Plumiferos Premiere: Review

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The history of Plumiferos was a turbulent one. The ambitious project (the first feature-length movie made in Blender) was abandoned when it was 80% ready. A new team worked in secrecy for another year and a half, and finished the movie. The movie finally premiered this week in Argentina.

Claudio Andaur (Malefico) was part of the original Plumiferos team. He went to the premiere and returned with mixed feelings.

Claudio writes:

After watching the movie in a theater, surrounded by my all-time friends, colleagues and family, and close enough to the screen (maybe too close) I could summarize my experience in one sentence: “I thought it was going to be worse”.

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    • Month3d

      Oeh I’m interested in seeing this. Any chance this will be available someway in the netherlands?
      And congratulations to everybody involved in finishing this :)

    • annoo

      congrats to evey1 involved..i wld luv 2 see it too…btw was just wondering why the new team worked in SECRECY??

    • Ian3D

      Wow this is great- the first full length blender feature film ! can’t wait to see it I hope Blender.org and Blender Nation get involved with advertising, publicity and maybe some distribution via the Blender shop.

    • http://digitaldraw.wordpress.com/ aws357

      @annoo Maybe they didn’t publicized their work as the Durian team does? Or maybe they really really like surprises… :)

      Wonder if it will be available on the blender store… In a nice DVD with tutorials and stuffs :)

    • http://melting3d.com meltingman

      whaaaaaoo mais c’est génial !

      Franchement c’est une superbe surprise. j’espère que le film viendra jusqu’en Guyane :-P.

      ça donne du courage :-)

      ++

    • tvvladimir

      Birds are just plane boring, if you gave me these charachters in the first place i’d say, this is gonna be one dead boring thing. Just try and imagine if birds if they can interract with objects? Everything is so limited. They should have made a cartoon about cats, dogs and a mouse (like Tom and Jerry) and make it all happen in one big house and around the garden of this house. That way there’s plenty of action. And i think also a big mistake was to involve humans in this film, they’ve been really badly rendered. And making so much decoration, buildings, should have aimed low, as simple as that and it would be great. Birds, they’ve been boring and they’ll stay boring.

    • http://www.blendernation.com Bart

      @tvvladimir: right, just like cars – no WAY you can make a funny movie with those. They can’t interact at all! Oh wait! Pixar made milions with that idea!

    • Moonflower

      Any hope for us in the US to see it?

      @tvvladimir: Right, birds are boring… so are fish, all they do is swim (*cough*Finding Nemo*cough*) and toys, when you’re not playing with them they just sit there (*ahem*Toy Story*ahem*)… why so pessimistic? With a little imagination, you can make anything creative and fun.

    • tvvladimir

      @Bart: that cars cartoon by Pixar is most boring thing of all they’ve done, I myself love watching cartoons, and Pixar has a name, money and great marketing oh and Steve Jobs (anything that guys will sell), if he sells strings tomorrow, it will be bought.

      @moonflower: fish is not boring, you’ve got prawns, sharks, kalimaries, srouts, and all whole sea fauna which all have different skeletal movements which is fun.

      Ogcourse I agree that birds can be very entertaining, but looking at these birds makes me think, that is definetely not fun. I mean prior to starting the project you receive the story and the charachters, at that point you should know it’s not going to be fun. They just don’t cool or funny or interesting, isn’t these parameters most important for kids.

      And afterall why u attacking me so much? You liked it yourself? From the videos I’ve seen its a dead boring thing. Or is this post aimed at advertising to power people to watch it?

    • horace

      the critics mainly is about technical stuff but what about the story/plot? does plumiferos work as a movie?

    • Ian3D

      @tvvladimir how can you criticize a film that you have not seen? (@tvvladimir now that you’ve had your say, I hope that you’ll shut up and go back to your boring life). I am looking forward to buying a copy of the movie, it looks great!

    • http://www.byronsdesigns.com ByronK

      Congratulations! I know this has been in the works for a long time. I hope I get to see it here in the USA. My Greenwing Macaw, and I disagree with the statement that “birds are boring.” He is one of the most interesting personalities I know. At any rate, it is so exciting that your movie has been completed and thanks for all the great teaching, the Plumiferos team has shared with us along the way.

    • http://www.blenderprojects.org Enriqolonius

      Umm all of you need to shut it. It’s a big deal what they did. Birds, people, fish, a brick, who cares! I say good job. I just hope the story makes sense even just a little. Ditto what Bart said. Some of you people I worry about. I really do.

    • Anber

      @tvvladimir The reason why people are “attacking” you, is because you made the rookie mistake of voicing your narrow minded opinion.

      Remember, not everyone is going to agree with you on your opinion. Take that in mind the next time you post something. Feel free to read you original post again and compare that to the other post of people who “don’t” get attacked. If you don’t spot the difference, then maybe you have not matured enough.

      If you don’t encourage or contribute, you are doing it wrong.

    • Aukeran

      Felicidades ¿se podrá ver en España?

    • Proxy Manheim

      The author obviously has a bone to pick with the Plumiferos team – this review is so obviously biased I really can’t take it seriously.

    • http://www.RemnantStudios.com BlenderBoy

      I understand the frustration Claudio has shared regarding simple fixes & render quality; perhaps these short comings will be corrected on the DVD/Blu-ray release (if the producers plan on releasing for the home market). I don’t see why not if they want to maximize profits. Looking forward to seeing this film in the US.

