Behind the Scenes at Crazy Ace Media

[Deleted member 325]

I thought, now that we have a nice new forum for Animation and animators, I would go ahead and secure my thread for my WIPs and Behind the Scenes projects.

For those who do not know, Crazy Ace Media is the name for my Video and Commercial Arts studio (it's actually the 3rd name). Most of my artworks carry a copyright notice with this name and my real name on it, and is what I generally do my freelance Art, Video, Animation, and VFX work as (or did when I still did a lot of freelance work). Here, in this thread I will post some behind the scenes clips, animatics, motion tests, etc... I primarily got into Poser as a way to bring story ideas to life without the need for real actors (as trying to put together a low budget film time and again failed). I saw what Poser 4 was capable of and immediately fell in love with it's potential. Digital People that, with the right add-ons, could be morphed into any ethnicity, drag and drop clothing, drag and drop hair... like a virtual casting call! I started selling content as a CA to try to support my animation projects (and most of my income still goes to equipment and content for personal use).

I have a number of Animated Projects currently ongoing, but my two largest/most involved are The Misadventures of Jaimie and Tommy, and Falling Stars (a.k.a. Chronicles of the Void, a.k.a. Squad 5, a.k.a. Siege Galactic... I just can't decide on a title).

 

[Deleted member 325]

Simple Motion Graphic Intro I made some years ago.

 

[Janet]

Just subscribed to you channel on youtube.

 

[Miss B]

Cool Kage, keep them coming.

 

[Dakorillon (IMArts)]

Awesome!
I'm going to pick your brain soon about an idea I have had. (I'm not quite ready to talk about it/do it yet).

 

[Deleted member 325]

Here's a quick motion test of another critter for the sci-fi project. I used Summoner65's Hell-Howler here. This is a flight and glide sequence, setting it up to be a seamless sequence that I can tile on multiple different creatures in a swarm (think I will make a post in the tutorials and theories section on Seamless animation later).

I think I need to make some small changes to the wing movement overall. May or may not adjust the body movement - I was going for a seahorse like effect on it, but not sure if I like it now.

 

[Rae134]

Not sure but I think the wing membrane needs to be made 2-sided as it disappears when viewing the underside but looks great other than that.

 

[mininessie]

I agree!

 

[Deleted member 325]

Not sure but I think the wing membrane needs to be made 2-sided as it disappears when viewing the underside but looks great other than that.

That's because this is a preview mode render - quite a common issue in preview mode. It has 2 sides in firefly.

 

[Bonnie2001]

I like it!

 

[Deleted member 325]

This time a VFX test - specifically pushing the capabilities of Poser Content and Poser Firefly. This clip is no where near final render quality, but is Raytrace 1 with shadows (needed to see the VFX properly). The weapon discharge is an experiment to see how feasible it would be to create/compose the weapons fire for some of the weapons in Poser using content I have and re-purposing materials. I think it has promise - especially if I render out of Poser 2012 using Shaderwork's Advanced Render Settings to automate separate passes for the VFX elements for later sweetening in post production. I do think I need to thicken the beam effect though.

For the Weapons effect I used:
Nerd3D's Fire and Smoke Tool
RuntimeDNA's Scatters:Snow (retextured)
Simon3D's Engine Flare Prop
Mix_Mash's Mage Rings (slight retexturing)

 

[FlickeringLight]

Here's a quick motion test of another critter for the sci-fi project. I used Summoner65's Hell-Howler here. This is a flight and glide sequence, setting it up to be a seamless sequence that I can tile on multiple different creatures in a swarm (think I will make a post in the tutorials and theories section on Seamless animation later).

I think I need to make some small changes to the wing movement overall. May or may not adjust the body movement - I was going for a seahorse like effect on it, but not sure if I like it now.

To my eyes, the wing lift is the problem area, it looks like the wing "snaps" up, rather retiming the frame, I 'd first try duplicating the up frame and pasting a copy 2 frame on in the timeline, just to give you a momentary hold.

