New Supergirl animation at SGMP

In case you missed it, a couple of days ago I posted on my website a 30-second animation called "Trapped" showing Supergirl breaking free from some tough-looking titanium cables.

And today I posted a preview of my next animation. It's called "Giant." It shows the first 40 seconds of Supergirl's battle against a giant robot. It's not done yet, but so far it looks pretty good. The full animation should probably be at least two minutes long, and the second part will have much more action than the first one (and you'll understand why it's called "Giant" a bit better).

One question, though, should I bother trying to cough up a soundtrack? I suppose a handful of sound effects are mandatory, but does anyone care whether or not there's any music in it?

Ronn A. Mann
The Supergirl Movie Project
runawayman.cyberbree.com

Pretty neat animation... liked the breaking the titanium bonds the best. Especially that wink at the end!

Shadar

Yeah, the hardest part of an animation isn't the action per se, but giving the characters a personality, and making them look alive, rather than just a bunch of pixels arranged together.

I try in all the animations to give Supergirl a little detail (like the wink in "Trapped") that makes her look more like a real living being. I'm glad you liked it.

Ronn A. Mann

Very nice animation! That one wasn't done in poser, right? If it was then the morph on the steel ropes must have been not that easy.

Cool work!

See ya,

Anterion

"Trapped" was done in Maya. I originally intended to do an animation of Supergirl working out. She would do biceps curls using some kind of machine, with pulleys, some tough-looking cables and a massive weight. When I finished the cables I thought, "wouldn't it be cool if Supergirl were tied with those things and she broke away from them?"

By the way, I don't suppose you guys would be interested in watching Supergirl working out, would you?

On a different note, on march 6 and 7 (right after I posted here for the first time) I received two emails from "newmedia@oakpress.com." Both emails contained viruses. This might be unrelated to my presence here. Or it might be that someone is sending viruses to email addresses they find here. Or maybe someone here is infected with the virus, which sent itself to my address.

I haven't had the time to fully examine the thing yet or to check the list of current viruses so I don't know what it can do (apparently it's called "wingo" or something). But if you receive an email from newmedia containing a .exe file, DON'T EXECUTE IT.


Ronn A. Mann

I'd love to see a video of Supergirl working out., especially if her muscles flex noticeably with each rep, maybe even her getting a bit pumped up as the workout goes on...

The animations you've done so far are excellent, not only for quality of graphics, but also for the personality touches that have been mentioned. The smiles, winks and other expressions really convey Supergirl's emotions.

Can't wait to see your next project!

I agree. I was wondering, actually if you could tell me where to get the Supergirl costume, or explain how you did it. Pleeease!

Both the Poser and Maya models are available at the website, including the textures for Supergirl's costume and cape. Although the Maya model is a bit outdated (I've made a couple of changes since I posted that version) but it's fully functional. As to how I did them, the Poser model is simply the nude female model from Poser 4 with a lot of morphs, most of which I made myself with 3dStudio Max. The Maya model is the same Poser model adapted to Maya, with the cape and skirt done using Maya's cloth simulator. And the textures were made with Photoshop.

By the way, yesterday I posted another test animation. It's called "Caption." It's nothing that will impress you or anything, but I do need feedback on it. The thing is that I'm planning to do a longer animation with a plot and dialogues, but I have no idea where or how to get voice actors (especially for free), so I created a little program to add captions to the movies, thinking that it might be good enough until I get voice actors.

So is it good enough (at least for now)?

Ronn A. Mann

That was definitely easy to read.
One caveat: if the backgrounds stay that silvery-gray, you may want to pick darker text than white. It will be easier to pick out, especially if the screen resolution is relatively small.

Yeah, the greatest problem is the contrast on the captions. They're supposed to have a black outline but I got stingy and made the outline only one pixel thick so it's barely noticeable and doesn't do much good. So I redid the thing and made it two pixels thick. It looks better now.