I have a LONG history with Blender - I wrote some of the earliest Blender tutorials, worked for Not a Number and helped run the crowdfunding campaign that open sourced Blender (the first one on the internet!). I founded BlenderNation in 2006 and have been editing it every single day since then ;-) I also run the Blender Artists forum and I'm Community Lead at n8n.
Incredible. Some scenes are really gorgeous. congrats, very proud to be a blender user. sadly my gf didn’t like it because of the ending :( but i thought it was great
Good job guys! it’s a masterpiece! I’ve seen it in 2k surround and it is just fantastic. My eyes were glued to my screen for the full 14 minutes and 48 seconds.
I wish you all the best and I hope to see you all soon on a new Blender project!
Seems like servers are already overloaded. :-O I’m just so keen to see it today, that I stay in our office till it is safely on my disk. But it still displays like 2 hours remaining and it seems to slowing down!!! :-(
Edit: Yeah… another server is much quicker! The Div-X one with the heaviest version is probably too far from me. I feel that I shouldn’t make no compromise and insist to enjoy it in the best quality. ;)
Congratulations and thank you for this movie. I didn’t follow its development in the last months, it became better than I expected.
It has some really great pictures, animations, effects and a very sweet lady in it :)
Impresionante movie ! he notado que han integrado al personaje Emo de Elephant Dreams
-Awesome movie!
I noticed that they have integrated the character Emo, Elephant Dreams
Wow, I’m so excited! I thought this day was never going to arrive but it has. Great job everyone. I have to say that the soundtrack is amazing. Great job again! ok, enough talk, i have to watch it again.
Wow, there’s so much to love about this. It’s truly epic, and in less than 15 minutes! Thank you for the non-cliched storyline. It was refreshing to be surprised. May many rewards come from this great work.
I realise they sponsored the project, although i dont not know to what extend. Cudos to them for doing so.
But, their version already has a 10 second intro showing the divx-logo to promote their involvement. There was absolutely no need to put the logo in the movie itself. To me this just ruins the whole experience.
If others dont see it that way, fine. But I will just wait for the production-png-files to become available and make my own h264-version (without a logo).
My equipment (21′ lcd screen, big audio-technica headphones) is no good for this greatness, must borrow a whole cinema room just for this awesomeness and watch it thousand times and then play Big Buck Bunny over a thousand too and then Elephants Dream also thousand times and… and…
where pendrive? TV… must brann.. dmag..e…. t oo. aw…vvesom… krn..el. pa… n….iii…iii…ii….i……… …
That was freakin beautiful! Loved the story, the execution,the music, the whole package. Congratulations to the team! It’s biggest success imho is that it’s a gorgeous MOVIE far from the application(s) or the servers and techniques used to bring this to life. I’m glad & proud to be a part of this community! Can’t wait for my DVDs now! ;)
Clap…clap…clap…clap… Bravo! Such powa…
Greetings and hugs to the team and BF from Greece!
awesome story and some very innovative narrative achievements. great that it is a movie that could never have been done by an american studio. as others have said, it feels epic for being only fifteen minutes long and the ability to communicate so much information and depth of feeling in such a small amount of time – such economy of expression – is really a significant achievement to be proud of!
***
but i’ll be the dick and point out some pretty glaring flaws that actually took away from my enjoyment:
– hair interpenetration with collar in first close shot on sintel… pretty glaring and painful to see especially so early on. imo, this is a “showstopping bug”. the quality of things like rendering and animation can vary depending on budget but to have a glaring *error*… ouch. this should be fixed in future iterations of sintel… even if by the community if need be.
– water and fire are particularly poorly done. was hoping to see some of the very cool fluid simulation that blender has incorporated… but instead, we get particles and what appears to be a displaced poly plane with a texture that’s waaaaaaaay too high frequency for that small bit of water. like she was carrying an ocean in that bowl.
– SPOILER – i think the intent of the end is to reveal that sintel has grown old and that more time has passed than she realizes – that’s why she makes the errors that she does. but because we show her as young to the audience for the entirety of the picture and then show her AGING in the dragon’s blood, it is not clear… some people interpret this as being some kind of “magical aging”. it is a cheat on the audience because it’s not clear to us why she was being portrayed as young even though she became old.
this could have been solved by having the non flashback sintel be shown in silhouettes and shadows or hooded or something. and then we only really get a good glimpse of her (and probably she for herself) when the blood pools up around her.
also, another person that i saw this with didn’t actually understand that she became or was older… basically the only thing that changes is her hair color… it would have been better if the age was apparent and clear. more lines and wrinkles, more sunken facial features, etc.
i thought that the attempted effect of conveying that much in the blood reflection was really cool but it cheated the audience before and was not clear during and after. could have used some work.
– it’s not really clear why she’s being attacked and why it doesn’t strike HER as surprising or questionable that she is being attacked. she’d ask “why?” wouldn’t she? just a few lines of dialog here would have sold this encounter as something more than “a bit of action”.
– it doesn’t make sense that sintel passes out after the encounter with the guy at beginning. she is uninjured and it plays as a “movie faint”. it would have been a simple matter to give her a severe whack to the head during the fight to explain it. also, the attacker is not blind but he charges heedlessly even though she’s heading for the spear so that’s a weakness that could have been addressed in combat choreography.
– unnecessary shot of old man’s hut… again, can cause confusion. the only person around here in this desolate area is her attacker. it seems most logical even to the audience (if they were not so well programmed by other fiction conventions) that the cabin being shown is the attackers! a simpler, clearer way to introduce the shaman is to simply have a figure come over her unconscious form and then cut.
– final render quality leaves something to be desired… silhouettes and edges feel a bit too sharp and “unmarried” to the environment. something that sticks out is the tail of the big dragon behind sintel just before it swipes her. some of the subsurfacescattering seems to be creating almost an “inkline” effect. actually, maybe this looks fine transferred to film but as a direct digital movie, the outlines of objects have a cg, brittle and artificial quality… maybe a run through a film grain filter or something would help?
– animation and modeling are ok… sintel falls into the uncanny valley and just demonstrates how much harder it is to do humans than furry critters. some of the animation feels very… clunky and…. “keyframey” in a bad way like it was just barely finessed. this is not a deal breaker but yah, animation struck me as not being the best i’ve seen from blender foundation.
***
overall the movie is something to be proud of for sure and blender institute deserves credit for trying to be so diverse in their subject matter.
imo, the movie that has the best polish in terms of look and animation and modeling quality is still Big Buck Bunny.
but i’m hoping that because of the nature of “open movies”, the community can pitch in help make a “special edition” with some bug fixing and refining.
@DimitrisC:
Yepz, the premiere last monday was really epic on such a big screen with very good 35mm projection.
Don’t think your PC screen can even get close to such an epic experience!
You made me tear up over a completely non-existant animal…congrats bastards, haha.
Great job though team, seriously, for the production time and the team size this is a truly quality work. Just next time, how about not making me feel so horrible at the end? I have to go drink a shot or two now.
SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER:
When the blood is pooring out of the dragon, she sees the scar, realizing that she just killed Scales, which grew up to a big adult dragon during her many years lasting journey.
The bady dragon in the cave is the baby of Scales.
Very moving! What was particularly impressive in the animation, was the impression of mass and density when the characters were jumping and moving! The textures were stunning as well as the lighting! The voice actors seemed to be emanating from the characters themselves! The facial rig on Sintel was very expressive.
So there are some things I found distracting that jin mostly covered above.
But hey! they had a limited amount of time, using new technology, and free/Open-Source tools. Not to mention most of the team was made up of hobbiest CGI artists.
All things considered they did an epic job and I can’t wait to see what happens next!!
Well done guys and gals, you’re my absolute heroes and an inspiration to me! CLAP CLAP CLAP CLAP!!!
Great job. blender2.5 rocks and I hope this short film will help the rise of this software over the (too much)COMMERCIAL solutions!
Great job you ve done guys. At first, durian should be a crazy action movie with ninja girafs and flying monkeys but your script is not so bad too ;)
Downloading now through torrent in full HD, woohoo, it’s going at 300kb /s. Can’t wait to watch it. I will seed for a while to take the load off the servers.
Really lovely, the Sintel character is convincing, touching, as well texturing, animation and lighting. The only thing very annoying IMHO is a LOT of aliasing in high frequency fractal bump very visible in several scenes and in the final cavern fight. I think the general quality of the image is too sharp, 2048 px is a big resolution where all is noticeable; a beveled box with bump is not acceptable as a stone, without true displacement.. A beautiful antialiasing in the whole image and in procedural textures was the key factor for the succes of RenderMan, would be nice to see a similar attention to aliasing problem in the future development of Blender render. Anyway Sintel is a big achievement, huge compliments to the team.
I have to shut up, i have really to shut the f.+* up! I am amazed!
You achieved something big! something beautiful! We can see that a great direction can transcend the “glitches” – modeling, animation, story – so for that, bravo!
But I have been really blew up by the quality of lighting, the “texture” of the image, the camera work, wow!
You have done something incredible with an ALPHA software, damn!
UUUhhhh! AAAhhhhh!
Sorry guys, seems like 50% ready!!
Too many errors in it!! Texturing, shading, lighting etc. and also weighting!!! In almost every shot!!
I am completely diappointed!!!
@jin
Actually came here to make all of those points. ( i had made a couple, such as the water and blood, earlier on IRC)
You reflected my feelings exactly.
The story was good, but your right, there were inconsistencies, and the animation, was rather… Rigid., there was none of the fluidity that BBB had, or even that Elephants dream had..
The aging, well that was just a little bit odd. More of a Concept error than animation fault tho.. It doesn’t work well as an idea, much less when converted to CG, in a short film.
Ahh well, :) sorry for moaning, its a great Short, but yer.. a bit ‘Unfinished’
Community….. GO
Awesome! Sure, there were quite a few things that stood out as bad, but there were also quite a few things that stood out as being awesome! The animations were especially good! Every bit of it was better than what I could have done, so I’m not one to complain.
I’ve only seen the YouTube 360p so far but I was impressed. Textures, lighting, animation all very good. I thought the hair and the wind on the clothes worked well. There was nothing I saw that was obviously sub-standard. A jump up again from BBB. Congratulations to everyone on the Sintel team.
