Au Soleil
A documentary style animation by Josh Wedlake, just a bit over sixteen minutes in length.
For the past four months I’ve been working on a short film using blender (with some AfterFX 2D animation on the side). The film focusses on my memories of cycling across “Eastern Europe”; if you’ve ever watched Chris Marker’s excellent “Sans Soleil” you’ll get the drift of where the narrative’s going!
I’m an architecture student so teaching myself character animation in my spare time was a pretty big challenge. The film uses a fairly wide array of visual styles throughout.
I dig it. More entertaining than most TV on these days! Brought me back to my month long hitch-hiking trip.
Thanks Tim I enjoyed this.
I enjoyed it also.
I believe you will get criticism based on the lack of drama and skill levels of the story and animation. What comes through though is mundanity and excitement of experience. There is a challenge here that should be a lesson to all our storytellers. Continuous excitement is boring.
Epic journey. Seems like travelling was the reward itself. (most of the destinations seemed to be disappointing).
I note that while people warned you about Romania it seems you had the most human contact there. Interesting.
Animation is a bit stiff, but I admit I wouldn’t do better myself.
This was a good documentary, congratulations. Only one remark – the cyrillic title has the letter “L” swapped with “P” and the letter “UH” is swapped with “B” :P
Very nice movie. Thanks for sharing your experience.
Great animation and very original way to present your memories.
One note, though:
I think there is a mistake of the Bulgarian translation of “Au Soleil” (if not intentional) in the titles.
You can correct this to:
“??? ????????”
Anyway, congratulations for your hard work!
(I think the messages doesn’t support Cyrillic letters
you can see the right spelling at the top of this site:
http://chitanka.info/lib/text/7748)
I was captivated the whole way through. I thoroughly enjoyed that.
I enjoyed it. I would have wished for a little louder narration at spots, but overall very nice.
Heck, at 16.5 minutes, this thing’s almost long enough for commercial breaks and a half hour time slot.
that was very touching it must have been so incredible
As my understanding of spoken english is not very good, I have not been able to follow everything, but I enjoyed the movie. Some interesting visual effects, and I loved the mood. 16 minutes is a real challenge, and you did it. Congratulations !
Very nice. Anything I could criticize would definitely not be major – the only real thing is the character animation, but the only perfect CG character animation I’ve seen is that of Pixar, so let’s just say I have excessive standards, and leave it at my fault.
Great job overall. I’ll come back and watch with sound on at a later time.
I enjoyed it. Only one critique. It was sometimes difficult to hear your voice due to too loud background sounds.
Although the animation wasn’t perfect, I liked the style. Well done!
It reminded me of my cycling trip last summer. I have also thought of going to Istanbul :)
In some parts, the music became to loud and it was hard to understand the narrator.
I must admit that the documentary is superb in its concept. I was entertained.
I’ll try to summarize my relevation here. I liked the way it was animated: it had a surreal quality to it and I can imagine how days turn into a blur of strange fading moments in memory. The few photos became so much more powerful when combined with the blurry animation.
Thank you for taking the time.
This movie is one of the coolest things I saw here so far! It has very nice artistic style and something to say and maybe learn! Thanks and good luck on roads and in the next productions! ;)
Around minute 11:30 is an incredibly moving segment. Near tears.
I really like the perspective on crossing the Danube (minute 13:20).
I am bothered by the long stretches of blank screen – I kept instinctively checking to make sure something wasn’t wrong with the video.
This was a really good production, and I will show it around.
Watched and enjoyed
Definitely a peace of art. I love especially the camera angles. The composition is ver good to.
As others pointed out the voice was sometimes not good to hear. The blank screens are a little disturbing to
especially at the end. The charactermodels and animation was good for all the cycling scenes, and the soccer scene was done great. What disturbs me most of the caracters was the hands from the guy in the train.
But the mood and artistic expression is so awsome that those flaws don´t even count.
Good Work!
The film really captivated me. Especially the beginning, when he talked about how driving a car is almost like watching a TV. I’ve noticed that effect in my own life.
In 1993 i did a solo bicycle ride from Munich to Berlin, it was wonderful, (shorter and easier than the ride these guys did) this film brought back some memories from that ride for me. I really enjoyed this. nicely done!
what a great story! truly a saga. Well done, well relayed. Loved your monotone monologue – i really felt the weight and tiredness of the journey. Welcome back too!
Excellent. You know, the format of the presentation – words with the images and the cuts was bang on. The simplicity in this case was not a detriment to the story – it enhanced it. Focused on the core.
Good work! Intriguing possibilities that Blender presents.
It remember me ” Ilha das Flores ” from the mood and narrative rythm… Very good use of blender, congrats.
I did not get why you had to cycle on the highway, must be very dangerous…
Side road hookers ftw!
No seriously, the documentary was really neat and it even featured my country, Romania :-)
hey thanks a lot for the credit and for this short meditative and cycling laps of time :) it’s very kind of you.
please let me know, if you have some time, about the modifications you did to improve it.