EMAIL: pterandon@yahoo.com
NAME: Greg M. Johnson
TOPIC: Anims
COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT.
TITLE: "The Way Things Ought to be Done"
COUNTRY: USA
WEBPAGE: http://www.geocities.com/pterandon/anims.html
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
VIEWING RECOMMENDATIONS: Suspension of disbelief
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.
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!