My only concern is that perhaps it needed to be a few minutes longer to flesh out the story some but hey BI did very well in the time and with the funds available.
I think even non Blenderheads will be impressed with the artistic achievement.
Really weak. Honestly, what is Sintel after? Snatching a baby dragon from her mother? That’s the motivation? We as an audience might be shocked to learn that “oh, years had gone by”, but her? she somehow managed to forget about the fact that 10 years(I would imagine, at the very least) had gone by and that the baby dragon might now be all grown up? And she just happens to find the dragon she was looking for in the first cave she walks into? what’s the significance of the tree(its on the logo after all) and who was the guy who attacks Sintel? was he just lurking on the snow on the off chance that a lone girl-on-a-quest might be passing by? And what does Sintel do for all that matter? She’s just an expert warrior who can go mano a mano with a Dragon, who just lives as a squatter in a(gorgeus, no doubt about that) ruined city? There’s no conception of the movie’s world below the surface level.
I won’t go over the technical details. The movie pushed the boundaries of Blender production. Still, I believe both previous efforts where more successful in reaching their goals, though obviously those goals were less ambitious. Having said that, it bothers me that for all the technical accomplishment, they couldn’t come up with a decent script. This is video game cut scene level, not short film level.
Kudos to Ton and all the team, really, I appreciate the work, but in the end this movie will not be judged by the effort it took to make it, but by the final product itself, and I believe it is lacking.
Oh, my god!
Now, I am looking at every scene! (bevore it was one complete run!)
Errors, errors and more errors! I could write a book about!!
I have doubts about Blenders capabilities!
I thoroughly enjoyed it. Of course there are some flaws, but i couldn’t care less! It’s a magnificent achievement from the team, and a good showcase to the world what the open-source community can do.
Thanks are in order here. Free beer for any team member who’s willing to come to Eindhoven!
I’m amazed by how many people didn’t get the story/ending. Were you all paying any attention?
An incredible production, and a fantastic showcase of how far Blender has come. Yes, there are errors, but I don’t think that most people realize that large 3D studios hire entire teams of people whose only job is to hand paint errors out of each and every frame. The Blender Institute does not have those resources available, but they have still done an amazing job with that they had, which is honestly next to nothing as far as funding goes.
Don’t get discouraged by nitpicky people. You all have made something very important here.
Great Job, maybe isn’t perfect, but see what we have now in blender and what we do have, That’s incredible, Thank’s one more time Ton Roosendall and Team, for such a great work, go BLENDER!
certainly i have to agree, the story pretty much is the weakest point… but picking on the technical and visual quality of the movie…. kinda poor. just imagine guys, toy story 3 took about 3 years and a team of 300 PROFESSIONALS and what came out: the same story as in toy story 2 and apart from the spanish mode buzz nothing outstanding.
here on the other hand there was just a bunch of hobby 3d artists (damn gifted ones by the way), who created within only one year a short movie full of pictures with one beautiful composing. the camera and the cuts just work perfect, and all this only with blender in alpha state… i just can say, you got my full respect.
little mistakes, like hair penetrating the collar… i bet the guys noticed these things and they would have loved to correct it, but time is always too short, so they had to deal with it
Visuals were pretty good in general. Blender has definitely come a long way.
The story was kinda weak, but again, if the main purpose was to showcase Blender capabilities, I’d say mission accomplished.
this is pretty average to be honest. would have been great 10 years ago. the look is just not up to par by todays standards. the lighting is very fake looking. way to much ambient light and no contact shadows. the animation is subpar. Characters have hoses for arms that don’t bend right. After big buck bunny i was hoping for something much better. kind of a let down. big buck bunny was much better . the blender foundation still has trouble telling a good story. in all the movies so far there are some confusing moments that are unclear. the first movie with the two crazy dudes was just straight up strange. buck bunny was a lot better but still had flow issues. and this one sadly is a stead back. Why do these films in such a short amount of time? i would take the time to really develop the story and not try to do so much with the software. I totally agree with jin , a lot of valid points .
just offering some unbiased feedback to help you guys make better films. but if you compare this to even a pixar short from 1996 it falls a little flat. why not integrate pixie or an open source render man engine the blender render engine seems really dated looking. I’m dying to try blender on a personal project but I haven’t seen anything done at a high level yet. :(. Anyway I know you guys will get there just keep up you’ll get better and better. one day we may all be using blender :). but right now it just doesn’t seem up to speed.
I am currently downloading the video, but I have seen it through youtube. I’d say considering the time and financial constraints, as well as the number of volunteers working on the project (a feature film would employ hundreds of artists), plus the fact that they’re working on developing blender at the same time, I’d say the result is pretty awesome!
As for the story being the weak link, it’ll only be fair to say that the story was squished into an approximately 11 minute video and that of course, additional story details would have to be deleted. If only this was a full-length feature film and more budget, and more resources to work on the animation, this would be a truly epic film!
as someone said earlier, a movie stands or falls ON ITS OWN MERITS. the conditions of production or the budget does not and should not figure into the evaluation of the work itself.
and i say this as someone who has turned out less than perfect work himself because the budget/schedule allowed for nothing better.
it’s no good to make excuses.
it’s one of the first things that my jr. high school english teacher taught me – NEVER MAKE EXCUSES FOR YOUR WORK.
my less than perfect work was not LESS IMPERFECT because of the budget or schedule. the imperfection does NOT get MITIGATED by the conditions of production. why should it after all? in hollywood, whether your movie cost $10,000 or $100 million dollars, the audience pays the same price.
but it DOES mean that the artists are not culpable though. and i don’t see anyone jumping down their throats.
but the work is what it is. and it does nobody any favors to ignore issues that are present.
***
to be clear, i (and most here) are not saying sintel is bad by ANY means. there is indeed a lot to be proud of.
but we must also recognize that these flaws and errors people are calling out are not just in comparison to powerhouse juggernauts like PIXAR and DREAMWORKS and the criticisms are therefore somehow unjust or unfair. as i argue above, it is as fair as it is inevitable.
but even under its own premise, THIS IS A FALSE AND DISINGENUOUS tactic.
you can compare even to student films like http://www.oktapodi.com/index.html which did NOT have access to billions of dollars and trillions of artists and still be found lacking. (i’m sure you guys can find many other independent or student works also that have no “bugs” as sintel does)
heck, you can even compare it to Big Buck Bunny which despite having a small budget and team, did not suffer from such, at times, egregious issues as are present in Sintel.
so Sintel’s not perfect. i think it’s better to acknowledge that (and learn from it) than try to ignore it and pretend it is the pinnacle of CGI achievement.
no?
and again, to everyone involved, high five and rock on. it is indeed a tremendous accomplishment. be proud and sleep well, get some rest. and just take the valid criticisms and try to be better next time.
the story is just kinda weird. who is sintel I feel no connection to her there is no character development, why was she randomly attacked. that whole section was just added just to add an action sequence , thats taking a page out of a bad Hollywood film doing things just to add them in cause it seems “cool” the shaman guy who is that guy i really could care less about him too again no character development. I felt like sintel barely knew scales what they were friends for like 2 days and she is already devoted to the thing? not enough development of that relationship. the whole aging thing at the end was just weird why did it take her like 20 years to find a cave? why was she after a dragon who’s mother came to take her home? scales was never in danger what was her urgency to follow and save scales? the whole story is a bunch of random thoughts jammed together to make a story . I mean the old dude says your in dragon country, well seemed like there were a lot of dragons around where she lived was that not dragon country as well? none of these thing tie into each other. the random attack by an animal again just action for action sake. why not have a few more scene of her and scales develop that relationship more. have some time pass so we know they are great friends. i mean she never even changes her clothes how is the audience to know time has passed? . maybe on her journey she pulls out something that reminds her that scales needs her help so she continues on when she feels like quitting. maybe that thing she pulls out is valuable and the attacker guys sees her pull it out and we see him start to follow sintel. then we know why he is attacking her to get the valuable object. then she is hurt and colapses. the old man takes her in and time passes under his care she gets older at this point her and the old man become friends he gives her advice and continues on her journey years later. this would explain the massive amount of time that has passed. and we “care” a little bit more about the old man. then in the cave instead of the baby dragon just sleeping peacfully we see the baby dragon looking like its in some sort of trouble so sintel moves in. when she gets close she relises its not in trouble its just sleeping and that the big dragon is the mom so she tried to leave but makes some noise and the big dragon attacks she has no choice now but to defend herself. they fight and the dragon is killed buy a huge falling rock or something unintentional at this point she figures out its scales and feels horrible. then the audience isnt confused by why she is in the cave trying to take a sleeping baby and kill the mom for no reason . even if the big dragone was scales mom why would she kill her friends mom? to many holes in the story . like I said the blender foundation has a long way to go in story telling its an art form people study and perfect and I’m sure they will get there one day but they need to take the story part more seriously instead of trying to show off the software. that is if they want to make high quality films witch is what im assuming they want to do . the CG was ok it wasn’t great buy todays standards the animation was ok not great. I understand some poeple get offended when you critique their beloved blender foundation in anyway they are obviously not professional artist I get critiqued ever single day i dont get offended its how you improve if you were an awful singer and everyone told you you were great so they didn’t hurt your feelings you would never know you were terrible and you would never get better. grow up its a short animation and it has a ton of flaws just letting the blender foundation know so they can improve. they are all grown men and women they can handle it. if I release a short film I would love to hear all the bad things about it so my next one is better .
anyway i do think there are a couple scenes in there that looked great definitely a lot of upside and i know one day you will knock everyones socks off keep it up!
I just watched it for the second time. Awesome work! Everyone involved should be extremely proud of what they accomplished.
I loved the story, it felt like it had substance and avoided cliches. Great job with the editing, the pacing was awesome and the sound design brought it to an epic level.
The rain scene was just incredible! I’d have to say it was my favourite of all.
OMG! Well done Durian and a massive round of applause to Ton who managed to keep everything under control! Yes my fav scene was probably the rain one as well! Too bad it wasn’t done by the durian team :-( Anyway Awesome movie guys. Hopefully Channel 9 get back to me about airing it in Victoria!!
