3DAmi has had another successful summer studio where they introduced teens to Blender. I think the productions this year were terrific - enjoy watching them!
Premiere intro
Tom Haines writes:
For the uninitiated, 3Dami is an event where teams of ~9 students, 14-18 year olds, make short 3D animated films in just seven days. After our first multi-site event in 2015, this year’s 3Dami was a smaller affair, run in London only and without free accommodation. But thanks to UCL it was still free, with lunch paid for, and we paid for transport where possible. CG Cookie also supported the event by providing free tutorials for all of our young animators. Despite the financial setback the event itself was better than last year, as we resolved the last few problems and ran almost entirely without issue. The three big changes were:
- Success when creating stories on the first day by getting students to describe their one minute film ideas… out loud in one minute. It’s a little unfair, as you could easily spend ten describing a single shot, but this really forced the students to focus on the important details, and create better films.
- In past years we let the students vote for a producer, and it’s been a regular disaster. Funnily enough, 14-18 year olds don’t know who in their team, if anyone, can whip them into shape. This year we put a member of staff in charge of each team, as the ‘executive producer’, and then had them offer the job of ‘producer’ to whichever student they thought was best suited. Students still voted for their director - that mostly works!
- We put the pedal to the floor with Cycles. Last year we had, for the first time, a massive render farm with 2000 nodes, but we were cautious, holding the students back as we weren’t sure exactly how much power we had. This year we went nuts. One of the teams had a typical render time of 2.5 hours per frame for their film! (Can you guess which one!?)
I think my biggest disappointment now is that all the scripts seem to involve animals in comical situations. We need some action! Some science fiction! Something less cute and fluffy! It’s a minor thing I know… We also had a great trip to DNeg, where until recently one of our alumni was working.So, here are the three films made by the students followed by the premiere:
Life ant death
Under the weather
Flora
This was our 5th year - it’s a pleasant surprise we have lasted that long! Our main problem, as always, is finding the cash/resources to run. We would love to talk to people about finding the necessary resources, as well as running more events outside the UK. We’ve built up a book’s worth of lessons learned, which we are happy to share with anyone else crazy enough to attempt something similar.
Both Pete and I will be at this year's Blender conference if anyone wants to chat. We can also be found on twitter as @3Dami, and the website is 3dami.org.
