A 3D series about Sonic and Mega Man X

[SS2Maximilian]

Greetings artists from GA. I am known as SS2 aka Maximilian on the net, but just call me Max. ^^

You see, I am die hard fan of Sonic the Hedgehog and the Mega Man X series, and I wanted to make a 3D series with a couple of people. While I myself can not make 3D models or anything related to that, I can still write the story, which is what I plan, and I will soon be able to make audio and music as I am learning.

First of all, this series is the telling of a story of a half mechanical half biological hedgehog known as S mark 3, who is nicked as S, S3, or Max by his friends. He was created in the S&S project, which was supposed to create the ultimate being, combining elements from Sonic himself and Shadow, and later parts from the Mega Man X chars. For the full details about this, just post here or contact me.

Here is a little preview that I have written with a friend:

The S Mark 3 - Sonic and Shadow Project Number 3 - was created in a series of painful experiments and kept alive by an internal fusion reactor that gave him great strength but endless torment. After many years of experimentation, when the project was almost complete, S3 escaped, vowing vengeance against all humankind. After many battles, he was defeated by Sonic, but not before he set in motion a chain reaction that destroyed planet earth and secured his own escape. Now, he has recovered from his wounds and joined a mercenary group - but even though humanity has been destroyed, the hatred that defines him still remains.

Now, what I need for the series is mainly experienced/talented 3D modellers, who can make beautiful 3D characters and 3D modellers who can make spaceships since there will be a Sci Fi part in this series, in addition to modellers who can make enviroments and all that stuff.
I will also need some audio/music guys that can help me a bit to learn to use certain programs such as Cubase, I can't just sit and write the story, I wanna help too!
Voice actors will probably come last as I rather have some basic stuff before shooting for the rest of the thing, but you can still apply if you think you can voice some of the characters from both the Sonic and MMX universe.
I already have an animator, but I believe a single animator is not enough, and as such, I rather have one or two more for this.

For more details, just post here or PM me. If you want to contact me, I'll PM my MSN to you.

Incase this is the wrong place to post this topic, then please move it to the right place. ^^

Best regards
Max

PS: This was also posted in ModDB, I'm afraid there was no reply from anyone there..

[cookepuss]

You see, I am die hard fan of Sonic the Hedgehog and the Mega Man X series, and I wanted to make a 3D series with a couple of people.
Please keep in mind that neither you nor your friends own either Sonic or Mega Man. Both are copyrighted and the exclusive intellectual property of their respective owners. Any such series, regardless of its intent or venue, opens both you and your friends to potential legal action. While these companies tolerate certain amounts of fan fiction and fan art, you may indeed be stepping on somebody's toes. Personally, I'd be surprised if you got together a seasoned & experienced crew for this. What you're looking to create is what's called a "derivative work" from a protected property. Legally, it's probably a no-no type of project.

Personally, I wouldn't touch it. Too much hassle, to go through "x" amount of pre-production and production work only to be shut down by Sega or Capcom. It can and likely would happen.

I would suggest that you take this desire to create a series, as well as gather together a production crew, and come up with our own original intellectual property. Not only will your creative spirit shine through, but you'll be far, far less open to lawsuits or angry letters - unless your "original" property is nothing more than a rip-off. Create and inspire. That should be your goal.

[SS2Maximilian]

Yes, I am very aware of that. On the other hand, look at the fan made flash videos that were made on both things. While they are not as significant, they were pretty popular on the net. Check Newgrounds for example.
However, I am tring to get in contact with both companies for that, what I do hope is that they will agree and won't have any problems with a fan made series. Infact, I am not tring to make money out of it, just to "fame" both universes.

[cookepuss]

In fact, I am not trying to make money out of it, just to "fame" both universes.
Doesn't matter. Simply put, non-commercial intent is not really a free pass. While you have certain rights in the way of fair use, they only extend so far. Unless your material is strict parody/commentary or serves some sort of educational value, you're on shaky ground. Even then, cases of actual fair use operate within very strict boundaries and can still be legally contested.

More over, saying that "X person did Y and got away with it" isn't a defense either. Lizzy Borden got away with murdering both of her parents. That doesn't mean I'm going to be the first in line to buy a hatchet. :) Just because somebody hasn't been sued doesn't mean that they won't. Your goal is to create something both significant and popular. That means that, if all goes according to plan, you'll attract a lot of attention. The property owners will surely take notice too.

