Adam Baum Fundraising Campaign
David Lindsley is looking to raise $9500 on Kickstarter to produce a pilot episode of his Adam Baum series.
David writes:Adam Baum is 100% Blender. I used Blender’s built-in motion tracker for the face and hand capture – and the whole thing was rendered using two dedicated render machines using Blender Internal. And lastly, I used the Blender VSE to lay out all the clips, music, and sounds to then create the final video.
If all goes well with the Kickstarter fund-raising, then I plan to enlist the help of several Blender artists out there to push the envelope and really show just what Blender is capable of! I know that I have seen many examples of that right there on BlenderNation! I’ll also need some talented writers and storyboard artists.
Link
very impressive !!!
So help fund!
very interesting.
Good luck, David!
Animation style: a reference to the ancient masters?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lMsmGb6RpPQd#t=2m41s
Very cool , I do like it :) here at this point I would love to offer most of my spaceships , which can be found under sender ,some at Turbosquid and some in Blenderswap . Way to go Adam Baum !
Thanks! That will be awesome! This is just the exact spirit of comradery and helpfulness that makes the Blender community so great!
Very cute, and good luck!
THe idea is very good, but the animation is very poor, the gestures very rough and I dont get why they try to use mocap in this so easy aniamtion.. I think it was counterproductive
Forgot to mention the ugly the character is.. a very lack of appealing.. anyway… one other blender “project”
“the ugly the character is.. a very lack of appealing.”
Ok, based upon your opinion any great tv series ever made could never get pass from the P I L O T E P I S O D E!
I’m afraid your logic is flawed … and the argument slightly crass. I also found the main character nauseating … I wanted to punch him …. perhaps a little further character development wouldn’t go amiss. That said, I like the rest of it !!!
no dude, I’m just saying the character is very ugly, with very weird phonemas and lipsync and a very strange mix of mocap and keyframing… and lots of people here saying it’s amazing!, very cute and very impressive… every other pilot episode has a final character design… so, based upon YOUR opinion, it doens’t matter the rough character concept? mmm…. anyway…. good luck to these guys and I hope they find good artist to help them with all the mistakes they have made… cheers!!!
Thanks for your input! Hoping to reach our goal soon! And as “Adam” says in the video pitch, we’re looking for “some talented animators”. Uh, probably won’t be contacting Gabby, though!
please dont!!! hahahaha… anyway.. take advantage of the critics! dont get mad!!! be humble!!! ;)
I don’t know David… Some parts of this the quality looks fine, but others… Not too keen on the idea of “Lots of funny references to your favorite classic and modern sci-fi shows!” either… People have put a lot of time into these classic shows to make them great pieces of entertainment. Making loads of references to things that people love might not be the best way to tell a story… Tell your own story…
I hate to be a negative Nigel, but I think this needs more work before taking it to investors. You should be going out the gates with a strong story, but what you’ve got is a generic space battle and a lacklustre joke about a space petrol station…
The best of luck to you with this and I hope you get the money you need, but I think that’ll be a very steep mountain to climb with what you’ve got to show… I’m sure you’re aware of this project:
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1331941187/the-tube-open-movie?ref=category
offering things back to the community, as well as personal treats. I’m not sure if I’d want to pay $1,000 for a neck tie of Adam Baum straining with an astro-turd…
Actually the reward for the pledge you are referring to is for an Associate Producer status. The tie was just a bonus gift – You don’t have to have the tie if you don’t want it! A lot of the Kickstarter projects have little more than a few drawings and a concept. I think I have a huge head start by actually having _some_ animation, albeit klutzy. But that is what the fund-raising is all about – to get some help with the stories and animation. This could be a very fun cartoon – never taking itself too serious!
I hope it goes well David, I just wanted to offer some constructive criticism incase the campaign didn’t come through, just some thoughts for areas of improvement. I’m not a fan of just saying “Yeay, that’s great!” when I don’t think it is. We don’t learn by not failing and if we don’t know why we fail we never learn.
Saying that, I hope you get the funding you need and make a great show.
My take. I think this is comparable to cartoons shown in Nickelodeon and Cartoon Network. Just needs some polish with regards to dialogue being out of sync with the mouth animation.
My major animation complaint is the eyes flickering with head gestures.
I hope you get the funding. Like AlyasPogi said, the material is definitely comparable to something you’d see on Cartoon Network.
You should post this on kickstarter.com, good way to get funding from folks who are serious about seeing your work make it. Good luck.
Graffiti master -artigliphics
Eh, did you actually *read* this post? ;-)
lol
can I be your script writer? :D
Hey there. I’m a 2d artist mostly and very busy but I can volunteer a few hours a week to storyboard if needed. omnidzyne on googletalk
Thanks! Exactly what I need! Welcome aboard!
Great!
I read all the comments and I’m a bit sad.
You’ve done an awesome job. If you stick with this, whether you get funding or not, it’ll work out. Great rendering clarity, texturing looks good, hair is awesome, eyes, not shabby. Amazing lighting for internal.
There is a little oddness with the animation, if I gotta nitpick. I have 3 issues:
1 There is a bit of jerkiness to some of the movements– which isn’t a big deal. I would just focus on making larger, smoother, more sweeping movements.