 

[Deleted member 325]

I haven't posted any WIPs in a while because I don't really want to give away all the good stuff I have coming before final renders, but production is sooooooooooooooooooooooo slow. Especially since I have spent 5 months with more than 2/3 of my render processors unavailable. Right now I am trying to focus on finishing up a few more products for Hivewire3D and Renderosity marketplaces before the years out, and the animation/VFX mixdown is on a side burner.

 

[Deleted member 325]

Well, a lot has happened since my last post on this thread - almost none of it good. I have posted about some of it elsewhere, though for those who missed it, I will give an abridged version. Shortly after the last post My father, who was battling a terminal illness, had his health decline sharply. We live 500 miles apart and I am disabled and on fixed income myself - still I have spent large portions of the past 2 years going back and forth and trying to move to be with him. He was hospitalized after Thanksgiving, and I was not able to get there, but was trying to make plans to get there. We thought the crisis passed and he was scheduled to be released between December 4th and 12th. I had planned to be there around December 10th. He passed away December 7th, and I am still dealing with the aftermath and fallout. Right now I am stuck between homes, with the move unfinished, and trying to deal with 2 properties, both of which need substantial repairs to be livable or sold, and I have not the funds for it. Needless to say, there has been little progress on my animation projects - especially with the render engines boxed up and in storage.

I am setting up a Patreon page for my animated projects, and will try to continue. Given I do not use social media much, I doubt it will go very far though. I would like to hear what sort of incentives those who follow me hear might want to see on such a page, or think would be a good idea - as I have zero experience. Of course at some level, getting listing in the special thanks of the credits - but what sort of other incentives?

I have been doing some animation this past month when not packing up my house or doing yard work, and hope to have a rough cut proof of concept video soon. I will be posting some more motion tests soon too.

 

[Dakorillon (IMArts)]

So sorry to hear about all of the chaos.

 

[Deleted member 325]

Here's a motion test in preview render of a cyberpunk themed project I am working on. The focus is to test movement of characters and cameras. I still need to set up proper lighting. The apparent render errors are due to the limitations of Poser's Sreed preview render module. This will be a foreground plate over a very dark cityscape with lots of lights and neon, ala Bladerunner, Bubblegum Crisis, Appleseed, or other similar dystopian themed futurescapes.

 

[Me195]

I'm sorry to hear about the onslaught of trouble life is hurling your way.

 

[KageRyu]

It's been a long time since I posted here in this behind the scenes thread. Still dealing with a lot of issues, most of my render net is still in storage, and the computers are aging out. Lost a quad core workstation (started with massive HD corruption in 2022 - turned out to be damage to motherboard discovered in 2023). So I haven't gotten a lot done (not as much as I would have liked). I have made a concerted effort to try to return to artwork and content creation in 2023 though. I have not made anywhere near the progress on either I would have liked by now. I spent a long time just trying to recover my master runtimes and content archives from the damaged HDs from 2022 (2TB in total) - currently that is about 60-70% completed.
I did post a short WIP around late September of one of my animated projects, and I have several others I am trying to button up a bit with a few more sequences and clean-up.

Right now, I am working on hand painting some overhead maps for an earth to orbit sequence. I am about 12 or so hours in. Rendering some items in Poser, bryce, Vue, and Lightwave from overhead, dragging them in to Photoshop, and layering them with hand painted elements to create an expanding Zoom-out landscape to use in a video editor underneath a mix of cloud layers and a rendered ship. While it does not look bad, I have convinced myself I am doing this the hard way - there must be an easier method. If anyone has any tips I would welcome them.

Also sitting here watching the animated frames for my Christmas short just crawl off the two machines I have set up to render (one being the machine I am currently using as a workstation). I somehow feel it won't be finished by Christmas . Debating whether or not to chain the motion tests together to post a WIP timeline video. Not sure if there would be any interest in that?