Convoy Short Film
By Rajiv Jayant.
Rajiv writes:A short Film I just completed, done completely on Blender 2.63.
Blender 2.63 Modelling, Texturing, Lighting, Rigging, Sound, Video Editing and Animation
Gimp for Image Editing
The sound is lowered during the conversation scenes as is necessary.
Hope you enjoy, please feel free to comment
The balance between the realistic models & props; and toon shading seems good. Would have loved to hear dialogues but it is good as it is. In terms of animation there is a lot more to do.. You need to work on the timings of actions. The editing is good with simple cuts and no fancy camera movement.
Good effort. keep going at it and you’ll get better. :)
Great job. That took a lot of work. I wonder how long it took you considering all the detail and scenes.
I really like the toon shader but character animation would be 10 times better if it were faster. Work on them and your piece will greatly benefit from it.
amazing! what render did you use?
Looks like “Waltz with Bashir” :-)
I echo what everyone else is saying. Render is cool – very anime feeling. Could use a few touches to add a nice ‘punch’. Clean up the animation is a big one. Feel very slow like something is stuck. Also a bit of a sound score and added sounds. People are pulled into a story by the audio.
Great “animated-on-twos” feel.
Please find a collaborator for voices, music and sound effects! Your visuals are pretty close to commercial-level limited animation (having also looked at the action scenes in Versus), it’s a shame that the rest of the package lags so far behind. It would also probably help the timing and editing fall into place, which I think is more important than more advanced character animation.
I like the overall look of it. The only things that bother me are the animation and voices (or lack thereof).
on topic:
pretty sweet. love the shader. we need more NPR stuff.
off topic:
not to hijack the post or anything, but I don’t know where else to ask about stuff I saw on blendernation. Perhaps there should be a freenode IRC channel or something for #blenderNation.
Okay, I am interested in making a short animation and was looking for an example + blend file I saw a while ago. it was short and simple if I recall correctly.
a simple character was running though the woods. he the jumped over a bush. it wasn’t high detail or anything fancy. just a couple animations and a few models.
anyone know what I’m talking about and where I can find it again? thanks.
This?
http://www.blendswap.com/blends/characters/base-mesh-with-simple-rig-and-animation/
YES! thank you very much kind sir!
I really liked the look.
Animation needs a lot of work. So does the camera blocking.
The conversation could have been so much more interesting with better camera work, animation(some acting with expressions), and of course the voice acting. It felt like playing a really old game, and not in a good way.
Great work on the visual style, it works really well.
The animations are just like your average anime. Perhaps that’s what he tried to imitate? :)
That said it still needs a lot of work.
Yeah :D Not to be mean to the person who did this, good job indeed (I have never even finished anything in my life so I can’t say anything), but my comment was mostly me trying to diss the animation of animes. 3 frames per second, repeting those same 3 frames for a minute while 90% of the image is static the entire scene.
And people wonder why I hate anime…
lol, I misunderstood you. :D
Exactly.
At 1:08 it looks like one is reading the other’s subtitle. (To me anyway.)
Like the visual style and military :D looks amazing…
Now I want to make my own short animation with my own short story with Blender :P
Looking forward for your story!
No voice, terrible animation, pretty much just stills. Sorry this does not work for me.
It’s other aesthetic, man. Look at more references. I’m sure you’ll understand…
I tried to do some 2D animation and all I got up to was doing the master shots and blocking the animation. If this guy had a sub to tween the animation he could’ve done a lot more, but for one guy to do this, thats still pretty friggin amazing.
to be continued? Please DON’T !
Overall pretty awesome Anime’ style, my main critique was the military attack/extraction plan didn’t sound realistic at all, too hollywood , if you know what i mean. Great looking in my opinion, like saturday morning cartoons!
I like the look and the fact that it feel like a late 80’s anime.
Was hoping that the mission was going to get shown, but I guess it going to be the next short.
Good job on completing you idea.Your still ahead of the pack of folks who haven’t finished their projects.
http://rylanwright.blogspot.com/
Hey everyone, Thanks for the comments good or bad, I really appreciate it.
