chillyche

Awesome response man, you've definitely done your homework. I was hoping that the transformation in Macross Zero would provide some hints, much like it added the "swing-bar" for the legs on the VF-0, but alas, we just don't know where most of those monitors are hiding.

I am now gawking. That cockpit is beautiful. It puts mine to extreme shame. Dear Drawing Board, we will meet again soon, as I am now fleeing back to you. Oh yeah, and now I'm totally thread-jacking... but, does anybody have any idea what happens when the valk switches to battroid mode... like, where do all those new monitors come from?

That was a sweet tracing job, man. Sweet. Bringing 3D back into 2D is a task, and you rocked it.

Shameless, venturing outside of the thread... but you know what, what do you have to be ashamed of? Awesomeness? It's not a crime. I can't wait to see what comes next from you guys.

From time to time, there's an update in Macross Generations, which I believe is the spiritual successor of this mod. I'm not sure if your work made the leap, but that project is still alive. Macross Aria is still alive too. Not a gaming mod by any stretch, but I like to think of it as cut from the same cloth, since the production team is sort of mod-like. You're welcome to check out what we're doing, we can always use more help.

I think I stopped responding to the images, because you guys are all frakkin' heroes. HEROES.

Does anybody in the community consider themselves something of a web ninja? What I'm really looking for right now are people with CMS knowledge (Joomla is a big plus, though I'd be willing to consider Drupal or even Wordpress), people with flash skills, people with CSS and templating knowledge, and people who love awesome stuff. We're in the process of putting up some new stuff, but it will go a lot faster with experts on-board. Any takers?

I concur with the scanner thing. When I was in high school I begged and pleaded for a year and finally my brother-in-law dropped the 400 bucks it took to buy a Marstek/Mustek hand-scanner which could only do 5" wide strips. To scan full page illustrations, I'd have to do it in two passes, at an equal speed, or else it wouldn't match up. Yikes. I really thought that was the tool I needed to go from doodling all day to making professional videogames. Then the first 10-million dollar game came out. Heh. Anyway, the point being, a scanner/printer/copier that will suffice (although I find they're not as good as dedicated scanners) will cost you under 200 bucks, and maybe even under 100. That will certainly get the job done. If you don't have access to photoshop, then people swear by GiMP and if it can read and save .PSDs then, great, because that's the industry standard for that stuff. The scanner will let him archive his stuff as well as create a nice online portfolio on his own blog or on deviant art or wherever, and to send stuff to whomever he so chooses. At the same time, yeah, it will open the door to digital enhancements, to which I still recommend a Wacom of some sort, since to a guy comfortable with a pencil, coloring and retouching with a mouse is like a bullet in the face. I think the others are right -- the most important thing is for him to keep having fun, and maybe to find an outlet that makes drawing remain fun. For some people that means collaborating on a project, and seeing it become something greater than the sum of its parts, for others that means the exact opposite.

Well, you know, basically, the more money you want to burn, the more professional the gear you can own. I had a Wacom Graphire 2 that I liberated from my office. And it was fine. I worked in Photoshop with it. But, I know a guy who does a webcomic and he uses the Cintiq, so he's obviously got more invested than I do. The Bamboo is probably on par with the first or second generation Wacoms that I used back in the 2000s for my job, so they're not terrible. They just don't have the bells and whistles that have evolved. As far as making the transition, it's important to have a big enough work surface, so I feel like the smallest size is kind of a wash. The truth is, paper and pencil will never die. They're not necessarily as convenient in a production pipeline, but as far as generating art and keeping practiced, nothing beats 'em. A real challenge for illustrators can be when drawing for the sake of drawing is no longer fulfilling. Then the need to produce something takes over, and one is aiming for a finished product instead of the experience of creation. Having awesome gear will allow your finished product to be leveraged, but it's not gonna change that fundamental motivational thing. All that said, if your bro wants something to illustrate, Macross Aria is in dire need of character designers. Have him sketch a character, two, three, seven. It'll be awesome. Perhaps a production pipeline is the type of fire he needs lit under him?

Although, when Spock Prime mind melds with Kirk 2.0, we get flashbacks.

Heh. Memento was enough of a critical darling, though, to land Nolan with the Batman Franchise, so there's always that. But yeah, for years flashbacks have been considered corny. It's basically lazy writing to be like, "oh yeah, this happened before, and its important, so lemme show it here." We see a lot of temporal jumps though, often times, where, say, we open with character A as child, or in the past, an inciting event occurs, and then we jump forward 5, 10, 20 years to the aftermath and or end result of said event. Which isn't a flashback per se. But, I would suggest that Hollywood is unoriginal enough now that whatever sold last year, sells this year. So, if some producer finds a LOST-style script, it wouldn't be hard to drum up money, if they attach the right talent. Or if the project can be tied to a franchise. Actually, speaking of Christopher Nolan, Batman Begins is loaded with flashback sequences, which, frankly, I don't think help the film at all. Anyway, how off topic is this getting? But yeah, I do agree that the rule of thumb is: no flashbacks, no voice-overs. And for good reason. And while we're speaking about flashbacks, versus nonlinear storytelling, I will say that there were a few episodes of BSG that were slightly non-linear, and I liked them. And then there were a few episodes that had straight up flashbacks, and I pretty much hated them. Whether there is a definable difference between shuffling your chronology and having a flashback, I'm not sure, but I definitely know sometimes it works, and other times it's WACK.