Just to add my 2 cents. Great film! You guy should be very proud of what you accomplished with the budget, size of team, and timeframe you had. Everything flowed very well, and the story was moving, although perhaps it went a little bit to much into cliche violence (that could just be opinion). Most of the scenes were very professional looking, I only noticed a few scenes where either the modeling or the animation was…’clunky’? (But you probably already noticed those, and so we should just stop with the negative comments, like when you released those renders of Sintel in the shamans hut and everybody got all criticizing-ish.)
Jan, I am amazed. You can tell that this is good music when you can’t remember the film having any after you watch it, because it’s so good it fits right it. You definitely made a big contribution to the team.
Overall, I must say that I liked the plotline of BBB better, just because it was funny. However, where this film really excelled was showing how Blender can be used for many different environments (I was thinking during the Quest section how someone had put those different environments in SIMPLY to show of what blender could do). And, of course, another bonus was all the contribution to Blender 2.5 that happened.
But you already know all that, so there’s no point in me telling you.
I do agree with most that you are saying here. Same boat. What I do think that the difference between BBB and Sintel is the fact that expectations and ambitions for the film were higher for Sintel than for BBB. This may or may not have affected the development of the film during the course of it’s development.
In fact in terms of animation and art, BBB is beautifully crafted. No argument there. Maybe some people can improve on the sintel movie once the blend files come in, after all, it’s open (I can’t because I’m just a software developer, and have no 3D skills whatsoever)!
I’d have to say, the work done by Team Argentina (correct me if I’m wrong here – if I recall there was also Team America – all volunteers working on different parts of the film) on the rain scene was pretty good!
OK. SBS has come back saying they would love to organize airing the entire open movie trilogy sometime in the near future. I’m waiting to hear back from channel 9 first to hear what they have to say :-) Heres hoping!
If they do, could you organize a post on blendernation, so all of us here in Australia can tell others when its on! They could get hold of the documentaries too, that would make an interesting watch!
It is great to see how much community input made its way into the film. It rocked.
Thanks to all of you Durian Artists and Programmers for your hard work and endless hours spent behind computer screens, and putting up with our endless criticisms and suggestions.
888 seconds of wow – I can’t stop watching it. Very proud of this film.
GREAT IDEA! A behind-the-scenes look into Sintel and the others in the ‘trilogy’ would be awesome to watch after seeing the movies. Let alone massive advertising for Blender! So far nothing from Ch.9 *sigh*. Oh well, I’ll keep you posted!
I don’t understand why everyone is talking about the budget as if it’s some paltry sum, as if these guys turned the movie around for pocket change in their garage. The article referenced on Blendernation just two posts before this one listed the budget at 400,000 euros. That is a ton of coin for a twelve minute film.
All other critiques aside, please don’t mention their budget as a constraint. There are plenty of studios that could turn around a 12 minute short for less than that.
And please, find somebody to write a decent story next time. Elephants Dream made no sense, Big Buck Bunny was decent, but predictable, and Sintel made almost no sense at all. And all three movies were about one person/animal being mean to somebody/something else.While I’d prefer a story about some sort of triumph or accomplishment, if you are going to insist on doing another tragedy do some research on some of the masters of tragedy like Shakespeare or Cormac McCarthy. They do it right.
Loved the technical side. Some of the animation was simply incredible. Most of the lighting was great, and most of the camera shots were well done. It truly showed off what is possible in Blender. The story, however, well, I have to think that the time constraint put a monumental strain on the plot, but still…..
Okay, it started in a good place, a cute girl, trekking in the cold and wind, nearly dies at the hands of an unknown attacker. Way to grab the attention. The shaman’s hut was way too easy to find, and it made no sense for an enemy of the gatekeeper (or whoever he was — it was never explained) to live right where he presumably patrolled. A better method of getting her to the hut would be for the shaman to find her, collapsed and exhausted in the snow, then carrying her inside. The flashback ensues.
Okay, dragons are apparently rather common because Scales runs free through the town with one without comment. Scales recovers from her injury and flies after some birds. Momma dragon (I’m assuming it isn’t some sort of dragon pedophile) takes her.
Plot weakness #1: in a quest type story, there must be a compelling reason to go on a quest, but there was no compelling reason for Sintel to go after her. My first thought was that momma dragon had been hanging around in case her offspring showed up. What was Sintell thinking, that she had first rights to a dragon who was eventually going to feed on cows, deer and maybe people? Sintel might want to make sure that she was okay, or to visit her later, but to steal her back? Doesn’t make sense.
Sintel goes on a quest to find her. It takes who-knows-how-long, but apparently years.
Plot weakness #2: Sintel is wearing the same clothes and looks the same, with the same haircut, and so there is no indication that much time has passed.
Plot weakness #3: Sintel expects Scales to look the same after so long, but if dragons are common enough to be hopping through a market, then surely she would have realized that Scales would be a BIG girl now, not an infant.
Plot weakness #4: Sintel grew older after she killed Scales. Why? Where in this short did we have a hint that magic was in the world? What was the meaning of that? All it was, IMO, was another way of making the plot even more of a downer.
Plot weakness #5: I didn’t like Sintel very much at the end. She was much more of a destructive fool than a heroine. She even left the baby dragon behind after she killed her mother.
Plot weakness #6: Where is the theme? What was proven? What was demonstrated? What did we learn? We learned that teenage girls aren’t to be trusted to raise dragons. We learned that some shamans offer soup instead of sage advice. If the comment about her not being able to see properly and the line about the blade having shed innocent blood were supposed to be warnings or foreshadowing, it was too vague to matter.
Ultimately, a story is designed to lead the viewer or reader to a certain form of satisfaction. A love story is supposed to make us feel happy that two lovers who were made for each other made that connection. A quest is supposed to leave us satisfied that he quest was completed satisfactorily. A revenge story is supposed to make us feel better that the villain got his. How could anybody get the warm fuzzies from this? Would a mother or father bring their kids to watch the supposed heroine skewer her best friend? Ah…. No; the kids would be disturbed for weeks. This ending makes as much sense as having the “Toy Story” characters end up compacted in a trash compactor and buried in a dump.
A few suggestions:
First, make sure Sintel gets a better motivation for going after Scales. When momma dragon snatched her out of the air, Scales was kind of waving goodbye. If Scales was squirming frantically to get away, I could see, possibly, Sintel going after Scales to rescue her.
If the plot demands a long passage of time, then make the passage of time more apparent. The magical aging, sprung on us as an afterthought in the end, adds nothing to the plot and only distracts. Sintel can grow a little. She can become an older teenager in some epic rescue-a-dragon clothes. There might be a scene where she learns how to fight.
Or, Sintel might just not take very long to find the land of the dragons. Why not? She can simply ask where they are or read a book. This mystery of where dragons live would almost surely be about as mysterious as discovering where the Eskimos live, or where lions roam.
She barely survives a battle with a bandit, not a gatekeeper. A shaman finds her, or she staggers to a hut.
Forget about mentioning that the spear has a bad past unless that’s going to be a factor, but logically, the shaman should give her some sort of wisdom instead of just being a sounding board for a flashback.
Sintel encounters the dragons. She either sees that Scales is happy and watches her and some of her friends soar in the mountain skies, and walk away, sadder but wiser, and happy for Scales,
or, she meets Scales, who is caught halfway between returning to Sintel or staying with her mother, and Sintel, wisely, lets her go,
or, Sintel is walking away, out of the cave after she sees that Scales is being cared for. The mother awakens and is about to have a Sintel snack, but Scales intervenes and saves her. The mother lets her go in peace after Sintel makes it plain that Scales is hers.
Sintel is absolutely brilliant. The coloring and the lighting drew me in to its world. Happy and sad all at the same time. Music score was wonderful. It was a masterful piece of work. As someone said earlier, I am proud to be a Blenderhead. Congrats to the Durian team.
I think a lot of the negative commenter forget a few things.
A. These Open Projects are going on along with development of the software.
B. Production time is very short compared to something pumped out of Hollywood.
C. Team size is much smaller than that of studios.
D. Everyone on the Sintel busted their butts to bring us another great Open Source Movie.
Wow…..
Aside from some visual stuff that was a tad distracting overall not a bad movie considering that Blender 2.5 was being built during it’s production.
I will admit though, I was not a fan of the ending. Way to dramatic and depressing. Especially after watching BBB the story for this movie was a bit darker, I think. Maybe the Blender Foundation warned about this new direction, but still I was not prepared for that. I was thinking at the end, “Ok, where is the happy ending?”. Oh, well. Nice film and great work.
Thanks for the hard work Blender Foundation and for pushing Blender to be a better 3D application.
Exactly! You did a PRE sale. This means you bought the DVD before they had finished it! This movie was only released late last night (for us Aussies) and plans to start to manufacture the DVDs haven’t even began yet. Please be a little more patient mate!
Great milestone Blender development, and Blender developers!
SPOILER ALERT:
The ending left me all sad and stuff, but the short film overall left me pretty impressed! Of course, some folks are going to point out the few shortcomings technologically, but people should remember that this was an open-project made by a team gathered around the world with the single purpose of producing a film using Blender and other open-source software to promote and showcase the development and capabilities of the the latest milestone in Blender development.
Yes, it was also for the purpose of providing 15 minutes of an animated short story (and I commend the Durian crew on their good hard work!), but it was also for the greater purpose of showcasing the developments in Blender they made along the way and to share just some of the possibilities with the new Blender developments. Blender is still well into development, and has a good way to go in some areas, but open-movie projects like these show just how far we HAVE come with Blender. We’ve come a LONG way, baby!
Overall, I have no complaints. I mean, it was a free little film, and I got my money’s…well, attention’s worth! :)
Cool!
I’m very proud about the team and Blender!
Good job!
but next time you should publish a 1080p scaled version too.
by the way, my PS3 couldn’t play any published file, the same problem on my Samsung TV, so i had to watch the movie on my desktop PC. At the weekend I try other codecs to get the movie played on a “large” Screen and hi-fi system. ;-)
Last but not least, a big THANK YOU to all peoples, they maid this possible!
You had a great story to tell, and you told it beautifully. I’m proud to be a supporter of this movie. After repeat viewings, I really appreciate all the small details. Sintel’s reaction after smelling the durian fruit in the market, Proog’s easter egg appearance, …..
