As I had said in a previous article, you can animate all you want, but if you don't have a good story to tell, you can have the best animaton in the world and hardly anyone will care. I came upon this animation on Vimeo the other day and it gave me a good laugh.
It's easy to see the large amount of thought that went into it. Subtle things like when when the native runs into the jungle to get the birds, there's a long camera shot where you see the leaves of the trees rustling and the birds flying away in fear along his path . The story also moves along at a good pace and is well timed on the scene cuts and has excellent camera angles.
Keep in mind, this is Coodle's first animation he created to gain entry into a University. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did. If you have any critiques, please, keep them constructive and friendly. Sometimes the tone of the critiques left on this site are a bit harsh. This site is about learning, sharing and celebrating each others Blender accomplishments and I never want to stifle anyone's creativeness, becasue of harsh criticism.
See Coodle's letter below.
Tim
Floating Point from coodle on Vimeo.
"Well, my name's coodle aka Konstantin and I have applied for the MultiMediaArt studies at the University of Applied Sciences in Salzburg, Austria. For application you have to do a multimedia project, for example an
animation (stopmotion, 2d, 3d) or a real filmed movie and they choose the best ones and invite the creators for an interview. This year's theme for the application project was “Flotsam†and they gave you the start of a story you had to continue in any way you want. My animation “Floating Point†is my contribution to this selection procedure.
It's my first animation so far, I have created a few models before that but didn't texture or animate them. It was a very hard task for a beginner but thanks to the nice documentation, the huge amount of good tutorials and last but not least the nice community of Blender I got so far.
Animating the character probably was the most fun though I had to kick out many animations due to the maximal allowed time of three minutes. Another bad thing was: The more I animated, the more I wanted to send my rig to hell. I definetely have to learn better rigging though I really had put some effort in
this first rig and looked for good solutions in rigs like Mancandy...
Storyline. The concept, creativity and ideas behind the movie are the primary criterions of the University's selection and I had several ideas. I chose the one that tangents me most: the manipulation and the change of life by the media, no matter if it's TV or computer and internet. For me, internet is a big chance but also a method of “drowning†in all the stuff you can watch and read, especially for an artist. It would have been hard though to do the story with a computer because it allows more interaction which makes everything more complex.
The rough storyline: indigene finds a satellite TV on a raft and unintentionally activates it. It shows him a new world with glancing things and at first he is creative and tries to rebuild the things he sees on screen. At
least the TV takes more and more the control over him and he receives so much impressions he can't assimilate them anymore. He's almost floating through the world of shiny pictures. Then he suddenly spots an image that is well known to him but he can't distuingish between reality and virtuality and so he takes
the film about an indigene tribe as real and attacks the TV. After it's destroyed he kind of wakes up and finds himself back in the real world. He snaps because of what he has done to his beloved island…
I used Blender 2.45 for the animation and rough video sequences, Gimpshop and Crazybump for the textures, MonkeyJam to check if the animation works, Premiere CS3 (I used the trial though I really hate Premiere but the CS3 worked surprisingly good, mostly without bugs) for the cut and last but not least
Audacity for the sound.
In Blender I used almost no proxies and no libraries, especially the proxies didn't work the way I wanted when I started the project. Not using them was at least my biggest fault because in the end I had to edit each shot separately…
I rendered the movie in half-HD size (864x486) and used the nice little BFR2 Tool which automatically renders your shots one after the other.
I'm looking forward to creating new 3d stuff and hope you can enjoy my movie.
Thanks a lot for your interest, if you have questions, just ask! I had no idea what to write here but I have found some things to talk about at least.
greetings,
Konstantin
28 Comments
It's really excellent for an early work - I am sure you will get in!
Also, thanks for the descriptive write-up. It's interesting and helpful to read about your process and destination for something like this.
Very nice, too, that the animation carries itself without the description; one can follow the exotic plot from start to finish without aid :)
Nice job!
Very funny
Well done!
Nice cameramoves, the animation works well (though there are little glitches in it - but that's ok, considering this is your first!)
Lighting was setting a great mood, cool music, funny story...
I hope to see more of your work in the future!
It's OK, but still needs a lot of improvements. There's one great moment - from 2:09 to 2:14. There's something thrilling in it... And one more thing - all the sounds are perfectly matched!
Good job doing a whole story. Keep pushing on projects and improve those visual and animation skills!
Wow. I like this video!!! I will show it to my friends.
Never stop to make works like this.
Cool.
hey coodle, good job on your first short movie. Keep up the good work.
A really good first animation. I have to look at it again to really critique it because I got caught up in the story (so that means the story is good and works). Yes the sounds match the video perfectly, and good use of light/dark colors. The only really good piece of advice is: keep going. After doing 1 animation like this, you know that doing another will be easier because you know what works and what to avoid (what slows you down). There is a lot to learn and doing it all at once is a lot of work. Congratulations on a good animation, and good luck.
Bob
Having spoken to coodle while he was developing this, I can say that he worked VERY hard to make this movie and did all of it on his own.
He was very shy about it. It was his first animation and he was worried how it would be received.
I have to say though, I think he's done a great job, considering it's his first work and he made it solo.
Well done from me buddy! You did really well!
Great movie, great story!
Dusty
I really want to put some some remarks. criticism, but I think you did a fine job that went beyond your current constraint. Good lighting, good editing, good camera work, good mood and fun to watch.
Great stuff! I'd be quite uneasy showing my first work to most people now, keep at it and the extra skills and polish will come with time.
Be sure to post here or at BlenderArtists.org and let us know how you went with the application.
