Christmas is Coming to Our Home

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A bit of über-sweet compensation for yesterday’s dark short ;-)

David Lindsley wrote:

It’s a little early for Christmas, but I thought you might be interested in a little Christmas song video I’ve been working on for quite a while – using Blender. This video features several scenes from a children’s cartoon show that we are in the early stages of developing. We are currently contacting several television networks – so hopefully we’ll have some good news soon!

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    • http://blendernewbies.blogspot.com Kernon

      Very nice, I always like the Bearubs!

    • scarystuff

      And the nightmares begin…

    • dRMahoney

      While listenin’ to those creepy teddy-FAIRY-bears i fell like i’m gonna kill em’ all, givin’ to them lots of pain! That’s how i feel… That’s… brainwashing…It makes me feel sick

      I feel sorry for those kids ;|

    • http://wickes.webs.com Papasmurf

      That is sweet. Love it! Catchy melody too! Dr.Mahoney, if you listen to it about 50 more times, those evil thoughts will fade away…

    • dRMahoney

      Oh, if i read your comment once more, i think i’m gonna totally believe you ;)

    • http://www.openoctave.org ccherrett

      That was nuts!

    • Nixon

      übersweet kinda fits the video quite well:)

      its very well done and the animation is great, however i guess i’m too old already to enjoy such cutie-bears to the fullest:(
      cool video and song …
      i found it bit confusing that even its winter somehow the trees still were full of leaves, but i guess thats due to the fantasy nature of the bears…
      the videos yesterday and today should be shown in a double feature:D

      CHRISTMAS IS COMING TO OUR HOME!!!
      …everyone panic :P

    • Icono

      Sound master blaster! My whimpy little speakers can’t handle this. They’re at half volume too.

    • SebastianErler

      I really enjoyed watching it. But watching one time is enough ;)

    • shproductions03

      I really like the animation, but not the song. I know its still in development but the audio quality is not so good.

    • Born

      I watched this video of lovable cherub-like bears earlier this morning.

      At once, yet throughout, indeed lingering beyond into the present, I was affected to consider what surely has to be absolute cuteness!

      In short, it was ADORABLE!

      –

      Loved the tune as well… the singing and piano-hook was most memorable… I wonder, as I’ve never heard this Christmas piece before, is it an original composition?

      Cheers!

    • http://www.seanjmacisaac.com SeanJM

      Now, this has some potential–cute, animation leaves a little to be desired, some character designs are awesome and others are scary. Unfortunately, the scary ones are the bears.

      You want to make these bears look like something you want to cuddle, right now they look like a doll I would never turn my back on.

      If you e-mail me @ [email protected] — I’l help you get these characters to where you want them to be.

    • tonurs

      Cute … but they seem to blink too much.

    • Born

      On a technical note; now that I’ve lowered the whir of fan motors and ambient noise in my location, and turned up the volume a bit more- mind you I’m not listening through hi-end speakers- there does seem to be a bit of distortion with the levels regarding the audio quality.

      Hopefully, before final production, it can be adjusted somehow without too much ado.

      Good luck!

    • Oblenob

      Nice, but there is quite a lot of clipping on the sound, specially some of the singing.

      Try having your voice actors stand back from the mics a bit or sing a tad quieter.

    • BonE

      This is obviously not meant to be heard by musicians. It makes us cry.

    • AK-47

      Very nice video.
      Maybe a bit sickeningly cute, but overall very well done.

      Few comments though.

      Sound is NOT optimized, and high notes sounds bad. Try working on it in Audacity to make the melody work better and make the clipping less noticeable. And be careful of clipping in general when recording.

      The animation and modeling is nice. But lighting and shading could be better. The human faces have too much detail compared to bears , which stand out, so a more cartoon like features can help. A better shading especially in the nose area could help, try shading ramp for the nose to make the colors shifts less destinct.

      Also some animation parts are a bit rushed. Like the part where the letter is written, the lines just appear, a few extra frames and better masking could improve the effect, this way the line is drawn and does not pop. Same goes for hats and other spawning items a few extra frames will improve effect, and maybe an alpha layer so that they appear out of air slower.

      But over all it is a very nice video. Keep them coming

    • vykelt

      Other then some sound and a few animation problems, I think this is a great little vid. Dripping with a bit much sugar and honey, but a great vid. good job

    • n00bie

      Great job! I wish you well in this endeavor! If you are successful with a network, it will be the biggest coup for blender ever! I agree with vykelt and AK47 that it needs work, as far as animation is concerned (sound is bad too, but a studio can fix that). The subject matter is really young, you need to approach pbs kids or nick jr with this one. Cartoon Network would sneer at it. On a positive side, this is a marvelous demonstration of all the elements required to produce a kiddie cartoon show! Bravo!

    • Agent

      This is how hell looks like.
      Srsly, kids will run away seeing weird hair particles and hearing these nasty howls.
      Definitely not re-watchable.

    • OMG

      This is more terrifying then the video from yesterday :U

      …

      however, it does have good characters and animation For the most part, and is higher quality then the usual blender animation I see, so good job for that. Hair Sim… not so much.

