Not looking just yet, but want in the future to hire a very good humanoid model animator..

I'd like to hear who at GameStudio is really good, even if they're not currently available.

If you've got skills, feel free to mention it here.

I really appreciate the help folks

Thanks!

- Jason

Im okay at it, but not even close to the best.

I don't know about animation per say but when it comes to humanoid modeling, I think the title goes to Andvari hands down.

http://www.coniserver.net/wiki/index.php/Human_resources

Perhaps Pappenheimer can help you out. I'm sure there are others who are good or at least reasonably good at animating!

Cheers

Andvari for sure. Visit his site at LowPolyArts

For modeling this guy seems good:
http://www.coniserver.net/ubb7/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=231513#Post231513

Also their is a user named nalan who is quite good, and there are others around here that are equally as good.

I personally dont need to hire a modeler/animator because I am proficient enough to do my own artwork. I also would not sell my skills too much because it would detract from my own work. that is the path i would recommend for most indy gamers here because most people here dont have much money to pay freelancers, but every person has to find what is comfortable for their own situations.

I would also check with Dan Silverman or Dexsoft has a lot of good stuff.

For animations specifically I really cant tell you. Most really good animators are working professionally. Animation is really not an easy thing to do, if I were to do humanoid animation I use motion capture mostly. I have learned how to mix motion capture with my own animations in maya to come up with a lot of useful animations. I use these:

http://www.e-motek.com/entertainment/stockmoves/index.html Cost me around $50 and I have over 1000 motions which I can use and create reusable clips in maya to mix and match and come up with a huge variety of animations.

Lastly I would recommend that whatever you choose, you make sure to either use the same team for your modeling/texturing/animation needs or make sure that they are working very closely together. I have done work with people on this forum who were paid as modelers because they were supposedly better than me, but when I had to animate their models they were not even closely set-up for animation. I had gross deformations on the arms and legs, the faces werent set up for eye blinking or mouth opening and other issues which meant that I had to fix the model and add vertices to make it work which I ended up charging the client for. So be smart with your choices. Or just do it yourself like I do. eventually you will get good at it.

Thanks everyone for their useful suggestions.

When push comes to shove, i may indeed do the modeling and animating myself.

BUT, I may not.

I will be doing my own video captures of live models because the actions are very much game specific. However, since I intend to record front and side views, they'd be pretty easy to use by others.

I also intend to use, like, black clothes with the white dots on key joints etc for easier accurate animating.

Very good talent here indeed!

Thanks everyone!

- Jason

That's very good advice, I also had bought some models that turned out to not be fit for animation without time consuming editing.

Cheers

Im not so good it tack by my a lot of time but, haw longer then so better

And what for modls du you need, solder, knight, humen alien... then I have some models, and by me nothing cast somthing

I don't think that video capture for animations is trivial, even the way that you plan to go could be full of efforts without result and more time consuming than you expect. It depends very much on the sort of movements that you need, too.
The following is a result of tweaking two of the free .bvh-files in the internet. First, I made a cycle in bvhacker (free program), then connected it with a model in fragmotion, reduced the frames per cycle (don't know if in bvhacker or fragmotion), and after exporting it to mdl7, I changed the model in MED and re-rigged it with a very lowpoly model from one of Rincewind's contributions.
Could be worth a look or two.
knight_walking.zip