Great concept and well done. I thought it was really funny when he licked it. Check out the sounds between 0:15 and 0:30, sounds like people talking and laughing in the background a little bit.
really a good video. It's like a metaphore for the consumer society. The style of the character (apart from the bone in the nose) reminded me of a cartoon serie named Nomad, about a guy who has the ability to control machines.
i liked it a lot!
i studied there a few years ago. :) i don't know how competitive the application process is now but at my time you would have had very good chances with a project like this!
Great coodle!
Keep the good work going.
German extra:
Ich find das ein geniales erstes Video. Ich finde die Hürde extrem schwer, weil man ja mit seinem ersten Video auch einen ersten Eindruck abgibt und da will man ja auch in einer so netten Community wie bei Blender einen starken machen ;)
Coodle, ich denke da sind einige Leute hier draussen, die wie Du vor ihrem ersten Video stehen und nicht wissen, welche Stolperfallen vor ihnen liegen (ich denk da üüüüüberhaupt nicht an mich lol).
Kannst Du so eine Art "How to (not) make a first 2min Video" Tutorial schreiben?
Mich persönlich würd zum Beispiel interessieren, welche Dinge am meisten Zeit fressen.
Welche Dinge man am Anfang richtig machen sollte, damit sie einen später nicht das Genick brechen.
Welche Tutorials sind Pflicht, damit man die Basics beherrscht.
Wieviel Stunden pro 10 Sekunden Video hast Du gebraucht?
Hast Du so einen ähnlichen Ansatz wie Comet benutzt? http://www.comet-cartoons.com/3ddocs/animprocess/
Ach, ich bin schon wieder viel zu konkret, ich denk wenn Du einfach mal zusammenfasst wie es Dir beim ersten Projekt ging, wären viele Leute interessiert zu hören, worauf man alles achten muss.
lg
Tom
just to practise my german, a translation of the message above:
so Cyrr approximately said:
I find it a great first video. I find the hurdles (in making a first video) really hard to overcome, because you make a first impression and you want this to be a good one when dealing with such a nice community as the Blender one.
Coodle, I think there are a few other people out there who, like you, would want to produce a first video and don't know what the main pitfalls are (definitely not thinking of me lol).
Could you make a tutorial that would go through these pitfalls, sort of a "How to make a first 2min video (not)"
I'd personally be interested in what things were most time consuming. Which things one should get right from the start., in order not to break the ...(Genick) later. Which tutorials should be gone through first in order to master the basics.
How much time did it take you for every 10s of the movie?
Have you used Comet or something similar (url)
Hey, I'm being too down to earth again, I think if you just wrote a summary of how this first project all went for you, a lot of people would be interested to hear about what they should be paying particular attention to.
regards,
Tom
Absolutely outstanding for a first animation project!
How long did you work on it?
That is hilarious! I love it! I'm about to die of laughter... man.
Woah, didn't expect this. Thanks for all the nice comments! Awesome...
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Okay, I'll try to answer some of the questions:
Deltaray: Yes, that's funny, there actually are people talking. I will change this in the extended version I plan to do because I had to kick some shots (the 3 minute limit you know). Thx!
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Cyrr and Jacques, you both are complementing each other perfectly :D
That's a very difficult topic, people have filled books about how to create a short film.
I now plan to note some things in my BA thread and if I forget that you may contact me there via PM. (well, you can of course always contact me, it's great to talk to other people who are interested in art, films, etc.)
Ah, my thread is here
http://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?t=126883
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Marcus, that's also difficult to answer, I had a long pause between the modeling/texturing/animation phase and the lighting and compositing (and some more animation) phase. Imho you can see the difference between the animations I did at first and the ones of the second phase. That's because I had to fight (really) with the lighting/compositing and the missing char. animations were just thwarting me...
At least I used many hours on this project, I can't tell how long exactly.
----
Many thanks again for the comments, you're great!
coodle, Thanks for this great video! I really enjoyed it The palm trees were especially nice and the camera moving thru them was beautiful.
awesome I wonder how you did the cool swirly television light grabbing his ankle thing xD
great!
It all looks perfect ,and a...
Next well done step is to create a global Blender television channel (English).
Not for community talking ,but full of
"Video Shows"
"Video Tutorials"
"Full DVD Trainings"
"Daily Blender Classes"
"Realtime Feed Updates" (Blender.Org ,BlenderNation,.. Commercials)
"Blender Movie"
What A Epic Idea ...
why not on internet too ,but better at television .
Lucas, great idea. You can go to this web site: http://www.boostcast.com/ and create a site just like YouTube ... BlenderTube perhaps. It has full administration features such as moderation. And you can appoint more moderators if you want. Best of all, it's free.
Oh, and Coodle, wonderful short movie. I loved it. Good story. Just the right length finished movie. Making it longer may not make it better.
Peace, Love, Laughter,
Rob:-]
Heh, nice animation. Better than I could do.
Only critique is that the animation is a bit rough, but for a first work, its amazing, and I honestly could never do anything like it as I am right now.
Great job! And nice sense of humor!
Nice service ,
I maybe help about anything ..
the problem is that im not that good .
But the "Shows" must also be with default english subtitles
(withnout any kind of street talking or something).
Than anyone should understand what was sayd on all that TV shows .
Iam from Brazil (Brasil with S from here) ..
you can mail me for some help if i could .
Thanks .
That's a good and funny video. I already watched it after your announcement on blend.polis
Guten Tag, sehr wissenswerter Beitrag. Grüße aus Hamburg