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Nice to have a fellow Irishman- you're the only one I've come across on this forum in the past few years.

Fantastic Advent Calendar this year, everyone - best one ever! Hope you all have an amazing time this Christmas!

-- Mike

Though Judge Dekker bought the farm (not that she'd appeared much in the previous years).

I'm more annoyed that it killed off Bruce, to be honest; probably the most charismatic of the 'world judge' characters at that point and he gets a throwaway death in a corner of one panel. Sadu could also have become one of the great long-running Dreddverse characters (but at least he got to go out in style).

(Only for Mike Carroll to whack him off-screen decades later). 

That's taking love of a character a bit too far...

Joycean.

Yes.

Yes?

Yes

Wait, what?

the non-scrot pic made me laugh too. That breast must be totally photoshopped!!

Oh, thank you, thank you, thank you. It was my wife's, um, concept, and I was worried no-one would get it. This makes me feel much better.

I should have said 'that tail is photoshopped' - might have made more sense!

Oh, now I get it! Leonia told me about the photo that was the inspiration for the pic - wouldn't have got it otherwise! Great pic, by the way, as is the first one!

This is just getting better and better! Love everything so far.

That said, I haven't read the Rogue pages yet - tempting as it is - because I want to save them up and read them all at the end. I expect I'll probably enjoy the story even though it's written by Richmond Clements!

-- Mike

I am genuinely excited to see what each day brings. It it's like being a kid all over again!

My thoughts exactly! Loving everything so far!
-- Mike

Stunned by the amount of work that must have been, especially Giant nipping through traffic

Thanks, Eamonn!

Oddly enough, that was actually one of the easiest shots to animate! The trick with something like that is to move the vehicles (they all move at pretty much the same speed) then work out the path the Judge has to take. It required a little tweaking here and there to make sure Giant didn't clip or pass through any of the vehicles, but not much.

Getting Hershey to throw the book, on the other hand, was a nightmare - though mostly that was because it took me ages to tweak the book's path so that it passed under the camera with the front of the book closest to us... Which can barely be seen in the clip!


--Mike

Glad everyone seems to like Cambermeg Green! The idea came from a conversation I had with Leonia about this year's advent calendar: originally I was working on another Christmas Presents from Another Dimension scene, but Leonia suggested I should do something animated instead. I resisted that idea at first because I figured it would take too long to do anything complex, but then she said, "Keep it simple. Do a Mega-City One version of Trumpton or something like that."

We bounced a few story ideas around, and quickly developed some rules to keep it Trumptonesque:

1. The characters don't have mouths (yay! No lip-synching!), so the story is mostly told through the narrator.

2. The character designs should be pretty basic: this is why the Judges don't have knee-pads, elbow-pads or badge-chains, and why there's no detailing on their badges, belts or shoulder-pads.

3. The camera is almost always stationary because it's tricky to move the camera when doing stop-motion animation (but I allowed myself to break this rule after Dredd addresses the narrator!).

4. It shouldn't be too violent - Trumpton and its neighbouring towns aren't know for their levels of violence. You'll notice that there are no Lawgivers in Cambermeg Green, not even a holster for them on the Judges' boots.

I wasted about two days trying to design MC1 buildings that looked like they were made of painted cardboard, but they just didn't work - they were too distracting.

I also spent far too long trying to make the characters' movements look slightly jerky to mimic the stop-motion effect. Like most stop-motion of the time, the Trumpton shows were animated at twelve frames per second, which is pretty much the lowest FPS rate you can use to maintain the persistence of vision (that's the illusion that the objects are actually animated, as opposed to a series of individual frames), but I wasn't easily able to copy that effect in the time I had available.

How long did that take?! Amazing 

In total, it took about eight days to do the graphics (so that comes to about 17 seconds per day, which is actually a very high rate compared to real stop-motion animation!), then about three days to stitch the individual shots together and do the narration and music. Leonia did the voice of Mrs Gunderson, but didn't want to be credited for that because Gunderson's voice appears after the credits roll up on Walter's screen: if the rest of the story is supposed to be an old cartoon that Walter is watching, it wouldn't make sense for Gunderson to be credited on that cartoon!

-- Mike

Hi there, folks!

My entry for this year's advent calendar can be found on YouTube!

(Fingers crossed that it works!)

-- Mike

Best time of the year, and as usual every entry has been zarjaz.

Well said, BCB! Everything so far has been top-notch. Sadly, that's a streak that'll break tomorrow, when my own feeble attempt is due... I'll probably post it shortly after midnight, assuming that I can somehow find a way to stop tinkering with it!

-- Mike

This topic has been moved to General.

http://forums.2000adonline.com/index.php?topic=41457.0

My entry is due on the 6th, and right now I'm about 99% done... So if anyone before the 6th needs to swap, let me know!

Really looking forward to seeing what everyone else has come up with this year!

-- Mike

Mike Carroll should be along to talk about his novels any minute now...

Those prognostification pill seem to be kicking in for you, Rich! 

Yes, I humbly submit my own novels the Quantum Prophecy / New Heroes series - for consideration. However, they do, as Allah Akbark said, fail the "no super baddies to fight, no superteams" part of the criteria.

-- Mike

This topic has been moved to Holding Pen.

http://forums.2000adonline.com/index.php?topic=41396.0

I'll have the 6th, if it's still free!
Thanks,
Mike