Hahaha. I know, man. This definitely doesn't run like a traditional film project.

We're all pretty busy, to be sure! I've been on back to back features, and this audio teaser thing is the most I've been able to work on Aria for some weeks, now. It's never too late to send us something, though.... Until you see the finished webisodes, at least. And thanks! The audio teaser was made partially just to get me amped up again, and I wanted to share it with the community here to inspire some of the same excitement.

At this point the script is (basically) finished, and the actors have turned in their lines. There are a few revisions to be made (and there may be more once we begin editing), but largely the scripting phase is over. However, we are also launching some ancillary materials that will require some more writers, as well as some web designers. Of course, we always need more artists. We have a very talented but extremely busy team here, and sometimes real life schedules don't mesh so well with our internet deadlines. So, the call is still out!

This is a treat for those who have been following the Macross Aria project for some time now. It's a an audio teaser highlighting the talent of our voice cast. http://macrossaria.com/dropbox/3rdTeaserFull_mixdown.mp3

I would disagree that Hollywood has shied away from flashbacks. The popularity of LOST reinvigorated the flashback. I WOULD agree that nine times out of ten the flashback is used lazily, much like the voice-over. Fight Club is a good example of a great film that employed both techniques in a classy manner. There have been a lot of examples of non-linear storytelling that have been successful as well. Both in recent history and throughout cinematic history. However, the flashback itself can be a case of lazily inserting new information, or providing motivation and characterization that ought to have already been included. Or is often something too literal. Tana's use of flashback feels less like flashbacks, and more like non-linear storytelling. The two stories are somewhat independent, and one is not used to explain the other, though they sort of crescendo at the same time. I suppose one could compare the two stories to Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, or The English Patient, or The Fall, or similar films where two different stories are entwined within one larger narrative, although, in the case of The English Patient and The Fall both stories are about storytellers. I dunno. I guess I just wanted to mention that Hollywood has fallen in love with the flashback (and the flash forward... they even named a show flash forward) recently, and I think it's a mistake. It was cool for the first season of Lost, and then quickly became a tiresome gimmick that instead of fleshing out characters, served to waste time, and present the characters really overcoming the same challenges over and over.

This is awesome. I keep trying to learn Z-brush and/or Mudbox, but I keep failing.

Oh, I never answered the payoff quesiton... I guess my thoughts are that you have this fragmented, dreamlike presentation, and it feels like despite being a non-linear narrative, we're building to this MOMENT. And the moment is definitely the Miriya moment. But for the most part, everything is shot so tightly and intimately, I feel like I never quite get the perspective I want. In my mind, there's a shot right after we see Miriya's face, or maybe we see her, we see him, then we see a wide shot of her Q-Rau and his VF-1, frozen in a seriously overcranked slomo shot, then, finally, she's gone. That's what I want to see in there. It is a little payoff for getting to see the mecha and really contextualizing it as something in the universe (incidentally, I felt like film would have worked as Macross or Robotech, and hopefully fans of either will see that the story you've told doesn't damage either mythology). But it's also ramps up that dramatic tension. If I really see her close enough to him to tear his fighter apart, I'm like, "whoaaaaaaa..." and when she leaves, I'm like, "whoooooaaaaaaaaa." Because I'm very articulate, apparently.

too bad, i probably won't be back in the city in time for the screening. oh wells.

Tana -- Saw your film on facebook a bit ago (not too long ago, obviously). Don't know if it's the same guy, but I know a David Hou doing production in NYC, too. DramaFever dude? I liked the approach you took. A lot of fan films want to tie into the main storyline, or recreate stuff, or focus on the action or mecha or what have you, and I like that you focused on the heart -- a character and his experience. The fragmented storytelling works in the short medium, and helps you tell a story with a minimum of set pieces and characters. I'll be honest, I was hoping for a bit more of a reveal towards the end, but c'est la vie. I'd love to see what you've got cooking up next. We may even run into each other, if you're also doing prod work in the city.

Ha ha. Yeah, it depends on if you're aiming for The Queen's English or The President's English. In America, we rarely say "an" before an "h" sound, but I hear British folks do it all the time. Actually for some reason, the one instance you hear it used prominently in American english is "an historic" -- I think because it sounds more distinguished or something. I think you can slip by on the technicality, but it isn't how most people speak around here at least. Of course, Americans butcher the language all the time. But whatever. Good luck building your models. I know we've been building ours FOREVER.

Another great one, Poli.

All right, you started this... now you have to keep providing us with content!

I think it looks awesome.

REN has a great Battle Galaxy model. He might lend you. But it's C4D format... don't know if that converts easily or imports into Max without a hassle.