TITLE: "The Way Things Ought to be Done"
NAME: Greg M. Johnson
COUNTRY: USA
EMAIL: pterandon@yahoo.com
WEBPAGE: http://www.geocities.com/pterandon/anims.html
TOPIC: Anims
COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT.
MPGFILE: ought.mpg
RENDERER USED: 
    Povray 3.5

TOOLS USED: 
    Modeller "Povray, the raytracer, not a modeller"; Chris Colefax's
City  macro; Mike Williams' spline mesh macro, sPatch to make the rocket
ships.

CREATION TIME: 
    A few weeks at beginning of contest period. I lost interest
after a while and set this project aside. Right before the contest deadline, I
then threw this together from an existing draft.  Hope it's not of such poor
quality as to waste yall's time.

HARDWARE USED: 
    Aptiva 2.8 GHz

ANIMATION DESCRIPTION: 
    A technically superior race invades the earth. Its ground
and air troops pass through our most heavily populated cities despite all
efforts of resistance of our combined militaries.  It appears they're looking
for something. They don't find it, and then leave with apologies and admitting
their mistake, leaving behind no civilian casualties.

VIEWING RECOMMENDATIONS: 
    Suspension of disbelief

DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS ANIMATION WAS CREATED: 

Inspirations: 1) The title of a Flaming Lips song, "Yoshimi Battles The Pink
Robots."  2) The opening scenes of "Pearl Harbor" where civilians in Hawaii
look up and see Japanese Zeroes fly peacefully (for the moment) overhead. The
gravity of being perfectly safe for the moment in front of something really
dangerous and historic was something I wanted to capture in my animation.
I used Chris Colefax's city macro to make the setting. 
I used an include file created by Mike Williams to create the robots. First I
created a spline from data for arm and foot positions in a walk cycle from my
own "Mime Man" include. One spline went from
wrist-elbow-shoulder-shoulder-elbow-wrist, another from toe-knee-hip-knee-toe.
Then I applied Mike William's spline macro to turn these splines (and another
for the head) and thus I have a new robot. 
My original ambition was to have the robots show more character, actually
bending over to peek into houses, making gestures of "huh, I don't see
anything, Bill" to each other.  When I realized that the robots were too big to
fit down the city streets, I set the project aside.  I guess the effect of the
final draft is to make them somewhat immaterial, as they are walking right
through buildings.
And hey, the captions are fixed!


