So HERE is the contraption, all rigged up and ready for action. Let us know what you think!
Also, if you’re in Boston this week, we’ll be staying at the Colonnade Hotel during Siggraph. Stop by and say hello.
Here’s the Ping Pong Ball Distribution Contraption model. It was modeled by Veronica Harper and Mike Kopa.
Textures, effects, and animation to follow.
Here’s a teaser image of the Random Cartoons contraption model in progress. The device was designed by J Chad Erekson, and is being modeled by Veronica Harper. Also giving us a hand, literally, is Mike Kopa. We’ll post some images of the hand part of the device sometime soon.
Here are the drawings we did of various contraptions to replace the gun in our initial boards. We decided to go with contraption #1, because we thought the hand would be fun and allow for some cool animation.
We’re in the process of modelling this thing right now. It’s more complicated than it looks!
So this is how we had planned to get ping pong balls shooting all over the screen. It seemed to make perfect sense, and a ping pong ball gun seemed pretty harmless. After some notes from Fred and crew, the gun became this:
Anyone that does 3D, or has opened a software package before knows that making a perfect sphere is a very quick procedure. They’re built in to almost all 3D applications these days.
The trick with this project is that the spheres need to be ping pong balls. One thing about a ping pong ball that makes it stand out from other spheres is the way that it reacts to light. If you look at a ping pong ball, you can see a phenomena called “subsurface scattering”.
What does that mean? Light enters the ball and bounces around inside the material, exiting at a different point than it would if the ball were clear. If you look at the equator of the sphere, you can see a line. This line is where they seal the two halves of the ball in it’s manufacture. The material is a bit thicker there, and that’s why [Read more…]
You might recall that last March we started a logo competition for our shorts show that had been first known as Oh Yeah! Cartoons Season 4 and then renamed by Nickelodeon as Random! Cartoons. Or that the competition was won by Michael Lapinski inspired by Darron Moore.
The question, of course, “What’s next?” The answer is that we have to come up with an opening for the series, and for each of the shorts. We’re going to create a 30 second version for the half hour episodes (three shorts together) and a two or three second version for the beginning of an individual short.
Floyd Bishop’s Bishop Animation of Honesdale, Pennsylvania will be creating the animated portion. The studio is also one of our creative team on Six Monsters. The sound design will be created by Jon Kane and Warren Fischer of the Bunker in Brooklyn, New York. Aside from being close colleagues for over 20 years [Read more…]
