[David Kerin]

Hey there Sandy, thanks for the kind words. Its hard to keep exact track of time on the production as it was so intermixed with everything going on in real life. Often I'd start something rendering, then go out to cut the grass (seeing I no longer have to do it Friday nights), or something along those lines. For the next one I'm going to work on the character animation more. I did this one with a program called Crazy Talk, which is fun to use as you can animate them in a very interactive way, but it is too limiting. I've just downloaded the lite version of Mimic, which will lipsync the audio for the 3d characters, and I can take that into C4D for animation.

Speaking of... what you mentioned JJ, I can maybe think about doing that for certain parts... maybe show the 3d animation setups, then the compositing in After Effects. It's all kind of spread out for production, but I'll see what I can do. I however hold no trade secrets, and always glad to share anything that I may do that might help someone else. If there was any one thing in my mind that helps make it possible is thinking in a way of a production pipeline. How to most efficiently work the types of shots I want out of what I have. That's why I went with the approach of rendering numerous passes of the spaceships with a matte channel, so I can take them into After Effects to mix and match them in various ways, changing backgrounds, altering their positions in ways that I can in After Effects. Such as taking a battlestar shot that flies away from camera, normally it flies off very level, however in After Effects I can slowly rotate the shot as it flies off so it looks like its banking to the right.

Basically I can't think of every shot I want being created from scratch with brand new elements for each and every one. A library of elements and a compositing program like After Effects makes it possible to do a lot. And every time I render a new element it adds to the element library, and I try to think of it in ways that I can maybe recomposite into other shots.

Also, for 3d, I've moved from MAX over to Cinema 4d. It is a much more user friendly program, and it integrates amazingly well with other 3d software. With a plugin called Interposer I can import anything from Poser and be able to animate and morph it in any way I would in Poser right inside Cinema 4D. And with the Mimic program it will lipsynk the mouth and face and I can import that into C4D and apply it to the character.

As for the next one, I have to start writing out the script. I do have it mostly played out in my head, now to just get it on paper (actually, word processor).