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The Light At The End

68

Chris Burton writes:

A lovesick man is saved from certain death by a divine light, but is there a hidden agenda behind the intervention?

Made with Blender 2.5's Freestyle renderer in around six months over free time. It would've been done sooner but I re-animated the whole thing after the story wasn't strong enough the first time round!

68 Comments

  1. Beautiful, very interesting idea, that there might be a higer spirit/power that knows
    the background of every tough situation. Although there is Japan and many countries
    where countless people died.

  2. Tiago Cristiani on

    congratulations, it's amazing.
    what you did to the animation stay like this? I mean cartoonlike. What you use for??

  3. Very well animated, and funny! The sound was lacking as well, especially his laugh at the end, which sounded like it was recorded indoors instead of outdoors. Overall good job!

  4. BobsYourUncle on

    Clever idea. I like it a lot. I must admit, though, I was hoping "The Light At The End" was a reference to 2.57. :)

  5. This is so good i dont know where to start. The story is great, with great rythym and plot twists. The music is amazing, not in harmony or quality (a little MIDIesque), but in integration with the animation, which is also great.

    Make space in your shelf for a Suzanne award!

  6. The plot twist can be seen a mile away !

    But it is so well animated you just want to see what happens next.

    And all the time you can picture the light "source" going :"No dude, stop it, no, come on, it's for your good, now listen buddy..."

  7. The laughter at the end had a strange kind of shrill quality to it, I don't know if there's any good open source sound editors or not, but otherwise, awesome.

  8. Giovanni Lanfiuti on

    Great animation! I was wondering why this one had't been posted before...
    @aws357... Come on! The story is pretty brillliant! I mean the idea...
    Good good work!

  9. smart and dynamic story!!

    Its style remember me the old Flash animations that I saw many years ago :*)

    The animation is very natural and funny
    the hair and clothes moviments simply kill me... are excelent ;)

    Greetings

  10. Wow, awesome response O.O

    @aws357: Given my stupidly spoiler-filled summary of the film just below the video, I'm not surprised you saw it coming. I was trying to make it sound interesting, but maybe I gave away too much.

    @Alexis & Techx: Actually the laughing at the end, like all the voice samples, was taken from the internet. Believe me, tests with my own microphone would have sounded better had I phoned them in ;)

    @Chucker: Hahah, continuity between films brought on by being too lazy to make another character!

    For those interested: I wrote a lengthy (for me) making-of on my blog. It focuses on the story, but there's a bit of Blender in there too:

    http://www.iceboxstudios.co.uk/blog/making-light-end

    Thanks!

  11. Good story, excellent animation, everything is smooth and professional. Doesn't look "blenderish" at all (if you see what I mean). You're a real master.

  12. Great idea and very good execution!

    Except for the music, really cheap, not about the MIDI effect but more about the theme.

    Well done anyway, it's a nice and original short!

  13. One of the best short films I've seen done with Blender. The story draws you in. It's funny as heck. You really care for the main character and the animation is superb. There could have been more interesting use of colour / lighting and as people have pointed out the voice / foley could have been better, but the rest was so good that I didn't notice when I was watching. The timing of the editing and direction was beautifully spot on.

    Awesome work and a beautiful showcase for FreeStyle!

  14. I like it - quality is very good, story too. Keep it up! :)
    @humpnotme: Maybe life after death is better than life before death?

  15. I've enjoyed it very much and I'm surprised that it only took you "6 months over free time" impressive! Also impressive is the freestyle rendering choice, I know that it has been in a very rough development stage until recently.
    Great short movie!

  16. just caught this and loving it. story was charming, just missing the ending splat. yay for suicide! stupid light has to go and ruin everything.

  17. @ erik90mx

    This is way more fluid than a Crash, I mean Flash animation. Blender for (pseudo) 2D, now that's something I've always wanted to learn. Please, Chris, a tutorial!

  18. Nice animation and story. However, I only have two critique:

    a) the laughing sound. i'm sure many people already commented on this. but to tell the truth (to you and everyone else), you need a sound engineer on this. recording in a studio is 50% of the process, and it's only good for one thing - keeping noise out. To make the sound natural, you really need a good audio editor, and know what you are doing (read: read a lot of book on audio, and read magazines on recording such as computer music, etc).

    an unprocessed studio recording won't sound natural - it sounded like it recorded in a studio. sadly, i don't know much about this (yet), i just know it the hard way (rented a studio). next time, must keep space cash for audio engineer too.

    b) the texture / movie cut. i can't nail it down, but maybe texture problem can solve it. After he look at the root, I though that the animation focus on the root, and will show that it gave way from the land. but after the mobile landed, I only realize I'm looking at the rock & water. Maybe my fault. Just to let you know.

    BTW, a standing ovation on the sound effect and handling of the frequent light scene. It really worked.

  19. The Masked Lurker on

    fantastic animation! very professional editing, timing and the concept is great... the one thing that I think you can improve on this is the rendering. I know you wanted to give it a toon rendering but to be honest I think it could have been done better.

    Please keep in mind that I only mention this because you obviously have the skill and I think this could be a part of a very successful reel, even salable if that one thing were fixed

  20. Great Story and idea. Great scale and dramatic affect. Music is okay, minimalism of soundtrack, dialogue, etc. Liked the whole thing. But why washed out toon? Did you try it in regular lighting? it did have a forlorney color scheme. I guess its good at that, might say, Genius!

  21. Brilliant, I think the very minor faults were insignificant. I would have been very proud to have made this, unfortunately I didn't.

    Dick

  22. It is fantastic! Great animation, timing storytelling.
    I actually think that the laugh at the end works quite well, being a little bit crazy.
    Congratulations!

    And nice to see such a successful application of Freestyle also :-)

  23. Dillbobaggins on

    One of the best not only blender films... But animated films i have ever seen great job!
    The only thing in this film was the laugh at the end. A little loud and a little distorted. But with as good as everything else is that detail is so minor it really doesnt make a difference!

    Once again congrats and keep up the great work!

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