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By will2power71 - 9 Years Ago
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I'm relatively new to Iclone. I'm coming from being a DAZ hobbyist who wanted to experiment with animation. My daughter and I are into telling stories and such and I felt that we could try something a bit more in depth now that we've gotten our feet wet. I started out in Poser, but I quickly became dissatisfied with the feature set and sticking my head in the sand when it came to everyone singing praises of it's animation features. DAZ offered the best set of tools to give us a shot at building a cast of characters for our own little drama that actually looked like they were in the same world. I always hated the piecemeal way people throw different generations of models and different quality when it came to how they were made. Iclone offered a lot more things that were important to me when it came to making animations --like moving trees and Rain/falling leaves, but the Genesis 2 line offered me consistency when it came to character creation. She's basically driving the story and pointing out how she wants the characters to look and I'm putting them together in DAZ before taking them to Into Iclone. She's been writing stories since she was little and now that she's 15 we want to do something a bit more involved. I spent a few years Acquiring assets and coming up with a scheme of how I wanted it to look. We're going for Anime Inspired --but not 100% Anime.
So my young director tasked me with coming up with some characters that she could use. Daddy's been hard at work:
I just got the seal of approval on What they look like. Like I said, I went with Anime inspired but slightly more realistic. These characters are not based on any one figure like Aiko 5/6 or Victoria 7, but a combination of different morphs and some custom work in Zbrush to arrive at this look. I went with the Genesis 2 figures because of their low polycount in comparison to previous generations. I want them to look like American teenagers, but still have that look that she prefers. She gave me the nod on them the other day. I'm stoked!
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By prabhatM - 9 Years Ago
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It seems the director is quite a hard task master !
The characters look awesome. I guess you have got them toon shaded in DAZ itself.
For animation of your characters, ICLONE is the right choice.
You are planning for Graphic novels or animated stories ?
All the best.
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By will2power71 - 9 Years Ago
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Well for now we're just going to do a few animated stories. My brother and I are going to be doing some of the voice work and we might get a few of her and her friends to try it. If I let her decide, we'd be making a full length movies starting tomorrow and I'd have to quit my job to work at her command in the basement. Right now we're just going to shoot for doing a two or three minute video teaser. She picks the story, we set up the shots and and set it to music with with some trailer narration. I didn't want to start with anything more than that.
We're using a lot of tools for the first time. In addition to Iclone, I'm going to be putting Morphvox pro through it's paces for the voice work. I am pretty good at doing voices but I was impressed with the way you could make yourself sound like an old man or a young woman with relative ease. After that there's Adobe Audition for working with the audio. LOL. My mom says she's for it because it gives me something constructive to do that doesn't involve re-building all the computers in the house or writing a program to turn the toaster into an ai controlled toaster that develops self awareness and decides to toast the human race! I admit -I'm like Tim the toolman when it comes to electronics and computers.
Whatever the project we're just going to do our best to have fun with it.
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By prabhatM - 9 Years Ago
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Looks like you really have fun-filled days ahead !
You could make use of a USB Dynamic Microphone for voice recoding in your home studio.
Looking forward to your work.
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By will2power71 - 9 Years Ago
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Oh. I have to mention that these were some of the early prototypes. I'm still going to o use them--but I have to go back and tweak a few things on them.
They were a little too anime, for my tastes. I liked the fact that I could use the Gaussian Texture Pack for Keiko 6 which I liked better for Iclone than the DG Iray Toon Styles for Genesis 2. The Gaussian set of textures can be applied to both male and female Genesis 2 Characters, and combining them with regular hair didn't put me off as I thought it would. I don't mind pointing out what I used to get to this point. A lot of times, I might have gotten further faster without all the trial and error. Having the characters have a uniform skins really made a difference to me when it came to establishing a look.
I even tried some of the other toon figures which gave me some ideas, but since they didn't come out with a female version, I had to pass on the look.
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By will2power71 - 9 Years Ago
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prabhatM (8/7/2015)
Looks like you really have fun-filled days ahead !
You could make use of a USB Dynamic Microphone for voice recoding in your home studio.
Looking forward to your work.
I'm using a CAD USB Microphone. I did a little homework and tried to balance cost vs quality. It's pretty fun to work with. I have not, AS YET, built a studio! But I might...
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By mark - 9 Years Ago
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I think you guys are well on your way! Can't wait to see what you come up with. And would love to see some "work-in-progress" clips from time to time as well!!!
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By prabhatM - 9 Years Ago
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I use DAZ and Toon shaders for all my characters. Daz has a few pretty cool toon shaders.
You can create both Anime and non-anime characters in DAZ.
Since I don't change my productions tools in the middle of a series, I am still stuck up with Genesis 1 and DAZ 4.6
Looks like I will not get a chance to work with Genesis 2 & 3. By the time I start evaluating my production tools again, DAZ would come up with Genesis 5 !!! 
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By Lawsuit Pending Records - 9 Years Ago
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Looks great Will2Power look forward to seeing your vids
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By Bigus - 9 Years Ago
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This is a special, creative, life fulfilling, father and daughter bond...
Heart opens with the joy of creation.
That's how I always see myself with my daughter a few years up the road...
Nice work as well! Keep it up guys!
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