For all you know, they may have internal plans to develop Sonic or Mega Man related CG movies or series somewhere down the line. If they feel that what you're doing is contrary to their best interests, they'll shut you down hard & fast. They'd be well within their rights to do so too.

Even if they don't have any such plans, it's technically their legal obligation to defend their copyrights. These properties have inherent value. Why let you do a series in their respective universes for free when they could charge you and obtain more creative control instead? They'd be well within their rights to do that too. That's the whole idea behind licensing. It could well be argued that, even though making money isn't your goal, you're essentially taking food from their mouths, so to speak.

Hypothetically, suppose you get permission and actually manage to get through one episode. You and your crew slave over it for months. When it comes out, it's a rousing success. Everybody loves it... except for Sega or Capcom. It only takes one guy... one guy... to find it objectionable. Legal will be all over you like white on rice. Even if you technically didn't do anything offensive, the fact that somebody over in the IP holder's camp feels that your work potentially damages the Sonic of Mega Man brands could keep you in court and bankrupt you.

Just because somebody extends you a grace once doesn't mean that they extend it in perpetuity. What God giveth, he taketh away. That's well within their rights to you. Bigger companies have gotten sued over less.

Now, this is not a criticism of your or your intentions, but I feel that you should SERIOUSLY rethink this.

There is very little original high quality IP out there. Everybody wants to pay tribute to a childhood favorite franchise or remake a veritable classic. Innovation is dying. Not you specifically, but people like you are letting it happen too.

I understand that you and your friends are fans of those series. I understand that you've got some cool ideas for them. Why not flesh them out into something more original for your own universe of characters instead? Give some kid the wild fantasy to want to pay tribute to YOU. Why walk in the footsteps of great men when you can forge ahead along your own path?

BTW, suppose you created a property that's worth millions of dollars. Now, suppose that somebody comes along and decides they want to use it themselves or even build off of it. How would you like it? You've got rights. You've got a property worth big bucks. Any use of your property, in any shape or form, could potentially be equal money taken out of your pocket. Suppose you've got some wild idea to take this property in a new direction and this fan's actions work against that interest. How would you feel? Would you stand aside calmly or take action?

These companies don't want to make it their life's goal to annoy and alienate their consumer fan base, but they've got every right to defend their bread and butter. I'd expect that you'd do the same.

It's always best - legally - to stay out of somebody else's toy box. Their toys. Their say. Bottom line.

Let me put it this way, even if you get some basic sort of approval..... Keep a lawyer on speed dial. :)

[SS2Maximilian]

Hehe, yeah thats very true I must say.

Thing is, I can't just make it all about fan made chars or just costume chars which aren't related to any of those, it still takes the style of both universes, and I already have certain concepts that I do not think will fit other styles rather than those two... I don't think S3 could be half a random human half a machine. :p

The other option is to suggest both of these to Capcom and Sega, and let them make it by themself while using the chars I have in mind. But then, they might have to redesign them so they won't be lookalikes (Though S3 does not look like a lookalike really ^^)

[Shadownami92]

Sounds to me like you just might be stubborn about the idea of it having to do with either franchise. It wouldn't be too hard to adapt your character and the two different styles into your own original idea.

Just mind a good median of the two ideas just with slight tweaks. Don't stick to the guidelines of either franchise for future development on the idea.

Furthermore I think you might want to look into what need to go into making a 3d animation. Right now I'm not sure if you know enough to take any steps further than planning.

I would suggest you further your story, make it top notch quality and make it your own before looking to make your idea a reality. Right now you say you want to help work on stuff music-wise yet you don't seem to know about that and ask for tutoring as well. Learn stuff on your own to become a more reliable member of a development team, rather than just telling people what to do, you know?

Before taking an initiative to find people to create your idea for you I would suggest looking into how much work is done to make 3d animations.

Best of luck to you with your idea but I think it's a good idea to think oustide the box that your in right now. Also Im not trying to say this to discourage you. Im just saying it's a good idea to know what your getting into before being all gung ho' in trying to make it, because without knowing what seas your sailing in, you might end up in some choppy waters.

[cookepuss]

Thing is, I can't just make it all about fan made chars or just costume chars which aren't related to any of those, it still takes the style of both universes, and I already have certain concepts that I do not think will fit other styles rather than those two...
One word... "Repurpose"

Cannibalize what's yours from what's theirs and go back to the drawing board. Game & film studios do it all of the time. They lose the licensing or funding from one studio, tweak the entire script or treatment, and make it into a totally different movie or game. It's so very common.

