So for the past three days, I have essentially been nonstop editing for the next VFX weekly. I wanted to try some compositing with 3D elements, so I decided to try and animate some Star Fox vehicles into my neighborhood.
Thankfully, to save me a ton of modeling time, I managed to find a 3D model of an Arwing, a Landmaster, and a Wolfen online. Bless whoever took those from Brawl, because if I had to model this thing...
...then this weekly would probably have become a monthly. I've only been playing with 3DS Max for about two months and modeling is still ridiculously hard for me. Thankfully, animating is still basically the same as it is in After Effects, so I had no trouble doing that. The only thing that was super difficult about this project was rendering. It took EIGHT HOURS to render, and it basically overworked my laptop in the process.
But I am very happy with the outcome. Take a look.
More importantly, however, let me tell you about the socializing habits of the rare and elusive Filipino mother. Upon the retrieval of their child at another Filipino family's house, such as Samantha's house, the two mothers partake in an elaborate social ritual. In the native Philippine tongue, it is called "wag ka tatahimic" but its closest English translation is "conversation." Though conversation, in the Western sense, is nothing compared to this.
The two Filipino mothers initiate the ritual by first gesturing to the other what appears to be a goodbye wave at first glance. However, between the two women, it is actually a signal that says "I want us to talk for an indefinite period of time in order to delay the work that both of our children have to do for as long as possible." From that point, the two women quickly jump from conversation topic to conversation topic while their children wait awkwardly outside of the car for them to finish. Which is what Sam and I did.
Eventually, when their conversation hit the 45 minute mark, we tried to play a trick on them. Sam snuck into my mom's car (my mom stayed in her car the entire time she was talking to Sam's mom) and she hid in the backseat while we waited for them to finish talking.
We ended up waiting an additional forty minutes, meaning their entire "farewell" conversation lasted an hour and a half. But eventually, my mom drove off.
She didn't notice that crouching in the backseat in the fetal position was Samantha, hidden from view by the back of the passenger seat, her occasional chuckles covered up by the hum of the engine and the guttural hyena-like roars of laughter that my sister was screaming out.
My mom immediately started saying that she could talk to Samantha's mom forever, and I just put myself into autopilot, saying "yeah" to whatever she said. At one point, my mom said
"Samantha's mom talks a lot though, huh?"
She asked that question at an incredible time, right at the point where we reached a stop sign and the sound of my sister laughing stopped for a few seconds. And, with equally perfect timing, in a perfectly silent car, Samantha said
"Yeah, she does."
My mom immediately looks in the backseat, notices that Samantha was still in the car with us, and IMMEDIATELY turns back around to Samantha's house, right as Sam's mom exits the house in panic mode, searching for her daughter.
We explained the situation and even though the entire car was laughing, Sam's mom was panicking. Upon exiting, Sam gave out this weird chimpanzee "WOOO!" howl and raised her arms in the air like Donkey Kong about to throw an invisible barrel.
Her mom threatened to smack us, but it was totally worth it.
RFotD: I feel bad that our little joke made Sam's brother panic too. Her brother's cool, he didn't deserve that kind of fear.
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