    • http://www.jorgerausch.com.ar Bataraza

      Just to say, not everything said by malefico is true.
      I took part in this movie, and I can assure 80% of these errors were made by the original team, malefico and I included.
      So, I strongly believe the best way to clear up his good name is leaving the responsability to the team that has finished the movie, taking a stand just as a viewer. Most of the “issues” he is highligthing come directly from malefico’s work and from the original team, me included
      I think more than a half of the original team laughed after reading this “review”

    • pixnolve

      I cannot really see a movie being a failure with Andy Goralczyk involved.
      Well done Andy once again.
      I wonder what he was involved in?
      Modeling (all the character I believe).
      Compositing (as usual)
      Animation.
      Having seen the Genius at work, probably everything.

      Finger cross for the Durian Project.

    • http://www.jorgerausch.com.ar Jorge Rausch

      Just to say, not everything said by malefico is true.

      I took part in this movie, and I can assure 80% of these errors were made by the original team, malefico and I included.

      So, I strongly believe the best way to clear up his good name is leaving the responsability to the team that has finished the movie, taking a stand just as a viewer. Most of the “issues” he is highligthing come directly from malefico’s work and from the original team, me included
      I think more than a half of the original team laughed after reading this “review”

    • http://www.artificial3d.com @ndy

      pixnolve: heh, thanks a lot for the kind words. just to clarify, i didnt do much at all. (and i’m not in durian btw either) bassam and i were invited to argentina (for a month in my case) to give advice about specific workflow issues, having – at that time – completed Elephants Dream. on my half it was mainly some texturing (reviewing eye and feather materials) and poking the compositing and lighting department about some issues. i’m not sure if the two shots i lit ended up in the movie though, they were in the trailer if i remember correctly. some still character shots were used for the online promo i believe :)

      anyways… regardless of the rough edges, the totally couragous team(s) behind this movie deserve all the praise they can get for finally pulling this off! nowadays that we’re spammed with CG movies, people tend to forget how much blood, sweat and tears goes to making these animated films, it still aint easy! :)

      kudos!
      .andy

    • http://www.malefico3d.org malefico

      @Jorge Rausch:

      Everything I wrote IS TRUE, to the very last word. But you might have misunderstood what I’ve meant. I was not hiding my responsibility on anything, as a matter fact I posted before about it in my blog. I can cope with the blame of all animation/rigging/render horrors happily.

      I was talking about the producers attitude at us. They worked in the shadow, never asked for help when they had the time and the money for it.

      And it is very funny (and I laughed at it) that someone like you try to lecture me on morality. Please don’t.

    • http://nicknamfx.wordpress.com Nicknamz

      I want to see it!

    • wysiwyg

      did the new secret team also use blender?

    • Big Fan

      Unfortunately it seems what was finally achieved for this movie is being undermined by bad feeling among some of the participants and spills over into the review and here on blendernation.
      This is not pretty for the public audience to behold.
      These things should be sorted in private IMO.

      I’m looking forward to seeing this movie.
      A full length feature film is an ambitious first for Blender.
      By all accounts a lot of people worked very hard on it to make it a reality.
      Congratulations on the premiere.

    • Nobody

      @tvvladimir: For the record, an animation production called “Valiant” is one of the best 3D-films I’ve seen…
      Sometimes the limitation is “I’m limited”…, since “Valiant”, I believe an English-production, is a ‘bird-movie’.

      Niels

      ps.
      For the record, making a boring movie can use all objects, since “the boring stuff” isn’t in the objects… ;)

    • N30N

      If I remember correctly, Valiant was the first feature length film made with commercially available tools (Maya and Houdini). Now just five years later we have one made with FLOSS tools.

      What a incredible achievement, Well done to all the members involved in the project!

      @tvvladimir, your post made me think of this…
      http://johnkstuff.blogspot.com/2009/07/ideas-arenas-modern-way-to-write.html

    • vidrazor2

      Hmm, “secret team”. I dunno man, I think the making of this flick should become the storyline for the next blender open movie. It’ll make Elephant’s Dream, BBB and Durian look totally lame in comparison…

    • grafixsuz

      Well, I cannot seem to use the link mentioned as the site has been suspended.

      In any case, regardless of how the movie ended up, it is a mammoth of a task to pull something of this magnitude off without there being some problems amongst the participants. But as has being mentioned above I was totally disappointed to hear this happen among you guys.

      I think the secret team used many commercial tools to finish off the movie as that is what I read on the previous blog post about it.

      Congrats on everyone for completing the movie regardless on how you ended up doing it.

    • Anonymous

      @Bart: Of course! Because “made millions” is synonymous with “good”!

      @andy: “how much blood, sweat and tears goes to making these animated films, it still aint easy!” That’s full-on bullshit. CGI is easier than _any_ other form of animation. It takes a minuscule fraction of the work of hand drawn animation and stop motion, and there’s a hundred years of history of people doing 12 and 24 frames per second with small teams and _alone_. CGI is a massive shortcut to doing actual work, and it takes a special kind of half-ass laziness to so thoroughly fuck up a shortcut as consistently as CG animation productions do.

    • gilboy

      what can i say i was there the day of the presentation of the trailer almost three years ago and I did not believe they finished the film but well congrats to the team who finish the movie

    • josiasbh

      I saw the traillers and the teaser.
      Unfortunaly, i don’t like what i see.

      Again, congratulation for all efforts and dedication but i’m sad because isn’t an state or art project.
      This level of quality says to all people that Blender isn’t a professional software. It remembers me that erros found in Sintel movie.
      I was the guy who said that if those erros could be fixed using Blender, ok!
      I didn’t like the birds textures. And i see that isn’t a Blender problem: Big Buck Bunny had a nice bird with great textures.