A good example would be the movie "Speed 2," which was actually supposed to be "Die Hard 3" instead. The script got rejected for one franchise only to get repurposed for another. Now, I'm not suggesting that you shoehorn your stuff into something lesser. I'm only suggesting that you reevaluate the elements you have. The weaker elements will crumble away and what remains can become part of a much stronger foundation.

I'm working on a full length CG flick of my own. Polished though it may be, the final shooting script is actually the end product of literally dozens of repurposed elements from some of my earlier unused stuff. A character here. A design concept there. In their original states, none of them would have made sense in this final script. A bazillion rewrites and treatments later, it's as if they were tailor made for this story.

I have an idea folder on my HDD. In there, I toss in random sketches, story treatments, bits of dialog, and even basic titles. At the moment of creation, they're a whole lot of nothing. Later on, they come together as components of something bigger.

Go back and look at what you already have. Don't be afraid to cannibalize and toss stuff out. Really, the worst thing you can do is become too attached to any one single idea or script. I guarantee you one thing, if you ever wanted to write for film or TV your perfect scripts or stories would get ripped to shreds before they ever hit the screen.

So many hands touch a script or story that the end product never resembles that original work of art. Producer wants Xchange. The ratings board wants Y change. Studio hired focus groups want Z change. Until it's in the can, it never ends.

Like I said, don't get overly attached to any one idea. If you're creative, you've probably got dozens or hundreds already floating around in your head. There'll always be something else in the pipeline.

Learn to repurpose, self-edit, and cannibalize now. It'll save you the heartache when people ask you to do it later.

You just might surprise yourself.

[SS2Maximilian]

Thanks for the suggestions. With that, I think I might go ahead and try to replan this, to hopefully get something that won't do any harm copyright-wise.

Still, I would be happy to know if anyone would be interested in doing something like that in the future, once I actually manage to think of something.

Edit: I've just been thinking about it: In the event that both companies will NOT allow me to use any of the Sonic/MMX chars, I will instade use fan made chars that me and a few friends have. I believe that if I use my own characters and setting, it's not a derivative work, and nobody can do anything to stop me. ^^

[Ged]

have you done any 3D animation before? I just ask because requesting that other people help you with such a task is a pretty bold move unless you are well established and people feel there is a good reason to invest a large portion of their personal time to your project.

For example I remember a few years ago I needed to do a 3D animation for university and I had done some 3d animation before but not much. It took me about a month! working about 3 days a week just to get 40 seconds of fairly average looking animation done. I cant even imagine the amount of work and collaboration required to get one 30 minute episode done.

Personally I would aim low first, just try to create a working prototype of your idea(I would also not recommend using someone elses characters etc). Perhaps Just see if you can make a 2 minute taster with the kind of quality the whole series would require and if it all goes well then think about doing a whole episode.

[SS2Maximilian]

Honestly, the only 3D experience I had was creating a spaceship from a tutorial with a few alterations in Maya, I never did any animations.

Is it really that hard? =S

[LowRez]

I think your underestimating the ammount of work that goes into a quality animation here max,

You need, quality models and environments that are properly rigged and then animated with and post production effects etc added on top...

You sound like you've dipped your toe into the water and now your asking someone else or more realisticly several people to jump into a lake and swim to the bottom on the basis of your writings for a "cool idea" of fan art.

If I we're you I'd take a step back, do some research into animating shorts (2-3mins) let alone full 30min episodes, and get a grasp of what your looking for in a team and what you have to offer people joining your team, If I we're an animator look at your current plans, I'd look at it and think why follow this guys loose plans that are massivly ambitious, when I could do my own script for a do'able short with my own carachters...

Ambitions a good thing but so is a realistic grasp of the 3d production pipeline, at the minute your like the 5 million other writers and designers who write/draft a loose film or game and go who wants to make this for me, without quite realising what your asking. Research, Plan, find similar minded people first, develope a script, test animations etc, see if your all as committed as you'd like, then produce a piece of work, at the minute your plan sounds like, write script, get people to produce..

I think your on the right path re-evaluating your script to use your own characters. It means if you do produce something great you'll own the rights to it to sell, But seriously step one is research, go on as many animation sites you can find and read up about it and talk to animators, this is a game art forum rather than an animation forum and most people here are modellers with a few exceptions of course.

As for how hard it is,

A 30minute animation of quality with several characters, is Aloooooooooooot of work for a small team of people working on it in their spare time..