(SPOILER)
…, the ominous warning that the blade has shed much innocent blood, Sintel’s discovery of her age and wounds, the crystals in the cave. There’s much visual awesomeness to behold here, too. Not perfection, but well-made, and easily my favorite of all the Blender movies in terms of overall storytelling. And, the software keeps getting better thanks to these projects. Can’t wait for the next one, and you can count on my support :-)
Great. I’m not 3D artist, I need 3D only sometimes for simple web and app graphics. But after i watched Sintel, i had to order DVD. I don’t care, i will not be in titles. I just had to support this effort. Keep the good work guys. Thumbs up!
@Josh: Good luck getting it on to Ch 9…
It’s not really their thing, methinks.
(How do I know? I quit Ch 9 to come to Amsterdam and eventually to work on Sintel)
Hi Aardvark, I don’t really agree with your criticisms of the plot – I’m just going to take apart your comment a bit. :-)
“there must be a compelling reason to go on a quest, but there was no compelling reason for Sintel to go after her”
It’s really quite simple – as Sintel tells the shaman, she’s been alone for as long as she can remember, meaning she’s probably an orphan. As the intro scene shows us, she’s lived a simple scavenger life. And as the montage shows, for the first time, she has a true friend and finds genuine fulfillment in her life. Her friend being taken away from her is the most terrible thing that could possibly happen to her.
“Plot weakness #2: Sintel is wearing the same clothes and looks the same, with the same haircut, and so there is no indication that much time has passed”
The filmmakers made a deliberate choice to conceal Sintel’s aging. In fact, when you consider her confrontation with the beast during her travels, it’s noticeable that it leaves no injury or scar either. Sintel is “stuck in time” since her friend was taken away. She’s obsessed with reuniting with him, and the passing of the seasons is meaningless to her. As the viewers, we’re asked to see Sintel as she sees herself, and we discover her scars, injuries, and true age when she herself realizes them.
“Sintel expects Scales to look the same after so long, but if dragons are common enough to be hopping through a market, then surely she would have realized that Scales would be a BIG girl now, not an infant.”
Again, Sintel is stuck in time, she does not understand how many years have passed.
“Sintel grew older after she killed Scales. Why? Where in this short did we have a hint that magic was in the world?”
It’s not magic, it’s purely psychological. :-) See above. It’s a bold stylistic choice, but one that completely worked for me. You’re dealing with a person who has been obsessed for years with a seemingly futile quest — how could her psychology not reflect that? Portraying an obsessed or psychologically damaged character based on their own inner world, as opposed to the outer reality, is a common storytelling technique.
What’s the great takeaway? That’s up to you, but I see it as a movie that’s about personal growth and development. Sintel’s never had a true friend before, and she’s had to learn everything about friendship — shared joyful memories and experiences, letting go, loyalty, hurting someone you love, loss — through this chapter in her life. But the movie closes with a new opportunity for her, a new beginning, and a new life. It’s ultimately not a sad movie, but a hopeful one.
I agree with the critics sadly… :< Story and visual world level wouldbe awesome about ten years ago. This shows me the some problems. If I work with blender I need 12 month and 400 000 eur to make this kind of short? If I worl with blender I need more money or better artists? Or more time? After all it's not a good advertisement for blender I think. There is many artist who can produce higher quality with this kind of budget and they don't need so many months. And many of my friends noticed why did durian team wasted time and money on such agressive story? I am simply disappointed.
@Erik Moeller “The filmmakers made a deliberate choice to conceal Sintel’s aging.”
see, the thing is, i can tell how this originated – as a written concept. you see this convention all the time in written fiction (last one i can remember is neil stephenson’s anathem) where because you don’t see the characters, you assume certain things about them because all you see is their “thoughts”.
but then as the story progresses, you realizing that “hey, something seems a bit strange here” and then at the end, you realize, holy crap, “he’s a she” or “he’s actually an african american” or “he’s an alien” or “she’s actually old”.
this is fair in written form because you’re not actively lying to the audience. you’re withholding information but the author (as opposed to a character or the persona) is not lying.
here, the film makers are lying to the audience… it’s a cheat.
as i said above, i think the same kind of literature trick could have been used if you only saw sintel fully in the flashbacks and in “present day” kinda stuff, she was hidden or obscured or hooded or silhouetted or something… this would be the cinematic version of “withholding information” but still “playing by the rules”.
GREAT EXAMPLE – it would be as if in THE SIXTH SENSE, if you see bruce willis was TALKING to haley joel osment’s mom and his mom TALKING BACK in the middle of the movie but in the end, the film makers CHANGE IT so that she did not talk back to him. that’s the kind of cheat that is engaged in in sintel. you have room to maneuver in ambiguity and not fully disclosing. but presenting information one way and then contradicting it feels off.
i understood what they did. but many people didn’t. and those who didn’t have good reason not to have understood.
imo, the piece is weaker for violating the trust of the viewer when they didn’t have to (silhouette, etc).
There seem to be a number of authoritative and critical views here, but what I was wondering was this – how many on this thread have been involved personally (‘in the trenches’, so to speak) on a 15 minute full-up animation for a protracted period ?. I have no idea what the answer to that is, it may be many , it may be none, but possibly puts many of the critical comments into some sort of perspective. I know that I do work with Blender and Maya (and get paid for it from time to time), and small things take ages, and every thing is bespoke. It’s difficult to be sure. But…I’ve never done a 15 minute short, so while I can appreciate all the fine detail and nuance, I can only watch it as a punter, rather than as an armchair football manager. And I did, and rather enjoyed it.
Way to go Durian team! A fantastic effort by everyone involved. The story had me engaged for the full 14 minutes, which is no small feat ;)
I’m sure the durian team are well and truly aware of the technical shortcomings, so in my opinion there’s no point in rubbing salt in the wound. Instead let’s just appreciate what the film has done for blender and thank all those that were involved.
The amount of work that has gone into this film is incredible. The Blender foundation and the Sintel team are an extraordinary bunch of people, sinking huge amounts of effort into a project knowing there won’t be any huge financial rewards.
So I must ask all the “critics” here when they are going to produce something better? Or will you all be downloading the Sintel source files and spending months of your own time fixing all those “errors”?
@MartianR “There seem to be a number of authoritative and critical views here, but what I was wondering was this – how many on this thread have been involved personally (‘in the trenches’, so to speak) on a 15 minute full-up animation for a protracted period ?”
this kind of sentiment is very frequently a response to criticism but here’s the thing – it doesn’t matter.
this is on par with saying “hey, unless you can do better, shut up about your botched open heart surgery. take it and like it.” or “unless you can fix your own breaks, stop complaining about the squealing”.
if the only people who could have an opinion about a movie are people who can make movies themselves, hollywood certainly wouldn’t have a large enough audience to sustain itself.
and as i said before, it doesn’t matter if you understand the CONDITIONS OF PRODUCTION.
if i get a really poorly done heart operation, is that heart operation of a better quality somehow if i learn later that the surgeon has been forced to work 72hours straight? or am i still really pissed that i can’t feel my legs anymore?
THE WORK STANDS ALONE.
and personally, i work professionally in cg and i’ve been subject to all kinds of adverse conditions. but i’m also the first one to call things as they are. i gain nothing from making excuses or worse, being delusional. from time to time, we are all called upon to do stuff that is less than pixar level work. that’s how life works. but if you do it, you better be able to see it as the less than perfect work it is. NO EXCUSES.
the work stands alone. but i don’t beat myself up either because i DO know the conditions in which this came about. so working conditions excuses the worker (if the doc has been forced to work 72hours straight and messed up, they probably can’t hold him criminally liable). it doesn’t excuse the work (botched surgery that is botched regardless of the doc’s hardships).
Well first of all I would like to say well done and let the guys in the team know that at the end of watching Sintel (in an empty room) I shouted out “Great stuff” and applauded out loud. This is a great achievement.
To add some constructive criticism I would say that the fight scene at the start was my least favourite moment and I would have like to have seen more of a blizzard to add to the intensity. I also found the beautiful music being too rich for some of the scenes – proof maybe that both visuals and the music need to make a impression to make an impact.
Maybe the story would have been better if Scales was the runt of the litter and had been purged from the dragon’s nest, hence the reason it’s found wounded (the mother is intent on killing Scales).
and again, something that probably worked “more honestly” as written fiction than as it was engineered for the screen.
but even for the screen, i would say the difference is that it’s not the film maker that’s lying to the audience – it is a manifestation of ed norton’s DERANGED MENTAL CONDITION. basically, the ending is the epiphany of a madman. and fincher kinda sets up this “altered state” conceit with little bits of hallucinatory stuff like the penguin. also, fight club is more explicitly “first person” especially with the narration so that the events of the movie are implied to be “as perceived by narrator”.
ultimately, imo, it makes more sense for a raving psychotic to end up having had a delusional story in the movie than sintel who is not explicitly off her rockers.
you can certainly feel free to disagree and fight club was an excellent example to bring up.
but for me, it still feels like the film makers cheated.
the wait?
IRC going bananas?
and generally, a load of people acting like a group of giddy kippers? You Bet.
You see Jin your wrong ‘context is everything’ in this case.
We can all be critical if we wanted to be, but gernerally we dont, why? becuase the people closest to the project, Animators, Designers and Coders know the issues, probably aware of more issues than the rest of us put together.
They know about nearly all the issues and I for one am not interested in SFO (Stating the … obvious).
The Project was to drive development of Blender, and along the way they did a fantastic movie. It could have been a short film, but this was a film condensed into 12mins or so. Gotta say I i’ve not seen that before, and its something i wasn’t expecting.
Loved the sound,
loved the montage with Sintel and Scales sleeping,
loved the market chase scene (liked the sneaking reference to the first film),
loved the pyramid scene (freeking awesome),
loved the montage through the desert and the bamboo forest (now was there some reference with the butterflies in there with BBB? need to watch again).
Loved the bedrangled, wet Sintel
Loved the cave, fight scene and loved the bit where killed Scales (caught me out). Loved the bit where she realised she was actually old :)
Oh by the way my daughter loves Scales and her animation (ookay me too). Dont worry she didnt see all of the film.
