How I animate Max’s jacket using cloth dynamics

[youtube.com/watch?v=wY7mvtAoWlU]

The Last Mice – Face Rig Complete

Last tutorial on face morphs, I promise.  If you skip to 3:38 in this video, you can see how this dynamic rig system makes Max’s face instantly come to life when I move several control points at once.

As you may have noticed, the link to my Kickstarter preview page in the previous post was broken.  That’s fixed now, so go check it out.  Thanks Jenny!

[youtube.com/watch?v=_jWvmDSDQNc]

The Last Mice on Kickstarter!

I just received an email informing me that The Last Mice has been accepted by Kickstarter.com.  In 20 days, I’m asking for $2500 in pledges to fund the first chapter of this series. Check out my Kickstarter preview page for more details, watch my video and leave comments. The project will not go live until my Amazon business account is verified… which should take another week. So please check out my Kickstarter and share it with everyone you know!  I would love to hear your advice on how I can improve my project description.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/373490571/204999082?token=90d412a5

The Last Mice Progress

I’ve had some technical difficulties over the weekend setting up Max’s facial rig system, but now everything is back in order and it’s just about go time to get this series rolling.

I have just submitted by proposal for www.kickstarter.com.  I will be launching that project in about a week.  I will be asking for $2500 in pledges to fund The Last Mice.  This money will go toward hiring more 3d animators and licensing software.

In this most recent picture, I’ve added a more realistic tree, along with a radio and marble table for his tea set.  I’ve also added a nice reflection in Max’s window, showing his view of the town below.  The only thing left for the opening scene is to create the book Max will be reading.  I want to make it look like real paper bending when he turns the pages.

The Last Mice – Having fun with Morphs

I spent all day yesterday playing around with the Reaction Manger to setup a manual animation system for Max.  In this video, I show a unique technique I created that involves animating facial controls along path constraints to get interesting results.

[youtube.com/watch?v=_LKqfRlLHj4]

The Last Mice – Reaction Manager

In today’s video, I show a sophisticated technique to manually animate Max’s face using a rig setup with what is known in 3d Studio Max as the “Reaction Manager”.  This is also extremely useful for cleaning up motion capture animation and adding that little extra expressiveness to his character.

[youtube.com/watch?v=hzpyP4-YN6c]

Graphic Novel Site Launched

Introducing The Last Mice Graphic Novel blog. I created a Blogspot site today and will be using this blog to post the graphic novel version of the animated cartoon.

http://thelastmice.blogspot.com/

Max’s New Hat

Here’s Max the Mouse sporting the very trendy pilot’s hat with mounted third eye attachment.

My Cat Loves Temptations Treats

This video isn’t related to The Last Mice, but I thought my cat is enough of a character to place a spot on the Animal Cartoons blog.  She’s a funny cat.

[youtube.com/watch?v=941HBvrAJtY]

Screen Shot – Max relaxing on his porch.