[cookepuss]

Is it really that hard? =S
Ummm....Yeah. :D It can literally take a team of 100-200 people 2-3 years to work on a 90 minute feature. That's where most of those $75mil-$100mil budgets go. It's a lot of man hours to get this stuff done.

Between pre-production & actual production, I've been working on my flick for the past 18 months. The past almost 11 of them have been nearly full time. This is non-paying stuff for me, which I typically spend about 70hrs a week on. Tack on paying work and I only sleep about 3-4 hours a night. I'm a wreck and I've been doing CG for nearly 19 years now. :p

You've got....
- Brainstorming/Ideation
- Story treatments & countless revisions
- Scripts & countless revisions
- Concept art & countless revisions
- Reference photography (for ref-ing everything from lighting to textures to real world props to characters)
- Scene breakdowns
- Shot lists
- Storyboards (mine consist of 2,000+ thumbnail sketches)
- Vocal scratch tracks
- Animatics
- Set building, texturing, & lighting rigging
- Prop construction & texturing - in some cases, even rigging
- Character modeling
- Character UVing
- Character sculpting
- Character texturing
- Character rigging
- Rigorous testing to see that nothing "breaks."
- Character animation which, depending on your experience level & projected visual quality, may only result a couple of seconds of final animation a week
- Constantly sitting in front of a mirror or video camera working through rough animations via reference, if that's your thing.
- Rendering - which can take weeks or even months to do depending on your hardware setup. I've got access to 10 PCs here in a network render setup and I'm still trying to trim render times.
- Compositing
- Music
- Foley
- Miscellaneous post work
- ETC. ETC. ETC.

If all you've done is a spaceship tutorial..... you're f***ed. :p Honestly and truly. Not to offend, but you're in way over your head. Something as complex as what you propose is not something I would have attempted 15 years ago. Not only did I not have the skill then, I didn't even have the hardware. Rendering 30 minutes of CG, depending on your LOD, can cripple a single PC.

Your best bet is to work to your strengths. Go for South Park level animation at this point. If your story is as strong as you say, it'll carry the visuals. After all, it's all about the story in the end.

[SS2Maximilian]

No offense taken, I really need these kind of comments.

Now, the story is already made and a few drafts written with new ideas popping up in my head.

In addition, I am actually going to try and learn to animate very soon. I will download some non copyrighted/free models and will try to animate something, hopefully something good. (Yeah, I saw some animators who were kinda lazy and the model got into itself with each movment, I'm not shooting for something like that. And no offense to you.)

[Shadownami92]

Also another great thing to look at is other stories, having a story is one thing, having a good screenplay with flowing dialoue that portrays the characters correctly and consistantly is another. Look at other peoples' screenplays, I also suggest reading some books about it, possibly some Aristotle for a classic way of learning some good points to writing.

If I were going to spend a lot of time on making a high quality animation I would want to be dead certain that my screenplay can't get any better before I say it's complete. :D

I actually have a friend who's a screenplay writer whos made a fairly decent movie, not because of the film quality, but mostly because of the story and script (was filmed with a normal digital recorder with some added computer effects)

Just remember, anything you aspire to do need a great deal of work and sweat in order to reach that high quality you long for, it may not be fun for the whole ride but it's much more worth it in the end then having regrets for not trying your hardest somewhere along the path. :)

[cookepuss]

Also another great thing to look at is other stories, having a story is one thing, having a good screenplay with flowing dialogue that portrays the characters correctly and consistently is another.
Here's a good site with lots of scripts.

http://www.simplyscripts.com/

It'll give you a fairly decent idea of how each writer tackles the issues of laying out story, actions, and dialogue. Some writers like less screen direction and description. Some like to treat a screenplay like a rigidly formatted mini-novel. Some writers are quite disciplined. Others, as professional as they may be, are a bit more loose and even a bit sloppy. The decision is fairly personal.

In terms of actual formatting, I prefer to adhere to Academy of Arts & Sciences guidelines.

http://www.oscars.org/nicholl/format.html

A couple of things to consider.

1) As a rule of thumb, 1 page of script translates to 1 page of screen time. A notable exception might be something like a fight scene or a car chase. 1 page of fighting may actually translate into 3 minutes. In most cases, the minute to page ratio balances out to 1:1, but not always. This is one of the reasons why, in the animation world, it pays to run through a vocal scratch track and some animatics.