To show what I mean here’s a scene from How to Train Your Dragon. I hope that’s okay to link on here.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yD59uANbTB0
— The animation here takes longer, is smoother, and has more deliberate movements. It looks really nice. I wonder if having an army of animators and millions of dollars has anything to do with that. Their frames per second might be different than what you chose, too, which allows for a smoother look.
2 The hands don’t always return to a natural rest position. They stay up in the air. Kind of reminds me of a puppet. Lol.
3 At a few times the planted foot that should remain stationary slides forward. (1:55 and 4:30). I don’t know what rig you’re using, but hopefully it’s an FK/IK system. The riggify rig has a button “snap FK to IK” and it’ll keep the planted FK bones in the IK position where they should be even as the character moves.
These aren’t huge issues and the more you notice/correct now the better off you’ll end up.
As far as non-animation, I have 3 main suggestions:
Camera: Personally, I like a little more camera movement. I think it looks nice. But it’s hard to say whether that’ll make something better or not. Sometimes stuff like this gets confusing since everything is so subjective. I never thought I’d say this, but what I like about math. “YOU ARE WRONG. I AM RIGHT. THIS IS WHY.”
Cycles: I hope you make the jump. Blender internal, at least for me, was impossible to make look good with lighting (you really have done an amazing job with that). I wasted a lot of time trying to tweak lighting changes and whatnot. Downside is you’ll need some serious rendering machines. If you get funding then consider doing an sli gtx580 setup. If you build your own you could get one for ~$2@4b105ef8a4f0188d4179647fbfd6e7cb:disqus 00ish. Even so, depending on your time limitation and animator/renderer ratio, you might need a few. Also, heat from those things will get high so make sure you got a cooling system (either multiple fans and/or thermal).
Story: I watched Rugrats as a kid and loved it. They were normal kids who did normal kid things– but not in their mind. A lot like this. I’d brainstorm with this kid having a brother/sister/school playmates/neighbors/daycare. Or maybe he doesn’t. And that could be in the story. I liked how you incorporated real life aspects into his little fantasy. It could’ve been weaved into the fantasy more seamless, like a radio reception on his watch “dinner” or something. Or a monster yelling in his mom’s voice, as creepy as that seems. Also, you could’ve made the monster yell “I’m going to turn you into spaghetti” while fighting. Then have the kid make a scared face when he’s told what’s for dinner.
But about why I’m sad– there doesn’t seem as positive of a reaction as I expected. Not sure why. He’s not asking for a ton of money and the amount of work he’s done is extraordinary. Just because there’s some small issues doesn’t mean that 99% of it is awesome. This is all a pre rough draft. Everything we see in movies and on TV has huge amounts of resources behind it. This guy doesn’t so keep all that in mind.
Keep at it and hell yeah I’ll throw in $100. It’s cool to see this kind of stuff. Hopefully it all works out.
I hope you didn’t mind me nitpicking it. Lemme know if you’d like reference tutorials or help. At you’re level there’ll become too much to do and not enough time to do it by yourself. I know when I’m working on my stuff I get so used to seeing it I gloss over my mistakes. I’m still pretty awful, but the practice and the perfect and the going together has something to do with each other. Or something like that.
Anyway, nice job.
Awesome comment!!! I agree with everything you said! And THANK YOU for donating on Kickstarter!
As much as I like the idea of kickstarter, I do not want to pledge for any project on that service because project creation is limited to US citizens (and it has been like that for years, as if the owners didn’t care about the rest of the world). I know it’s a restriction from using amazon payments, but after some years, something should be done about it (if not from the amazon side, from the kickstarter side, which might involve changing payment providers). If I do not have this reciprocity (e.g. I can pay but I do not have the right to ask for money if I needed so), why should I pay for anything?
Note that I might be sounding like a troll. It’s not my intention. I would definitely pay some money for such a project if it was on a website open for project creation to non-US residents (e.g. indiegogo).
Note also that all the above are my personal views, and I perfectly accept people having diverging opinions from mine.
I know I’m one of the few, but I don’t like the idea of Kickstarter or other crowdfunding as I think it crimps creativity and craft (in addition to creating the false idea that you’re actually investing). With regard to the actual project (animation, etc), I think you could probably take what you have, polish up the idea a bit, and still pitch it to those important people as it is. It looks fun with lots of potential.
Funding creative people with money and tools crimps creativity? Now that’s some creative thinking. If that’s true then taking money away must foster creativity.
And as far as investing: If there is an investor who genuinely thinks kickstarter is an investing website then they haven’t done a drop of research– which makes them a lousy investor. I’m not sure what any of that has to do with this David’s project either way.
You know they did tests comparing all the latest fancy toys, lego etc against a cardboard box with kids to find out which offered them them most creativity, and was played with the most.
The box won outright because it was only limited by a kids imagination……good luck with taking this forward….
Maybe it should Adam Baum and his box, and each episode should show a different thing, Castle, Den, Spaceship, Bus?
I see someone has been using Blenderguru’s asteroid tutorial :p
I think the comments have pretty much covered the animation aspect. So I’ll tackle something different. The sound quality. You definitely need better recording equipment, you can hear the static/background noise during the speech. Then it cuts out. This is very irritating and an immediate sign of an amateur production. Also the sound effects are very repetitive. But I applaud your efforts, it’s obvious a lot of work has gone into this!
Interesting
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