BF/Durainers you aimed high and you now what? I think you should be very proud…EPIC :)
Spoiler Alert:
I remember asking/wondering about the actress voice sounding older than Sintel when I saw the first trailer but got no answer… The passing of time is clearly shown in the movie and I bet there are more ‘faces’ of Sintel to the young and the old one. During her travels she seems a bit older than the Sintel we see on the market.
Sintel’s mind is clouded (don’t know if I set the right term here). In reality humans kill lots of animals just by trying to ‘protect’ them and offer them a better life. Sintel and the whole humanity doesn’t understand how nature works and will only realize it when everything will be over (sadly). It’s a great film people!
To the people commenting on technical flaws: There are some, but you can always get the DVD and create your own ‘100% perfect’ version. That’s the open film idea and BF encourages you to do so by offering the movie assets.
I think the movie suffers a little as did Elephants Dream in that what was conceived by the artists was a little ambitious for the time and resources and in the end not quite enough story was told for those in the audience who dont reflect on what they have seen and join the dots for themselves.
In this it is asking quite a bit but I dont think the audience is cheated.
Overall I think the standard was quite high. The artistry was up there with ED and BBB while the animation was really a decent attempt I felt. Considering the state of 2.5 it was a solid achievement. While there were more people involved this time I think it is still a little short of what is required to make a very good job of it. 500,000 euro next time.
Some of the crits here are a little unreasonable I feel but obviously some people notice faults more than others. Some people dont seem to be able to get past the technical and appreciate the whole experience. Personally I found the result of the teams hard work held together well although I agree the story sort of skipped across a pool of ideas.
@The Fatsnacker: Congratulations! You are the first to get the BBB reference! (that I’ve seen any way) kudos!
Also, you are spot on correct about the Durian team being vividly aware of technical flaws. We are harsher critics on ourselves than any of you guys. (even Jin!) However, on balance I am certainly proud of this work, and I’m pretty sure the same goes for all involved.
Also it’s good to see that the story being debated in such a way. It was always going to be controversial, with the sting in the tail and the question mark ending. That the story and its characters are inspiring discussion and debate means we did our job as story tellers, IMHO.
I can’t figure it out why some people can never appreciate any work done!.
IMO, no matter the shortcomings (of which the durian team are aware) the work done is incredible.
Those of us who want to sound more “professional” than others have to put their thought into critique before they speak.
Great work durian team, it is nice. I like it. Well done to you all.
I am sure Sintel will inspire a new generation of (younger) Blender users, probably also the target audience for this movie…
From that point of view and Sintel seen as “a project to test/develop software” I think this is quite successful!
As others above, I believe in honest, constructive criticism, I’d wish nothing else for my own project from those I call my friends and colleagues. So here is mine for you:
* the overall look is very “crisp”, it seems that the higher resolution used here tends to give too much detail and that’s very sharp and hard “to get out of focus” in every sense of the word. It’s quite possible that this works much better on the big screen/a 35mm print. Maybe a “muddier” version would work better on a PC…?
* how can Sintel forget that she’s grown older…? And how can we, the audience, forget that together with her and then, with her, come to that terrible realisation/revelation at the end?
Somehow I am reminded of “The picture of Dorian Grey”, where the main character makes a wish that his portrait should age instead of himself. We understand why he keeps looking young when he is not and why he suddenly ages when he destroys his portrait at the end. Now Sintel does not destroy her own portrait, but a projection of her fears. By destroying the adult dragon that was her baby (dragon) she destroys her (inner) child and (suddenly) ages. (Once again she has “failed to see”.)
When watching Sintel I could not quite follow the (emotional) logic of her suddenly aging, Though when writing about it now I wonder how the target audience (teens…?) might relate to that emotionally: Sintel in that sense might work like a teenage werewolf story: you kind of don’t want to know the obvious until it can’t be neglected any more…
(Edit:) Let me just add the “obvious” (that I left out earlier):
* there are some visually really stunning sequences in Sintel, my favourite is the over the city/up the stairs one. That’s also where the above mentioned crispness of the image works for me, I guess it has to do with the ratio of close stuff vs. far away one…
* and obviously also the open-movie character including the financing are another big success here that needs to be mentioned!
I think to incentivise and positive outcome from the critique, I think the BF should have a editable document listing their personal gripes with the story and the existing technical issues with Blender which could be amended by the unwashed :)
In Prince2 terms a Post Project Review. Would be a carthatic enterprise as well. Would show the context of why things were the way they were, and the decisions that had to be made.
On a separate but linked note…….dont tease me with the DVD release. Correct me if I was wrong, there was a checkbox on the DVD ordering section which meant I could receive one of those now unsed workstations from the Blender Foundation :)
Please put the big red sticker on it,warning the postman…he aint too bright :)
I think it would be a mistake to image that the audience arent doing at least half the work here. Another one along these lines would be too much of an imposition of the goodwill of some.
It seems to me Ton likes this metaphorical style but some of the audience dont connect with it especially when it has fairly well realised ‘normal’ characters that they expect to move through an obvious tell me a story.
There are complaints about the realism of the hands or faces or whatever.
Perhaps to get away from this mental trap the next project could be a little more avant garde in an abstract or disjoint sort of way.
I dont know how to express it but sort of as 3d rap or street dancing…or a S Dali painting come to life
I mean some innovation, unconventional use etc etc something that pushes the bounds…
We obviously have very talented people in the Blender community but it seems we are saying look what we can do too rather than taking a creative leap.
These projects dont actually have to please in a regular commercial sense.
OK I stop now :)
the sintel’s story matching my story that i was written for a short film (i try to work on it as soon as possible, but still no resources)…
the story is about a person who never knows whats happening after his when he goes far away from his family. he know it during he is send to a “job”. And this be his “Last Job”.
There is two different kinds behind this movie, as I see. First I totally agree with Jin Choung. ON the other hand the effort behind the scenes is respectable and it should be supported, this moves things forward and forward. I not going to “attack” this side of the production. Never. And the development is respectable and good thing behind a movie creation and teamwork training, if it’s not slows down the productions. I just would like to mention: creating a good animation and production capable software needs a lot of information from the artists and professional animators from the world, and sometimes it can be cheaper than creating an other inhouse production. The professional feedback can be usable too. As I see BF tries to add good references into the “showreel” and I have mixed feelings around this kind (releasing this kinda short) of advertising. I have a lot of critics in my pocket for this short, but after the ED I think they should see the weak points. (I think the ED was the best from the 3 movies, not because it was the first…) The financial questions belongs to supporters and supported groups.
Story with a twist, gorgeous grafics, awsome soundtrack… The presale was so totally worth it – can’t wait for the DVDs to arrive. This piece truly deserves the word “epic”.
I have just finished watching and i think all you that didn’t understand the story should go back and watch it again. Like why does she keeps getting attacked? Why did she suddenly get so old? These guys had to compress a story into 15 minutes and the way they did it works well.
The story was excellent, and the lighting when she was going through those bamboos was awesome. Really well done. Don’t listen to all the nitpickers.
I must say that with all that waiting and anticipation for more than a year, I hadn’t realized that this was going to be a short film! I was kinda shocked when it ended :0
To be honest, I didn’t get it. I watched it four times in a row, each discovering some detail that I had missed. The story has too many holes. Only after reading some of the explanations in this thread have I come to an understanding of the story. The fact that Sintel aged in the end completely escaped me. I saw the scars but didn’t notice the hair color changing. The specific semiotic choices Colin made to denote certain facts/feelings/circumstances/etc were way too subtle and at times rather unconventional. I agree with the comments made that the story is one of the weakest points.
Having said that let’s not forget that this is a specific production model that we’re talking about here. BF raised funds to produce a movie by preselling it. In that respect, the project was VERY SUCCESSFUL: the movie was eventually produced.
Moreover, for me the objective was not to produce a perfect film but to advance the development of Blender and showcase what it can do. From this perspective the project was HUGELY SUCCESSFUL:
(a) I use Blender 2.5 every day and I’m quite happy with how it’s evolved
(b) modeling, texturing, lightning, and compositing are superb. The level of realism achieved in certain shots is breathtaking and the visuals are truly stunning. I was pleasantly surprised by the attention to minute details given this time. I disagree with others who argue that this level of rendering is not up to standard. I watch most animated films and cannot tell the difference.
WHAT IS TRULY EPIC IS THAT THE DURIAN TEAM MADE THIS MOVIE WITH ALPHA SOFTWARE.
For me, that’s by far that most amazing achievement.
Congrats to the whole team! :-)
Thank you guys.
I’m really looking forward to receive my dvd copy….
Wow so first kudos to the makers. The quality is truly stunning! On the history, I must say that I was initially sad how it ended, but I think that is exactly the emotion that should be created! And the fact that the film has generated an emotion is more proof that the concept works! Excellent work!
Great work. Sad story, but so beautiful ! Great sets and excellent animation. Full of feelings.
Congratulations to the whole team, and a special shake hand to Colin Levy. I followed his works for many years in the time of Peerless Productions, before his hilarious “Suburban Plight” movie, and I’ have always known that his name will be written one day on top of the billboard of a great movie !
@Paul; you got the right mark, the confusable point, if all got it they understand what the story is…..we can’t tell this (just clue – no mirror, trully Epic)…..just watch it……
Well done guys.
I think I share most crits with Jin storywise. And I have some CG wise, but who cares?
I also have some framing wise, and vignetting seems to be a dirtyword at BF… (-:
But I know Blender for some time and know this is a (again) a major leap forward.
I need a therapist after having watched this one. The story completely got me and the ending totally knocked me off my feet.
So it worked for me.
And there is a, albeit melancholic, kind of possible happy ending: Sintel might take care of the little dragon she just orphined. after all: it follows her in the last shot.
And about the flaws in the story telling: I’m a fan of the ”The lord of the rings” trilogy. I have the extended DVD version and watched it dozens of time if not more. By now i have discovered containerloads of flaws and mistakes in the dialogues, camera-angles, CG-animation, you name it. And i’m not talking about the diversions from the book (witch i also love) but solely the flaws in the movie itself. But despite all these flaws that i’ve discoverd i still love the movie.
So I think the team did a magnificent job
Just my 2 cents
What an amazing video! My whole family enjoyed it, and it is a must see in HD, yotube version isn;t as amazing looking as the one downloaded from their website.
