TITLE: The Adventures of Mime Man, or Helium
NAME: Greg M. Johnson
COUNTRY: USA
EMAIL: pterandon@yahoo.com
WEBPAGE: http://www.geocities.com/pterandon/index.html
TOPIC: Animations
COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT.
MPGFILE: helium.mpg
RENDERER USED: 
    MegaPov 0.7

TOOLS USED: 
    MODELLER-- the MegaPov patch of "Povray, the Renderer, Not a
Modeller"

CREATION TIME: 
    maybe 8 h

HARDWARE USED: 
    Aptiva Athlon 1 GHz

ANIMATION DESCRIPTION: 


The adventures of the superhero Mime Man (named after a random comment my wife
made about an early prototype). The title sequence is inspired by the opening
credits to season 4 of Babylon 5 but probably needs a lot more polish.  Mime
Man takes a peaceful walk through the park only to be disturbed by a call for
distress.  He finds his love interest, "Pheno" Mena X trapped in the
ampitheatre of the park by the Green Meanie.  Mime Man fires his He laser (in
his ring) at the Meanie. The result is what every physicist *knows* is supposed
to happen. 


VIEWING RECOMMENDATIONS: 
    1) Squint 2) Suspend disbelief for a bloody minute


DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS ANIMATION WAS CREATED: 


BLOB-BASED CHARACTERS

i)   The Green Meanie is the bully from my IRTC entry two rounds ago-- it is
sloppy FK in construction.  
ii)  The 'Pheno' Mena X character is used with permission  from N.B.'s earlier
Stills entry (http://irtc.org/stills/1997-06-30.html). There are a few
modifications, most notably the hair and eye colors to coincide with those of
my wife ;) . 
iii) The Mime Man is in essence a new creation, even if he has the old head from
my entry of last round.  I hooked this head up to my pure-IK figure system,
added a costume which is a mere texture on the blob, with a logo, and a ring
able to fire at any point in space. There is also an "open mouth."  You folks
probably tire of hearing "it's completely new" but from my side it is...   I
probably spent 950f my creation time on the blob figure itself.

SETTING
The trees are an old creation of mine, based on isosurfaces.


As always, I feel I could have done a bunch more with this project given more
time, but it's time to get to bed...