Oof, if you're looking at this first person, you're about to get hurt. There should be a sign on the door of Jav's room that says: "Never practice angular momentum air-kicks in the presence of obstacles." Of course, such a sign is admitting the great possibility for disaster. Love Hina showed a sign like that right after Motoko (master of the sword) nearly kills two of her roommates with her sword. Anyway, this is scene 5, Page 5. I think I'm done with Jav's animations. I might adjust them. Now I just need animations for the rest of the characters. Looking at other mangas, I find that JF is lacking large pictures. It really could use some, but I am afraid to waste space yet. JF Final will certainly have a bunch of large boxes to show off my complete mastery of the manga art. ^_^; Or not. But the idea is that Jav is making a big kick here. The motion lines are just bezier curves that are black, but 80% transparent. I drew them right onto the BMP (single layer) with Corel Photo-Paint. I'd like a better tool, but this actually does a pretty good job. My lesson for you is to animate your mesh and take a good clean picture of it that really brings out the mood. Then add in lines to ensure that everyone knows what's going on and then you have yourself a box of your manga. Remember background, though. Some people like compositing, but I'm a fan of actually having everything in real-time in the same place. All my characters, my terrain, and my building are all in AltSci3D and I just take a screenshot. So, really, I'm thinking that this whole idea is about solidness. The lines are solid, the mesh is solid, and the animation is solid. Together, you get a good picture. We can see that it is simple, yet beautifully rich.
Again with the nothing stuff. Sorry about that. I'm rediscovering the school thing, which truthfully means lots of video games and a bit of homework. This is one thing I've been looking at lately. This Open Source Racer thing has something to it. It's not easy to drive, but it sure is beautiful and physics-intensive. It looks and feels pretty real. Of course, that mainly has to do with the models. *shrug*. My lesson is download that racer and have a bit of fun with it.
Sorry, no nothing tonight. I spent all my time writing the blue reply in the letter below.
You were expecting maybe Scene 5, Page 5? Well, tough luck. JF is not a fair mistress to me or to you. Some days you'll get a comic, some days you'll get a Making Of JF page, and some days you'll get jack. I can safely say that I am hurt much more by any pain that you recieve by this page. 264 Triangles is a bunch compared to the very basic car that I always think of. You see, in my mind, I have this picture of a rabid automobile that is a derivative of the cars in Streets of San Francisco or similar. If you didn't play that back in the day, you're missing out. It was a 3d driving game back in the day of 386-25 etc. No graphics, 16 MB of RAM, 2.8 MB of data was more than one could imagine. For goodness sakes, you can put a pair of Bibles in 2.8 MB. But these days, it's not uncommon to see one texture for one car taking up 8 MB. I cry everytime I see a good looking virtual car. A tear of joy and a tear of nostalgia. I think how beautiful cars can be. Then I think of how beautiful Streets of San Francisco was. Crazy Taxi, Midtown Madness 1 + 2, and Grand Theft Auto 1-3 all are driving games set in a city. There are a bunch of good arcade games also. But they lack the novelty of Streets of San Francisco. I want something new and beautiful. But my vision of beautiful requires simplicity. I've never seen something that is beautiful and complex. Whenever I see complex, I am almost sickened. If I want complex, I'll go do some physics problems. So I say that this car is almost a compromise between the two. It gives in to the details of a car, yet it retains the very simple bases of a car. I might ditch the windows for a texture to make it more simple and lower poly. Each window is 10 triangles where there only needs to be two. That's 48 extra triangles. But then, of course, I can't roll down the windows. I need to add seats, but that's easy. I also need to add a driver. These cars won't be parked. They'll be driving down the road in Scene 6. I'm mixing it up for the next scene since Scene 5 is coming to a close soon.