Magnificent! I especially liked her being stuck at the one day feel. And her expression when she see in the blood that more time passed, t\she was so focused on finding the dragon that she forgot time. And this bummer when she kills her dragon for who she put all those years of searching. It was like she went through hell and destroyed everything she had (a friend) because she was blind to see the time.
Magnificent wave of the story. Of course one thing looks strange is that when she gets hit or bitten you can;t see the marks instantly but I suppose this has the allusion to her not seeing what actually is happening, she is too much focusing on the go find the dragon thing. Sintel is really alive in that story.
Even though this movie was so short it seemed it lasted for one hour, so strange, you want to see more but you actually feel like you just saw a featured movie.
Shaman says her: You are a fool for traveling alone so completely unprepared. He should have seen her scar and her age. He should have said. You are a fool for traveling alone at your age.
Sintel enters the cave in the nigth (looks like 3-4 am), figth scales about 2 minutes and when she leaves there is already dawn (like 5-6 am).
In minute 4:20 were she looks for scales hunting the chicken there are 4 people in background, 6 second after, the place is another completely, and is totally empty.
this movie will be also used for testing video codecs i guess. but there are some rendering errors like flickering shadows that could be very bad for such tests since they could be confused with codec errors maybe? :p
i hope some of the most obvious rendering problems and hair/cloth problems will be fixed for the 4k version!
i also think that some of the scenes in sunlight look overexposed / way too washed out.
but otherwise i liked the movie a lot! :) it really sucks that you easily notice such problems if you also have some experience working with 3d software. :)
Amazing! It took a little while for me to come to terms with the sad ending – I’d hoped for something a little more fulfilling – but now I like it a lot more for what it is. Excellent work!
For reaction of the critics here made me rather disappointed. They’re not *wrong*, per se, but you have to remember you should only critique something for what it IS, not what it is NOT. To compare Sintel to larger commercial productions is valid, but poor form indeed. To compare it to other animated shorts? That seems much fairer to me, and doesn’t interfere with many of the suggestions voiced here.
As mentioned by the team already, Sintel has its share of weaknesses. The fact that they said this themselves makes me believe that this was probably the BEST that they could accomplish in the time frame given. I’m certain if they could have fixed any issues within their timeframe, they would have. Congratulations on a film well done!
With all the assets becoming available soon, there is the opportunity for a very dark alternative ending, whereby the little dragon at the end comes out and pushes the sobbing girl off the cliff, then morphs into the shaman, at which point the dragon we all thought was dead emerges out of the cave and roasts the shaman with a nice flaming blast.
On the other had the existing ending works just fine, I loved it :)
This was pretty good. I don’t have any complaints animation wise. It had a palpable ‘epic’ feel, and as a result – seemed way shorter than it should be.
I think the Blender Foundation is ready to make a feature length film.
Congratulations! Great job.
Thanks to Ton and all the team for all the efforts and benefits to Blender.
About the errors: Sintel isn’t Blender.
If these errors can be repaired using Blender it’s ok!
There were many points to conduce along this production: the movie itself, the Blender development, tutorials, DVD package… A lot of things beyond the movie. Maybe Ton can talk about it.
When a movie studio takes a production, it’s all about the film and all atention is on the movie.
I saw a interview (Ton) in Blenderguru, and he talk about the art ambitions, about the inexperienced artists and how they survived. I think that they learned a lot of things and we can learn too with this production. This is great!
I think that Pixar, Dreamworks and other studios do great movies, good scripts, excelents renders with no errors, but most of us don’t know how they do that. They don’t open theyr productions and all we can do is to watch and eat a popcorn.
I think that i will learn a lot of things with that rain scene (wonderfull), more than with the “UP”.
I know that i can’t do a job like Sintel, all the artists involved are better than me (not you?), otherwise i should be there.
We can remember that first purpose: Blender. What are the benefits for Blender with this production? Is Blender better than before?
I think too that we should not stopping to look at the errors found in Sintel because we like Blender and we perceive all the efforts during this production.
An art piece must be apreciated and it can be evaluated.
Now, i’m happy: if a studio decides to use Blender, that studio can do a good movie.
I’m not gonna be picky and write about the details that might have been better, it’s completely useless.
I’m still crying, the avalanche of emotions that I’ve felt watching Sintel is impossible to describe. Having been a part of the huge Blender family for more than 10 years (since it wasn’t even Open Source software), and seeing how far we’ve gone makes me feel so damn proud!
Guys, you did an amazing job, THANK YOU!
Seb
P.S.: I’m going back to watch it again… :D and again… and again… :D
But…I have to say the story wasn’t working for me. It just seemed way to big a story to tell in a short like that. It felt really disjointed. The shock of her being old at the end came to quick. What I think was supposed to be a shock was forced to quickly and made it seem really anticlimactic.
seems silly to me that people keep trying to explain the story . if you have to explain it that means a lot of people didn’t’ get it witch is not good story telling. I think the team took on way to much for a 12 min short. and the execution in the end was not very good. I love that people are developing blender and making it better. I keep hearing the team knows of all the flaws. if they know about them why not fix them? to me if you hit your deadline and your work is flawed and not quit done thats a failure. I work professionally in 3d on a lot of high end project a lot of them I will admit are bad. a lot of Hollywood film makers are not good story tellers either. When co workers of mine watch the film they laugh and point out all the obvious problems witch is sad. At the end of the day when professional artist look at this blender is still ” a cute” piece of software not to be taken seriously quit yet. if you want to develop blender and make something that advertises the software take some time on it. Make the story great no ok and risky . a film like inception makes you think but it is well though out and well executed. This story is neither of those things.
And I’m sorry to tell you not all good animated shorts are huge productions that cost millions money does not buy you a good film. Lets look at pixar they started from the ground up developing their software but they made story the most important part . when they release something it is “the best” they can do its not “well the team knows there are a ton of problems and the software is in alpha so considering the team already knows its flawed and the software isn’t the best I like it” blender needs to make a good film that impresses people and not just the loyal blender heads. all people , professional artist, film makers. so people stop and says “wow look what those guys are doing “. blender is open source is it not? why not make an open source film and let the community pitch in on story ideas , cg, development. I’m sure people donating time and doing an open source project would yield better results then funding a small team of armatures with a poor story line.
anyway just my opinion I use maya everyday and I can tell you autodesk is a crappy ass company they release buggy software all the time and its pretty frustrating when you pay for software to have such bad support. I’d love to see blender get up to par with the big boys and start making some noise in the industry . but its just not ready yet. I’ve yet to see something at a professional level done with the software. and this short is def not a good advertisement for it sorry. I mean look around at all the work being done in CG this is not even close to current quality . I mean some people are saying the characters are so “life like” really who do you know that looks like this? def not life like and I dont think that was the intent just seems like some people have been living in a cave when it comes to CG. I mean Look at gollum in lord of the rings pretty convincing and that was done what ten years ago now. Yes big production some commercial software some developed on the film you will say not fair to compare but it just shows you commercial software ten years ago was killing blender so looking at this short seems like blender is what like 20 years behind commercial products still. I just feel like it should be further along
big buck bunny to me was much better. technically speaking the fur looked awesome thats hard to do in cg. animation was good character setups looked up to speed with commercial software, the environments and compositing looked great. the story was cute it was ok. but sintel kinda falls on its face on so many levels and to my eye seems like no progress has been with software development. i know its in alpha but so far its just excuses excuses why the film falls flat and why no one should give it a crit. I’m not going to love it just because people worked hard on it . people work extremely hard on feature films doesn’t mean they are all good.
another point this is not an open source project the artist are being paid and there is a budget its a commercial production using open source software. so to me this should be held to a higher standard then even short films done by students and artist doing things on their own time its a commercial production. and it fails. people do stuff at home with smaller budgets and produce much better results so a lot of the excuses here are invalid. its better to take on a project and make it doable in the time frame then take on something to aggressive and fall flat in the end. the team should not be making excuses if your doing that then deep down you know its not that great. if your buying something and the sales guy is like ” well its been tuff to get this done and there are alot of problems and I wish we could have done this or that” your probably not going to be to excited about your purchase right? and the fact that they are making excuses tells me they are not totally proud of this either. being an artist myself and dealing with this daily I would bet most the artist know the story is kinda lame but they had no say in it and just did the best they could at their job . knowing in the end the final product was going to be just ok. I feel like this is more of an issue from the top of the production. the people making the decisions are making bad ones if this is the product they deliver after a year of work.
anyway im sure tons of you will think im an asshole and whatever just saying it how it is I dont have any bias either way i dont love blender and i dont hate it. just giving you an honest opinion. in the hope that it helps BF continue on and grow and get better at what they are trying to do.
Be able to will you know.
Lord of the Rings, some are trying to make whether
At least 1000 people or more.
Korean technicians have heard about making movies avatar.
He was a studio technician
The size of about 12 people
They only made a flying rock vines ….
Hollywood studio system has an enormous amount of small stick that was found.
Is called the size of its personnel …….
They are therefore in order to save labor costs in Southeast Asia and India to establish studios in many cases.
Hollywood, Hollywood with the capital size of the market because it can guarantee a profit but …….
Anyway
Consider
Suppose that a company called Autodesk …
Blender is out.
Create an Avatar in Hollywood.
I’m sure
They can make it.
Conversely, suppose …
Make Sintel
A very small number of
100 people stuck.
How did Sintel?
The important thing is the underlying technology.
The reason for the commercial software
Is a good position to win the competition.
Makes the problem of competing with the situation……….
……
….
Anyway
I understand most parts or your post, and sometimes you are right, sometimes not.
I said before: if these errors found in Sintel can be repaired with Blender, its ok! Sintel isn’t Blender.
I think you are wrong with the software development point and i could say many examples (better raytracing than previous versions, new modifiers, better sculpt tools for example) that demonstrates improvements in Blender software and i think that in the end we’ll get a nice software with the 2.6 version.
Let me try something: if apple sucks with the new iphone 4 means that all apple products are bad? Really not.
If someone like you, who understands all about art, animation, rendering, all about serious productions, who works professionaly in Pixar or another big studio, if someone like you brings all your knowledge to a production using Blender, will we get something amazing or not?