2) Choose your font carefully. Courier 12 is the accepted normal font. However, not all Courier fonts are made equal. Courier Truetype does NOT print out the same as Courier Monotype. Avoid the TT variation at all costs. Monotype, being fixed point, prints out to a height comparable to an old school typewriter. I guarantee you that Courier 12 TT will inflate format your page length. Stick with Courier 12 MT instead. Besides, if you were ever to submit your script somewhere, this is the preferred type anyway.

3) Pay close attention to your margins, headers, footers, and indentations. In order to preserve this rough page to minute ration you have to stick to the standard writing guidelines. If you screw it up by even a little, your script will be messed up. I created a template page complete with macros to insert dialogue and scene descriptions. I'll dig it up for you if you really need it. You shouldn't though. The MS Word formatting stuff is a no brainer really. The reason for using dialogue and description macros is that manually formatting each block of text becomes tiresome after a while.

You could opt to use a program like Final Draft if you wanted to. Final Draft takes a lot of the guesswork and grunt out of formatting. However, a basic knowledge of MS Word is all that's really needed. Screenplays existed long before computers.

Above all else... have fun.

[cookepuss]

Here's my template doc:

www.robertsanta.com/images/template.doc

Just make sure that you enable macros in MS Word's security. Otherwise, they won't work. Don't worry. The macros are safe. I recorded them myself.

[Draxxuss]

The more I read this the more I get frustrated.... Max.. you are really underestimating the amount of work needed, especially since you have no experience save writing, and even that is speculative since you may or may not have written anything before. I have been in the games industry for about 8 years now and before that was making children's CG movies down in Florida fo rabout a year. This whole thing you have planned sounds like what I got mixed up with in Florida where a couple of glorified car salesmen had this idea of grandiose proportions that they would start up a 3d studio and make films, complete with audio and editing suites. It was the most ass backwards place I've ever worked. There was no structure ( what was there sucked), no planning (things always went over budget or didn't happen at all), we were paid weekly from these asses selling stock to make payroll and the last one to the bank usually didn't get paid.. I kid you not. One of the biggest hurdles was a convincing and well written story. If you haven't completed that then I wouldn't even consider finding people to do this yet.


I knowyou were kidding, but, " .... Is it really that hard? =S "


HOLY CRAP! I nearly fell out of my chair when I read that.

This isn't to offend you as I would hope you expected these kinds of comments when you posted here, but please, as my Dad told me many times years ago... give your head a shake! Let's put it this way. I love motorcycles. I have 2 bike subscriptions mailed every month to my house, I watch all the bike shows on tv, I owned a dirtbike when I was a kid, my Dad and bro each have one, I've even modeled some on the computer... in fact I have one sitting in my garage ( a '66 Jawa - it needs work and about 1000 bucks to get running), but I"ve never EVER considered fabricating a motorcycle from the ground up. And to tell you the truth... I would say it is an easier task than making a good, well written, convincing animated movie... and I'm not at all saying being a mechanic is an easy thing to do... but neither is a skilled 3d artist... of which you would need lots to get something like this off the ground.

Anyways... time to make the donuts.

[SS2Maximilian]

I'm sorry if I offended you or annoyed you Draxxuss, I didn't mean to by no intentions. I am deeply am sorry.

Thanks a lot for your support cookepuss, I will get into it as soon as I can. You helpd me a lot with this. =)

[Draxxuss]

No offense taken... just realize the scope and magnitude of what you really want to do.

[seven]

You've got....
- Brainstorming/Ideation
- Story treatments & countless revisions
- Scripts & countless revisions
- Concept art & countless revisions
- Reference photography (for ref-ing everything from lighting to textures to real world props to characters)
- Scene breakdowns
- Shot lists
- Storyboards (mine consist of 2,000+ thumbnail sketches)
- Vocal scratch tracks
- Animatics
- Set building, texturing, & lighting rigging
- Prop construction & texturing - in some cases, even rigging
- Character modeling
- Character UVing
- Character sculpting
- Character texturing
- Character rigging
- Rigorous testing to see that nothing "breaks."

also:

if the Character DOES break, rinse and repeat, modeling, uving, sculpting, texturing, rigging...

hopefully you rigged before you textured so you wouldn't have to sculpt, uv and texture the model yet again.

There are some tools that help you transfer rigging, sculpting, uvs and texture work but sometimes you get mixed results.