I just want to clarify a few things:
1. The Anime style was chosen purposely in a certain way to imitate anime done for t.v format(the 24/30 minute ones that air weekly) not the much higher quality original video animation(OVA) and film quality(Akira, Ghost in the Shell). If I panned the camera using translation in the compositor it is because this is how they do it in the budget anime.
2. I did this all by myself-it was impossible to do industry quality voice acting. Subtitles would have to suffice-there was no other option.
3. My computer is the same one I used for the “VERSUS” short, it is four years old and if I render @24fps and 1440X1080 it sounds like an old robot gurgling ready to kick the bucket. In other words the machine is outdated, has no graphics card(on-board), 2GB RAM. More importantly the inadequacies of the hardware have forced me to use techniques to bypass the handicaps imposed. For e.g. each .blend file that goes into the final animation WILL NOT cross the 20mb mark and I use the compositor and the VSE extensively to compensate.
4. Yes I know the “conversation” shots are boring and don’t do much but I had to learn how to do them. Yes in hindsight I should have used more upper body shots, hand gestures and head movements.
5. The lagging animation handicap is mainly because of low spec harware, how I wish I could press the “ANIMATE” button and sit back. Unfortunately in my case the computer might conk out.
6. Finally I DON’T do this full time, I currently work an 8 hour job(I am a mechanical engineer).
Thanks sincerely for the comments most people have been very open minded and helpful..
It’s good as an homage to the style of weeklys, one thing to add could be possibly to include one single epic animation sequence at a pivotal moment in the story, where everything is drawn “on-the-ones” with much richer colors and details. The insider joke being, “so THAT’S where all the ink and missing frames were hiding out!!” That’s how the production schedule is for many weekly serial animes… all the work goes into perfecting the pivotal episodes that count, leaving the rest in a half-finished state. Anime from the 1970s was notorious for those extreme opposites in quality from episode to episode.
But there’s no real way to get that across in a short piece. Just talking as a silly animation-history geek here, not really any useful advice.
Love the style. The background detail is brilliant, I really like how everything is dirty and used looking. If you’re making another episode try not to have camera angles straight on to characters, but rather have them slightly off centre and at an angle.
Don’t know anything about military tactics but I sure hope we get to see what happens. If you asked for a little help on Blender Artists I’m sure you could find some people to record some dialogue for you. You would just need to write a short script.
I can’t believe all the negative comments! Blender users are better than that! I think you did a great job! Making all those models and rigging all of them couldn’t have been easy. Also, great job on the artistic style. :)
Everyone looks on their best conduct to me. There was no badmouthing in any of the critiques, and the only person who said that the entire thing wasn’t his style, was still civil about it. Everyone else who gave a critique included lots of positive advice and suggestions and congratulations.
I love the style. The only TWO things I would say are:
1) The flag and the people most of the time seem like they are slightly in slow motion, so perhaps speed this up.
2) When panning around the helicopters I felt that there was almost too much detail in the background which made the scene look quite flat.
All in all very good work, better than what I could do. I’m just trying to be constructive.
Keep up the good work.
This is excellent work; the imagery seems to be spot-on in terms of late-80s animated works. The lighting and positioning were, for the most part, correct.
However, there are a couple things:
* The establishing shots and the head nod seem to be moving in slow motion. Don’t be afraid of jerkiness in their motions in order to keep the speed of their actions up; as long as there’s more than three frames showing the action, and the action is realistically-timed, the brain is good at filling in the gaps.
* When two people talk to one another, usually, it’s best to use shots that include both actors in some capacity in order for the audience to assume the conversation is between them. Some examples would be an angled shot from a distance (excellent for establishing the scene), an over-the-shoulder shot (looking at the speaker), an angled three quarter shot of the non-speaking party, or an over-the-shoulder shot of the speaker, looking at the non-speaking party if they’re responding, such as a nod or a facial expression change.
* Something that would help the realism along would be to include other forms of deformation for the mouths; such as horizontal widening and shortening, as well as adjusting the shape between linear and rounded.