Pony:
I will try and describe the project I am working on. First of all there are 3 characters. The first one is the one that I am working on, (first realistic human, Post in WIP).
The animation will start of with the first character walking down a dark ally. He will get hit buy something but we will not see it. As he continues he will keep getting hit and pushed around by something we do not see. At the end he drops to his knees and then the whole thing rewinds. The whole thing starts again. This time the 2nd character is introduced. (The 2nd one is a Seraphim (Angel). I have attached an image. I want to use a lot of particle effects to give him a similar look to the picture from Nintendo’s “Geist”). You will see that he is the one that was pushing the first character around. It gets to the end and rewinds. In the third and final pass the 3rd character is introduced. (The 3rd is a fallen angel similar to the 2nd but decrepit. I want to make him very dark and he will leave trails of fire.) This time you will realize that the 2nd character was not beating him up but protecting him from the 3rd. At the end the first character prays (body language, there will be no talking), and than there will be a shot of the Fallen angel confronting the Angel. The Angel will open up his wing and brighten up. When this happens the fallen angel will go away. The Angel will then help the 1st character up and they will continue walking down the ally together.
I plan on showing allot of emotion in the 1st character as he is very proud and gets very upset at first. As the story progresses he will be humbled and realize that he is not able to do this on his own.

With all that said I have a question. I realize that this is going to take me an extremely long time. But is it worth it? In the end I just want to get a job. Would it be more valuable for me to just spend time modeling stuff? (I want to be a modeler). I have been struggling with this for a while. My school really stresses getting a finished product. But I am staring to wonder if that is really the best way to get a job. If I want to be a modeler wouldn’t it be better if I just had a bunch of stuff that I modeled?

here is the pict.

WOW, ok first, I'm way inpressed buy the story idea and way its reviled visualy. This is a kind of short peace that really trips my triger. I'll help in what ever way I have time for.

Do you have a larger image of that one that your trying to match the look of ? if so send it to pony2012@cox.net

At least the 1st character will need more of a normal SSS afect. And the little thing with the ramp and sampler will start you in a direction to fake a level of SSS that you will want but it will not be the only thing. I'll see if I can't find the siggraph white papers on the fake SSS they used in finding nemo. A good deal of that was in post if I remember right. It might be just the ticket for all the characters.

About your last coments.. Your going after a modeling spot, nothing wrong with that, and your right its a lot of work for a modeling demo real. If you want to put in the extra work though, and you can aford to, ei your modeling is top notch and your time would be better spent promoting your self and not learning some new modeling tricks. Thin I would say one way to set your self apart is to show that your models will work right under animation. Plus the shaps are more exciting when they move. You could have some one help you with the animation. Shows your familer with working with others. Also they get countless demo's of models on terntables I'm sure.. this will be a good way to set your self apart.. and not have them fall asleep on you.

Thanks Pony! That is very encouraging, just what I needed to hear right now. Any way I almost forgot about the velvet shader. For now I have found a go around. But eventually would like to get this to work better. I have used a ramp to make the edges translucent, not allot, but just enough for the light to shine threw giving the appearance of some sss. I put a blue back light just to give the idea. The nice thing about this is I wouldn’t have to animate the ramp for the color of light but the drawback is it only gives a small rim. For some of it that should be fine because my character will be in a dark ally but I will probably need more when I introduce the angel.

Edit:
after a few more test I dont think this is working like I thought it was. Back to the drawing board.

the velvet shader. This what I dowloaded to try and figure out how the sampler works, but I couldnt figure it out.

ok looks like a good velvet to me. Don't see the prob.

ok well Let me work up a shader. I'll do it in a bit as I got some work I need to do right now. What it will do is use the info node for light data to put the fake SSS afect in there. Along with a little bit of a velvet that is driven buy the amount of light so you get the soft velvet afect from miro hairs on this skin.

oh yeah. and it will be for MR also. MR is just as fast, if not faster than maya soft as long as you don't tern on like GI or FG. It also has more options for kool nodes to use.

Ok let me try and explain exactly what the problem is. When I apply the shader it give me the effect I want but in to many places. For example the stuff I circled. I could paint where I want more of the efect like the ear but I do not know how to get it not to happen in the unwanted areas and still keap the effect only on the places where I do want it to happen. Circled in green.

the miss will give you great results for your needs. and its fast. im doing some work with it now too.

Luke, sorry, had a bunch of stuff to get done. Long delay. Well far as I can tell your not against using a mix8layer node in mentalRay. You can get some nice stuff with that also, as far as fakeing or doing much more complex shadeing.

Anyway for a fake SSS and falowing what stahlberg did. I don't have it tweeked out but this little scene has his shader in it. Just hit render.

Pony: no worrys I have been busy myself. I will take a look at the shader. Thanks!
I started working on my angel. If you want, check it out in the WIP forum titled "Angel"