- Character animation which, depending on your experience level & projected visual quality, may only result a couple of seconds of final animation a week
- Constantly sitting in front of a mirror or video camera working through rough animations via reference, if that's your thing.
- Rendering - which can take weeks or even months to do depending on your hardware setup. I've got access to 10 PCs here in a network render setup and I'm still trying to trim render times.
- Compositing
- Music
- Foley
- Miscellaneous post work
- ETC. ETC. ETC.

and Max, Bone up my friend. You've got a lot of work ahead of you to even think about putting a team together. Good luck.

[SS2Maximilian]

You are right seven, I do. I feel like these young kids who actually wants to do something, announce it and then do nothing because they are either incappable or couldn't get a team..

I won't give up though, I will learn, plan, do as you suggested, and in the end, it'll be ready. I am patient and I've been waiting in my life a lot for certain stuff, this will be one of them but in the end I'll get it done. ^^

Also, if there are no more suggestions you could suggest, though I'd be very happy for more, I think this topic can actually be locked for I think it served its purpose.

Again, thank you all, you really helpd me out with this.

[cookepuss]

if the Character DOES break, rinse and repeat, modeling, uving, sculpting, texturing, rigging...
Yup. I didn't even mention retopology, scripting, or technology solutions - all of which further complicate things too.

There are some tools that help you transfer rigging, sculpting, uvs and texture work but sometimes you get mixed results.
Yeah. C4D has VAMP. I think that, as long your demands are reasonable, such transfer systems are powerful tools. Any system can be broken if you push it too hard or go too far beyond the developer's intentions.

and Max, Bone up my friend. You've got a lot of work ahead of you to even think about putting a team together.
A team environment alone puts a unique set of challenges on the table. Working by yourself, you can kinda play fast and loose on all levels. On a large team project, everything you do has to be in consideration of every player.

- XRefs
- Version control
- Gannt charts
- Larger scale project management & resource allocation
- Storage solutions & redundancy
- ETC

Once you put a team together you now have lots more management related tasks to add to the mix. Some of that stuff that might have been (somewhat) optional considerations before are mandatory now.

Project scheduling is a skill all by itself, Max.

TEST CASE

1 Sentence Description:
· Mega Man & Sonic team up against the combined forces of Dr. Wiley & Eggman to save the Earth from the threat of Robo Bunny Annihilator X.

Project Mandates:
· Standard 3 act story structure
· 2 sets - home & enemy camp
· 5 minute length
· Wide format TV quality CG @ 24fps (NTSC res + film frame rate)

And that means?

· 2 protagonists
· 3 antagonists
· 2 sets
· 7,200 output frames to be rendered
· 720x486 output resolution (which is NTSC @ 16:9)

What's in your control? (Let's be super optimistic here.)

· You've got a skilled character artist who can fully model, texture, AND rig each character in 1 week. (full time)
· That same artist can bring each set to full detail in 2 weeks
· Suppose that it takes to 45 minutes to rough out 3 seconds of animation in 2D (really rough)
· Also, suppose that translates into 5 hours for a strong 1st pass in 3D, which you already blocked out in 2D
· Suppose you've got 3 passes to do
· With lots of baking and texture tricks, you can output each frame in 2 minutes.
· You can render when you're asleep
· Suppose you allocate 2 weeks to post production

Let's examine how much time you've got here. (Again, being super optimistic)
· 5 weeks for modeling & texturing
· 39 weeks of animating (40hr weeks)
· 30 days of rendering
· 2 weeks of post

Right there, at super optimistic projections, your 5 minute project is already about 1 year old. With little modeling or animation experience, double or triple that projection. That's not even counting delays, hardware failure, re-renders or re-shoots, loss of motivation, or vacation/off time.

I think this topic can actually be locked for I think it served its purpose.
Well, I'm sure that other people might find it to be at least a bit helpful. Might as well keep it open.

BTW: Here's some motivation so that you don't lose all hope and abandon CG forever...

http://killerbeanforever.com/trailer.html

Granted, Jeff has had well over a dozen years of CG experience and this 85 minute flick has taken him 3 years. However, it goes to show you that anything is possible with enough time, skill, and determination. (Others have done similarly complex/long projects before. It's not impossible. Just really, really hard.)

[SS2Maximilian]

Im..impressive...most impressive I must say. Thats exactly something I wish to shot for in the end, the quality, the awesomeness...*drools*

Still, I got a long way to go, but I won't give up, I'm not abandoning anything and I know it can be done, be it weeks, months, years.