It's alive...ALIIIIIIVE!

Yup. I got Medim rigged. Finally.

The animation (action) is not mine but I thought it would make a good test- you may recognize it as the ballet.BIP that comes with 3Dmax. I'm still working on my animation technique.

I'm glad this bad boy is rigged but it ain't pretty. There are still a lot of anomalies that bug the shit out of me- there are a few problems in the crotch area and the back of the leg (That little turd looking thing at his butt is actually a section of the skeleton that, for some reason doesn't "hide" with the rest of the skeleton- don't pay attention to that- I'll remember to hide it next pass).

His arms consist of more shoulder than bicep- which is how I designed him. It was my plan to animate in a different manner so when I use a generic animation like this it tends to look weird. It makes me want to rethink the design but I gotta stick with my experiment.

The "face" is NOTHING like what I want the end result to be like- THIS IS JUST A TEST.

This was just a quick animation I did in FLASH- imported into After Effects for resizing and exporting- imported into Avid in order to add the "glow" and "scanlines" effects and then imported back into Max as a texture (where I made it self luminate) and rendered the animation. Total time: about 15-20 minutes.

I'm VERY happy with the process. There are some steps that I will be able to skip- (going into After Effects AND Avid aren't necessary as they both have glows and scanlines) but I wanted to cover all my bases.
I will work to tighten things up and finalize a few things now that I know my process is more than a theory.

I will work with the toon shader to actually get the look I want- this shiny thing is the default setting- I may try to work with Illustrate since I am familiar with it.

I have a lot of plans for that monitor face. It's generic now but I'm going to be working on a way to make that face look scary- cute- weird- all kinds of stuff.
What you see here- like I said, is just the most basic of animations. The eyes blink at random (well, I did plan the one on the end) and the mouth doesn't move.
I may even loosen up the rigidity of the monitor so it can stretch a little and therefore add a little more to the expressions.

I also need to work with the real textures and add the "knobs" for nipples I'm soooooo looking forward to.

I have a lot of work ahead of me.