If the answear is negative there is a big problem with Blender. I can say that i have seen many good art pieces made with Blender.
Your post mades me think about a lot of things. Maybe, the movie production could be done by professional studios using Blender with the Blender Foundation technical support. I personally don’t remeber Autodesk doing movies but we see Laika using Autodesk software with the correct support.
I think the rain scene is ok, and that demonstrates my point of view. This scene was made in Argentina.
The open source movie point, i thing that is a good idea. I remember that error in the Sintel’s shirt! There’s a guy in the Durian forum that warned about this error: shirt penetrating sintel’s body! This occurs when some imagems were published. And nothing was done!
It’s not a Blender failure. It’s human. And i’m sure this errors can be repaired without Maya.
@ghost3d:
“another point this is not an open source project the artist are being paid and there is a budget its a commercial production using open source software.”
Its open content project meaning that you can acces all files.
As to the closed projects like toystory3 where you are alowed to buy all the merchandise.
Did you know Ian went to the preview night? ( Why would that interest you, lol ).
Are you telling me you didnt get the emotions that Sintel or the Dragons where trying to bring across the screen?
I dont believe that. It was at least as good as modern in game “i have led for eyes” mask motion captured crap.
But, yeah, Japanese “I work 21 hours a day 7 days a week” stuff like “Beyond” from Koji Morimoto is ofcourse a bit better ( with a bit you know I mean at least a byte ).
C’mon guys…
Remember Tron?
Was a great movie too ;)
Anyways…
According to me, Sintel was not as good as Big Buck Bunny fe.,
BUT it has a great, sad story, which leaves room for interpretation,
(btw. it’s a SHORT-movie, ever heard of?).
The technical part is not that fkn brilliant, but it’s quite nice.
Comparing Hollywood crap with Blender movies, c’mon…
BBB already showed us, what IS possible.
Sintel still IS amazing.
And I just don’t understand those guys like “ghost3d”…
So… enjoy the movie, im awating the next great Open Movie from the Blender Foundation.
Cheers
the first toy story had a budget of 30 million dollars.
sintel had a budget of about 500 thousand dollars.
toy story is 80 minutes.
sintel is 12 minutes.
so toy story did cost 375 thousand per minute.
and sintel did cost about 40 thousand per minute.
that’s a difference by the factor 10! and this is the first toy story which was really cheap. i think current animation movies have a budget that is more like 200 millions. so the difference factor goes more in the direction of 50.
even game cutscenes have a lot more budget nowadays than sintel.
@ghost3d: You say you work in the industry working with Maya all the time. Which means that you watch as a 3d-artist. unfortunately for you most if the viewers aren’t. they may be playing around with blender (like me) but they’re not pros. And as such many of them seem to love the movie (and i’m one of them) and don’t see the flaws or don’t care about them as long as they’re not too obvious.
Maybe you should try and watch the film as a consumer with a more open mind.
“I’d love to see blender get up to par with the big boys and start making some noise in the industry . but its just not ready yet.” [en of quote]
Blender will never be up to par with the big boys simply because it’s not aiming to do so. Blender is aiming at hobbyists, semi-pros, freelancers and small studio’s. At least that’s what Ton said in an inteview some time ago.
Which means that it will always have some restrictions but can still be a good app.
@TLOZ
I’m not comparing it to Hollywood movies just making a point the quality difference is huge I was just hoping the difference in quality would be not so great. and again money doesn’t buy you a good film look at Rust boy from years ago made with infini D . that was looking pretty cool not sure what happened to that but surely you could match that quality level with a commercial production with blender years later right? I mean i would hope but honestly sintel looks to be at that same level sadly.
@horace
missing the point again.
@joeri67
I dont really want the assets to the movie nor do i want the assets to toy story 3. that doesnt sway my opinion on whether or not sintel was a good short film. and yeah you have to buy toy story toys but you also have to buy the sintel dvd dont you? not sure what your point is.
@josiasbh
you make some really good points I would be curious to see what professional artist could do with blender. I would actually love to try it out on a project but does risking losing quality to try it out worth it? I just haven’t seen enough good things made with the software yet to justify taking the risk :(. Also places like Laika have a support dep of their own. if maya doesn’t do something they need they write a tool to do it. thats the streath of maya its very flexible and open so its easy to integrate into a large production. they do not rely on autodesk to provide features. witch is also maya’s flaw some simple things it should do out of the box it cant and people that cannot write tools are stuck .
and im not a maya fan boy or anything I also use 3dsmax i dont believe in software loyalty i think you use the tool that does the job best. I’ve started playing around in blender and some of the new features are really great I know I sound like im bagging on blender but I am impressed with a lot of the new stuff. example the smoke sims I’ve seen look great better then the maya fluids witch is great. the sculpting stuff looks really great. i cant wait for the painting features. the things I’d love to see improvement are the renderer for sure needs some updating still
overall I appreciate the work that went in doing a short like this is really hard and with such a low budget is incredible. but the end product not so great. and hey I could have watched the short and said “eh another blender movie no big deal” and moved on with my life but I decided to offer a crit to help BF improve I dont see whats wrong with that you might not agree with me and thats fine we all have opinions .
fair enough , maybe I’m expecting to much . i think its great effort and if it had a good story it would make a lot of heads turn. i think big buck bunny was close to breaking through but this one kinda takes a step back . but your right i dont really know BF’s intent maybe making dvd’s and selling them to loyal fans is the only aim of the software and thats fine seems to be a success in that sense.
It’s a great accomplishment, and I loved it, but I would have to say that the only thing that made it unbelievable for me was the lack of real reason for Sintel to go on such a quest to find Scales. It could have been made so much more feasible if a younger Sintel had found Scales newly hatched, then the bed scene could have had them aging between shots.
The fact that Scales gets so much bigger so soon is fine with me – it could just be the quick onset of “dragon puberty” or something. Just that one gripe; everything else was great!
@MoreLikethis: “The critics here are a bunch of a@@holes,”
Dude, I don’t think you understand what feedback is. Feedback is about hearing the good and the bad, not what makes you feel good. Critical feedback isn’t written in stone, it’s an opinion, and I’m sure the grownups at the BF are capable of deciding for themselves if any criticism is valid or not.
No, Blender can’t do GI like Vray or Luxrender, but it has a cute feature called Indirect lighting that works tolerably well at casting reflected light and color from one object onto another. I’m fairly certain it was used in Sintel.
I have downloaded the sintel movie yesterday and watched it immediately after download. It is a masterpiece. Good story, great music, and the animations may rival the big hollywood animation blockbusters. There are some things to improve in some places (like more fluid movement, etc) but it is an amazing product from a community of enthusiasts and a collection of opensource software.
Thanks Ton for your vision and perserverance. Big thanks for all the movie team. Great work!! :) Keep going.
@AJ173: You realize that what your saying is that the only thing that is unrealistic is the main plot of the movie?
@ghost3d: I get what you’re saying. I’m far from being a pro on 3d, for animation at least(I’m in the Architecture business myself, and not very interested in viz), but the movie does have some quality issues noticeable even for me(a non pro). I already had my say on the story, which sadly is once more the weakest point. I have to agree with josiasbh that it is not a matter of how good blender is right now, more of an issue of this particular production. I don’t want to diss the production team, after all they were selected on account of their merits, but I feel like something didn’t click this time. The thing is that this movies are always pushing the boundary of blender, which is nice because it brings about new features, but it is not the wisest way to produce work. You should strive for quality within the bounds allowed by the tools you’re using, but this open movies are made precisely to push those bounds. It is hard to get things to wrap up perfectly working under that logic. Storywise, though, I still thing scripts as poor as this one are inexcusable.
Anyone who doesn’t like this world class short comes from another planet.
The only thing I can say is, I WANTED MORE!
What a great story and a bit of a tear jerker.
To be honest, I found the story way a little expected at first (I presume, it’s because I have had similar feeling in my sub-conscious mind while I was following the Project Durian blog, right from when it started last year after BC ’09).
However, upon few retakes on the screenplay, I found so many metaphorical elements that have been so well weaved which I missed at first glance. Indeed, the original storyline couldn’t be justified in a shorter version. But I think Esther Wouda – Colin Levy did the best possible treatment one could (obviously after several iterations) on the subject.
As for the full length feature, I did pitch the same question to Ton some time back (because I didn’t have a fair idea about the production cost). He explained beautifully, what it takes for a ~ 90 mins animation feature – more than 80 artists working full-time for 2-3 years. But do not lose your hearts, who knows.. BI may come up with one as thing looking very promising by days.
Technically, it did disappoint me in certain level. However, that could be understood as team was working on a evolving software with such time and cost constrain. But never underestimate what Blender can do – ED and BBB already proved it’s capabilities. And let’s not compare with any previous edition and move on to make this project successful as lot of hard work went in to with no intention of making monetary benefit.
Oh yes, special thanks to Jan Morgenstern for his awesome and exuberant scores!
There were a LOT of good things in the film, but there were also a lot of not so good things. Some areas could have used improvement. Just being honest.
wow! just watched it! just loved it. though the story line will be hard to follow for those who don’t have a good idea and not been following the movie development…but its really amazing!!! there are few places the movement could be better and appears a bit unnatural but over all the realism is exceptional…
Incidentally my 3 and a half year old daughter loved it and can’t stop asking me to show her the “baby dragon” ( the part where Sintel meets the baby dragon) its now on par with chocolate and when ever she does something good, she wants to be shown the movie as a reward. ( thanks Ton for saving me some chocolate money and my daughter’s teeth).
any chance of in-corporating a sound editing program like Audacity (http://audacity.sourceforge.net/) into the work flow of blender for sound editing like the “adobe premiere / audition/ sound-booth” work flow??
congrats to the Durian Team for the successful short – Sintel!!
While several (hundreds) variations of the Cinderella tale exist, they move around the same idea that may well have originated in classical antiquity.
The idea of a character (a she, a he, a person or a animal), fighting her unfair situation (sometimes violently, other times more peacefully), and trying to recover/find her loved one.
While the resolution of the tale might vary in success or failure, the lesson to be learn is that even when we don’t achieve what we wanted at the beginning of our journey, we should keep believing, and having faith that our dreams might come true… eventually.
