Campaign Creations

Just FYI, Monty Oum released five episodes of Dead Fantasy. He hand-animated all his work in outdated programs using extracted "Final Fantasy" and "Dead or Alive" in-game (or fan-made) assets, taking upwards of 6 months on each. He acknowledges he doesn't use the most efficient means available, but he's self-taught and uses what he knows how to use. His inspiration comes from listening to the very music used in the videos.

He's currently working at Rooster Teeth on Red vs. Blue, so the Megaman video makes even more sense.

EDIT:
Oh, cool, he's doing an original series:

Spoiler

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pYW2GmHB5xs[/youtube]

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vt9vl8iAN5Q[/youtube]

EDIT 2:

Spoiler

Apparently there are unreleased Dead Fantasy episodes Monty was working on, 6 through 8 or 9. I'm guessing life took him elsewhere, but there's at least one unpolished video floating around out there that is supposed to fall chronologically as episode 8 I think.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-uaIIs8iD10

Hah, I have dreamed for years of being able to do what this guy does. If only talent could be learned.

If you can imagine it, really picture it in your head, then everything else is just an application of technical knowledge. Which can be learned.

Imagining is always the easy part. Technical skills are the worst.

I'm talking depth and breadth of mental imaging. Not vague forms and rough emotions, but clear details down to the smallest level your brain can maintain before it gets jittery and dreamlike.

Hah, I have dreamed for years of being able to do what this guy does. If only talent could be learned.

Me too bro... Me too...

Hercanic wrote:I'm talking depth and breadth of mental imaging. Not vague forms and rough emotions, but clear details down to the smallest level your brain can maintain before it gets jittery and dreamlike.

So am I. Imagining things is easy, and always has been. It really is only technical ineptitude stopping me from doing what I want.

Learning animation and basic rigging is much easier than modeling, in my opinion. He didn't model much of anything in relations to the characters, so it's incredibly easier than anything you've done.

Easy is relative when you are capable of learning things/were tutored and I am incapable of learning things/don't function in a tutoring environment.

Lavarinth wrote:Learning animation and basic rigging is much easier than modeling, in my opinion. He didn't model much of anything in relations to the characters, so it's incredibly easier than anything you've done.

Well, you're also assuming he didn't lift the animations from somewhere, too.

RazorclawX wrote:

Lavarinth wrote:Learning animation and basic rigging is much easier than modeling, in my opinion. He didn't model much of anything in relations to the characters, so it's incredibly easier than anything you've done.

Well, you're also assuming he didn't lift the animations from somewhere, too.

Touché.

RazorclawX wrote:Well, you're also assuming he didn't lift the animations from somewhere, too.

Yeah, but he didn't. Even if we were to grant the possibility of him having used some stock animations from the "Dead or Alive" models, Yuna never brawled with her pistols. Sure, maybe he rigged her model to a different animation skeleton (provided he had the raw data or could extrapolate it somehow), but we're talking about over a half hour of nonstop action just in the five Dead Fantasy installments. If it were a mere animation hack job, the sheer effort required to match up so many unrelated animations into something as long and dynamic as Dead Fantasy would be insane. It's the choreography that makes it. Give credit where credit is due. The man knows how to make fun fight scenes.

Lavarinth wrote:Learning animation and basic rigging is much easier than modeling, in my opinion. He didn't model much of anything in relations to the characters, so it's incredibly easier than anything you've done.

Everyone has their strengths and weaknesses. Thinking in motion and thinking in depth are related, but still different from one another.

Hercanic wrote:Give credit where credit is due. The man knows how to make fun fight scenes.

And that doesn't mean the animations aren't recycled.

I've looked at two of those videos you posted earlier and I already saw some very similar movements going on from the one I posted.

They may be original, you say. But then you also have to remember he didn't make those models, either, so it's not as if you can't possibly think some of the animations came from elsewhere.

Sure animations get recycled. Would you really remodel a character every level?

Here, it's better if the man himself tells you exactly what he does and how he does it:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1USOygdZrhs[/youtube]

• Part 2
• Part 3
• Part 4

Pretty crazy how he got picked up so easily by big names like Namco. I guess when you got talent, though, everyone wants a piece of it.

A lot of the technical stuff he's talking about doesn't make sense to me. I guess I should just stick to box modeling untextured static meshes.