    • http://hamsterking.com JoOngle

      LOL, that was creepy as h***! :) And freaky as I am – I LIKED IT!

      You do need to improve on the sound bit though as the others said. The video itself
      is of commercial quality and can certainly be aired at a morning show – television time,
      but then the music MUST be improved with it. It sounds a bit like children in a kindergarden
      singing, talented – but not much singing practice, out of sync. etc. And the music itself is
      sort of played “whoops…ooops” style rather than an organized clean tune.

      All in all – a pretty darn good job that most should be proud of still!

      Good luck with the series.

    • Soundman

      I am no blender guru so I can’t say much animation wise, however from what I know of modern cartoons lil kids watch, you seem to follow the lack of movement that a lot of those shows use. I guess lil kids find it easier to watch things that move slower and more fluid. However, I have a great deal of knowledge in both music and sound as its currently its my major in college so a few tips…

      1: Completely ignoring sound quality, you need to check the pitch on the singers, often times they sound between a major second apart or less when its an obvious unison.

      2: Try to get into a studio to record with better quality, the Audacity and the Open Sound movement are completely pathetic and are no where near up to par with the rest of the open source movement.

      3: Watch the pitch range of the singers and the instruments and see if you can rework it so they don’t cross too much. When two sound sources both meet at the same pitch frequency, you will only hear the one thats loudest and can drive you nuts while mixing

      4. Don’t turn the input/gain too high on the microphones, there is terrible saturation distortion from the gains being too high. Remember, you need good levels, however, mixing is where you adjust volumes ultimately, don’t record everything so hot. And since your using sequencing and MIDI for the rest of the instruments you can easily adjust all of that.

      Good Luck with your En devours

    • vidrazor2

      Damn! A lot of hard work went into that, but I have to agree it’s frightening! I can appreciate that effort, though.

    • Pawel
    • http://www.DreadKnight666.com Dread Knight

      Im not into the whole XMass thing and dancing and singing and cute stuff, but I rather like it :) Good job.

      I think the shaders could have used a bit more work, to get it a more Disney/thinker-bell kind of look.

    • EX

      …

    • http://davidlindsley.com David Lindsley

      Thanks everyone for your input! I’ve made arraignments just today to re-record my two singers in a local recording studio on Wednesday and Thursday – which will hopefully address some issues raised here. I’ll also be making some other visual tweaks to try to get this done a little better! Watch this space for an update… Thanks again!
      David Lindsley

    • http://www.blendercross.org madturtle

      …..maybe a nice concept for Durian……okay….i believe i saw it one time to much !
      Nice work for the kids! ;)

    • bojo600

      nice video, but its dripping with cheese and it a little strange.

    • Nixon

      I watched it several times now and its definetly very cute:), i can imagine the bearubs being quite popular among the small tv-viewers,
      i don’t think that kids will be that critic about the sound, or some minor rendering issues,
      after all its a perfect song for children of certain age, they will like the dance and all the stuff on presents and christmas activities…
      i peeked into the trailer aswell and it seems its gonna be a great show for the lil folks…
      good luck to the bearubs.keep on dancing:)

    • Blendiac

      Urge to kill… RISING….

      As long as sean’s helping you out, I think you need to replace at least one of them with:
      http://www.seanjmacisaac.com/2D/Slate.jpg

      Now excuse me while I go and pour undiluted sulphuric acid in my eyes….

    • Tim Nevo

      I liked it! Catchy tune! I hope you find a network that’ll pick it up.

    • http://blendnz.co.nr BlendNZjnr

      :) Some great animation!
      Lets keep the christ in CHRISTmas

    • Velu

      Looks pretty good. There’s obviously a lot of work that went into this animation. If I had to try and pinpoint what’s making people say it feels “creepy” I’d probably say that the eye movements need some work to appear more natural. In some scenes it’s a bit too uncontrolled, looks like their eyes are rolling in their heads, which reminds one of a sightless person that is moving their eyes but not actually focusing on anything. The blinking seems a bit random too.

    • http://www.traylorpark.com +peter

      that is terrifying.

    • http://www.antoons.org antonvdh

      falsely sung

    • Blendiac

      Man I’d love to see this with the sound turned off and some Edgar Alan Poe or HP Lovecraft overlaid. Bearubs Meet Cuthulu? I’d watch *any* network to see that! :D

      Nice job, by the way… *Too* nice!

    • terence

      Personally, I’m not into the whole sugary sweet thing, and try to keep my kids from it as much as possible, but to all those who think kids won’t like it because of various technical shortcomings have quite a bit to learn about kids. Having worked with preschoolers a lot (as a teacher), I can attest given the choice of a pixar or disney production or some videos with horribly poor production values, they often chose the latter. Go figure.

    • http://davidlindsley.com David Lindsley

      Okay, I’ve made some improvements to the Bearubs Christmas video – so here is the latest and greatest version!

      http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3MsrXvDNaL8

      Thanks everyone!

    • Nixon

      the sounds is really awesome now…the singing is way much clearer and the song gets a better flow in terms of melody and the synchro:)…the new graphics is great too.. all the improvements worked out great ..really like the better quality of sound and video:)
      thumbs up!