door of Happy Gopher's house with the muffled voice of Happy Gopher telling him to go get stuffed.

I also keep having this vision in my head of Happy Bear hitting Larry on the head with a frying pan. You know that very unique gong like klunk of a frying pan on someones head? I figure at some point Larry will just be so manic from the caffiene, that this will be the only way to stop him. I envision Larry singing some annoying kids song on the show that repeats forever and he just won't stop... there will be a time transition fade and he will still be going strong and then... thunk!

Anyway, this is top on my list of personal projects right now. the characters are very simple (have almost two of the four done already!). I have, so far, one volunteer voice actor, possibly some free studio time and, it makes me laugh. It is also very cynical which is how I feel right now, plus I have a completed script.

And I have some silly music for the childrens show theme. That is part of what inspired this. I write music for fun on the computer, and I have 4 or 5 of these really cheesy cutsie short songs. They sound just like childrens show theme songs. I kept thinking "what the hell am I going to use these for?!" BINGO!

I plan to record if possible as many episodes as I can in the time I can get. They are all very short and this will give me enough raw material to last for a while.

Of all the ideas I have had in the past, this one has me the most excited, and the most confident of actually finishing something! By hook or by crook it will get done.

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p.s. Colin! I got your post! Thanks dude!

Vernon "!" Zehr

Well,

I don't think it will have the impact that 3-D would have. Yes I probably could do it faster with flash but....

Nope, going to do it in AM. I will definately do an animatic... probably not flash. To be honest I don't like using flash that much. I like using After Effects for my animatics. Timing in flash is tough to pin down. Different speeds on differnt processors. Too much work pinning down the timing.

Also these characters are so straight forward. they are very simplistic, covered in hair to hide the awkward bits. Rigging will be a piece of cake. I already started rigging happy bear. Just using a few simple fan and cog bones for the joints. Very basic. Most of the work will be poses for the face. Lots of eye expressions and eyebrow movement. Happy Bear has separate eyebrows that slide around on his face. He reminds me of that toy robot bear from the movie AI.

Larry Liger is almost done! I have decided to paint hair maps for length and density just to try it out. I find it just a little bit slow trying to use the hair tools to get everything right. My computer is just a little slow. Needs a new faster card for realtime display.

Render times are not bad at all even with all of the hair! I plan to render and composite in layers as much as possible. This should speed things up.

I have never been able to model this fast before... I don't know what happened. I did Larry's head last night in about 2 hours... I just did most of the body tonight in about 3. Happy bear I did in a couple of days. Don't remember exactly how much time went into him but it couldn't have been that much.

Happy Gopher is going to be a walk in the park compared to the other two. Ethel the Fairy will not be a model at all! She is just a partical effect.

Another thing I might do to speed up production is use a lot of moving static background images rather than try to build complicated sets. This might add to the "childrens show" look.

I also might do a lot of the shots from the waist up... as if they were puppets. See how things go.

This is a real project. It is not going to fall by the wayside like some of my other ones. I have been looking at pricing on studio time once I get my voice actors lined up.

My brother, who lives in VA, does some writing, acting and directing in local theater. He is looking over my scripts and is formating them for me. He is also checking on possibly getting some voice actors. I might be going to VA to do the recording. All depends on my available resources.

Vernon "!" Zehr

Thanks Rodney,

I thought about asking for volunteers on the forum, but I think I would probably be better off working with people I can gather in one place, just to have more control.

I may be an artist but I really want to DIRECT!

I don't have specific ideas for all the voices (except what I hear in my head at night, but that's another story).

I do know that Happy Gopher speaks with a funny lispy voice (the big teeth). Depending on my voice resources, Ethel could be a seductive female voice (to contridict her claim that she is a "nonsexual mythological creature"), or she may end up as either a bass male voice or a falseto... that could be funny as well I suppose.

Vernon "!" Zehr

Negate the gravity on the particles so they don't fall away so fast.

And for getting "thinner" how about two particle emitters... one spraying wide, but short lived, and another casting a narrow stream that lasts longer. I suppose you could spread that continuum over several particle emitters for a finer effect.

Does this involve a Clarence Thomas Bear?

Dagnabit!

Thanks Robcat2075
(are you a time traveler and you need to keep track of each of your "versions" by adding the date to your name?).

I just remembered that from my cereal particle experiments!

Right now the emitters are coming directly out of her body, so of course they spread out. I need to create an "invisible" emitter that will "aim" the particles to more of a point.

I completely forgot about gravity. So, if I turn off gravity, the particles will still stream away from Ethyl....Ethyl... Holy cow what a great typo! I am changing her name to Ethyl...

..anyway they stream away, but don't fall down.

I am definately going to add more emitters with different behaviours. I am also going to animate the colors and life span of some the emitters to use for lip synch...

So as she talks the the color will shift in time to the voice, and possible "expand" slightly. My concern is that you won't be able to tell she is speaking. I will also use the color change to indicate emotions, possible also making the particle emitter "vibrate" if she gets really angry.

I had another great idea to use a very large emitter image that is a soft ring around her. Like concentric circles of "smoke" that slowly expand and vanish...

THIS...IS...FUN!

I am still kind of amazed at my progress! I actually rigged ethel with the 2001 rig... in an hour. I added weighted CPs for the joints. It was so simple! I have never been able to do this kind of thing with such confidence. I think I have hit another plateau in my AM skills.

p.s. Ah! You caught my subtle historical reference! I hope this won't be too extreme.

Vernon "WooHoo!" Zehr

It worked very well! Great idea. I haven't done much texture work yet, myself, but when I do, I'll have a neat trick to try. Thanks!