At first sight our Sintel have a tragic lesson and a pretty sad resolution. Yet after watching the movie so many times and read about Cinderella tale I think I found what really Sintel team intended by finishing the movie so sad: Opening A Door .
A door for discussions, a door for new endings, a door for new versions, a door for new tales. As Cinderella tale have hundreds of variants and endings Sintel should have them too!
From my point of view, ED and BBB are finished tales, and no one would really want to create new versions from them. Things are completely different in Sintel. People want to modify it, enhance it, gave it a happy ending….
And if that is the intention, I think Colin Levy have a great success: His movie started a spark in several of us that believe Sintel should have a second change, a redemption:
Even is we cannot model/sculpt/animate them as good a Sintel team, we should do something: We should get the sources and give the Sintel the touch, the final we believe she deserves.
And somehow this is the start of our journey, just like Sintel’s, we might succeed, or fail, but we should not stop, we should have faith in us.
I invite all of you who like me think Sintel should have a variant (a happier one), to contact me, and keep in touch.
Please let me know your thoughts,
Have a great day, my contact is l3c_lara(at)yahoo.es
LC
I think its important not to single out the script as being to blame of any shortcomings.
There was a whole team of people working on this movie.
The result is the product of many decisions and labours.
I am pretty sure there was more scenes intended for the movie than actually made it within the time and budget.
A few more shots completed might have made all the difference to those in the audience who cant quite grasp the story as it is presented now.
I respect that everyone tried very hard to achieve something of a high standard.
In the most part I think they succeeded.
@josh
Yeh, after talking with my brother, I’m convinced by him that this would not be the kind of thing ch.9 would be interested in… especially the documentaries. But you will most certainly have better luck with ABC2 or SBS because they often play documentaries and short films, even have small shows about designers around the world (can’t think of any off the top of my head). So as far as I can see they would be the most likely to promote and show sintel and its suite of documentaries. I would hope that if you could arrange something along those lines, Ton would be happy to release the documentaries to the channel, because it would be sure to significantly increase awareness of blender and open source software.
So sad. It feels like it was inspired by a Greek tragedy. Though I won’t go any further.
They really could have used the dynamic paint for the snow and sand scenes. As foot prints are not made in the snow. And the sand scene is done oddly. the foot prints are clear where she was and the new ones she makes look weird.
Overall fantastic. Though I’m not going to recommend it to a friend who liked big bug bunny because she would find it too sad.
I am not going to compare this film to anything else I have seen nor get technical, just going to express what I think of it as is..
I was simply moved by this film, so much was left up to the imagination which I really appreciated! there was just enough info for me to have a grasp of who Sintel and scales was. reminds me of my childhood when I would just find animals hurt not knowing anything about them or where they come from, all I knew is that they were my friend even if it was just for a moment.
The flash back of how she meet scales was great, I felt great compassion for scales from the get go. I was angry when the adult dragon took him away!!!! The way in which scales was revealed at the end was a great twist, I totally thought he was the little one in the nest. Even I was not aware of just how much time had passed because I was so caught up in the emotions, trying to find that cute adorable little dragon. The clues were very subtle and nicely done.
The way Sintel came to terms with her age and loss of her friend was very well done, That was the only point where I felt compassion for her. Being alone for so long she’s not mushy or over emotional, u can sense that callus side of her.
A very sad and emotional film I like it a lot and I want to say congratulations to the entire team on a job well done!
Come on crits! The movie was targeted at young emo goth kids from the beginning and for the target audience it was a smash hit judging by the comments ;). Nobody over the age 20 is not supposed to like it anyway.
A girl tends to a wounded animal until a family member comes to get it. She later finds and kills it, and makes it’s kid an orphan. This made me feel terrible. It looks nice, and the story is one depressing thing after another.
This is the Blender film I enjoyed most up to now. Great work!
The film unfortunately has its technical problems at some places, which could be bad for the reputation of Blender as tool for professionals. I know professionals aren’t the primary target for Blender right now, but wouldn’t it be nice for Blender users being able to apply for a job at a professional studio and work with their favourite program there some day? Think about the popularity and coverage the first Blender movies received, and deduce the effect they had (and still have!) on decisionmakers.
Of course, there are more elements to success in business-driven environments (like professional support etc.), but a good movie to show off the cool features of Blender can be a start. Think about how Linux avanced from a hobbyist project to a software that is employed in huge scales (not the dragon :) all around the world, in servers, on desktops.
Anyway, I got a bit carried off. :) I for one would welcome a probably shorter, but more (technically) polished film the next time.
Hi Joeri, Thank you, but DVD PAL encoding standard is MPEG2. You file is labelled MP4 on Vimeo, so I fear that it will not play on a standard DVD player.
Hi Roubal,
Its also 1024 wich will also not play on a dvd, i thought it to be for an authoring system.
But you are right, I might as well release an 720x576anamorphic mpeg that will play on dvd’s that plays files, I guess most do. Spares the work of making an VIDEO_TS VOB.
“Come on crits! The movie was targeted at young emo goth kids from the beginning and for the target audience it was a smash hit judging by the comments ;). Nobody over the age 20 is not supposed to like it anyway.”
Wow. Sir, I’d recommend getting some culture. Something of slight importance…like the famous Greek tragedies. This would fit right in. Americans always impress me with their inability to deal with any story resembling the hard and less successful parts of life.
Still surprised how many people just flat out didn’t get the “she was old all along” part of the story. I guess there are a lot of slow people out there.
And for people calling the story “emo”, you’re seriously bandwagoning, and I’ll assume you’re no older than 16 or so. Strife and loss are parts of life. Experiencing them and reacting rationally doesn’t make you a bitch.
@W: come on man, this is not complex, at all. We “crits” could see the ending from a mile away, and it reeks of videogame cutscene and generic anime inspired design. ED was very unique, BBB imitated a classic style but did it flawlessly(design/animation wise), but this is very generic and not at all up to current standards. The story is inconsistent and predictable. And yeah, maybe this could be a greek tragedy. Greek tragedies rocked when they where state of the art storytelling, 2500 years ago.
It is tragic that Sintel killed the very thing she was looking for, yes, but I as a viewer cannot relate with someone who becomes obsessed with a pet she had for about a month, and cannot understand how she is so stupid not to realize her whole life has gone by. Not to think once, in all those years, that her dragon might have grown up, or that maybe snatching an infant from its mother is not such a good idea.
Also, I felt cheated by the film, they lie about Sintel’s age, there is no clue, nothing that you can go back to and say “oh, so that’s why this and this made no sense”, but no. The whole movie is consistent with a young character(I mean, c’mon, she kicks ass all the way through), and the BAM she’s old.
The whole plot is forced together with proverbial duck tape. It just doesn’t hold water. Compare it with a greek tragedy, compare it with Oedipus, which is the closest thing I can think of. Oedipus does not once do something that seems illogical or unexplainable to the audience, he acts consistently to what he knows. Sintel? She’s either really dumb or mentally ill, she does something that’s obviously wrong, even to someone just watching her life for 15 minutes, she has had years to question all of this things. It is just silly, the way she acts.
Visually stunning scenes are mixed with what looks like in-game-scenery, and I get the feeling of an unfinished product. But, and this is a big but, I am not sure more time would have fixed everything.
Is it the application lacking the tools needed to go all the way, or simply lack of talent? I´m not trying to be mean here, but realistic. A big caveat I have with all the Open Movie projects is the lack of accurate animation and timing. Characters lack weight, and lip synching, facial and bodily expression give an eerie puppet-on-a-string impression. At times it is “OK”, but mostly it´s just annoying. Where you want to focus on the story, you instead keep noticing things that are off, if ever so slightly.
The story is nice, pacing okay, but for me the only thing that holds outstanding class is music and sound composition. 2 stars of 5 from me.
Seen the movie twice now and thought it was exceptional. I also thought that the story was clear and easy to follow. I can’t help but think that the complaints stem, not from the story being poor, but from the fact that it wasn’t “happy” and lacked a feel-good sentiment at the end. I thought the decision to age Sintel towards the end was kinda brilliant, a way of deepening the loss that resulted from her absolute obsession. It’s incredible the way the story was able to evoke such emotion and attachment to the characters in such a short span of time.
There were some issues with the animation. For me, the most obvious issue was the weighting in certain scenes. For instance, when the adult dragon knocks over the pillar after taking Scales, the way the structure collapses looks a bit odd – as though it was made from Styrofoam. I think these errors were a bit more obvious as they juxtaposed so clearly with the animation that was really impressive.
Overall, a fantastic effort and the whole team should be proud.
NSM, I heartily agree with you on the story elements and also that the polish on some parts shines where a couple of niggles (agreeing here) don’t bring the whole piece down. I love it and indeed the team should indeed be very proud.
“The whole plot is forced together with proverbial duck tape. It just doesn’t hold water. Compare it with a greek tragedy, compare it with Oedipus, which is the closest thing I can think of. Oedipus does not once do something that seems illogical or unexplainable to the audience, he acts consistently to what he knows. Sintel? She’s either really dumb or mentally ill, she does something that’s obviously wrong, even to someone just watching her life for 15 minutes, she has had years to question all of this things. It is just silly, the way she acts.”
She’s driven by obsession to a form of madness. Have you never seen people become so close to an animal? And to say that she’s only known about Scales “for a month” is not something you’ve derived from the movie, but an assumption made. Scales was her one friend in a life of loneliness and she wanted to get him/she/it back. The character’s motivation is stated clearly from the outset. You can argue that this wasn’t presented clearly, but it certainly wasn’t wholly illogical.
@NSM:
” looks a bit odd – as though it was made from Styrofoam ”
Yet a land with flying dragons is perfect normal.
@differentsmoke:
I totally agree with not being able to relate. If I would loose my daughter I cannot believe that I will chase her for 20 years and then kill her trying to get her daughter and then abandon her daughter in dispair.
But I have no trouble that the director sets me on the wrong foot in the beginning of the movie. Stories are told, and told with the colors ( mindset ) of the talesman. That is always current and very current here now in Holland. Thinking that you are looking at an objective fotography of the realworld is something everybody needs to step away from when watching or reading. At least thats why I have no trouble when a director does that. Memento is great in that sense, “don’t believe this man”.
No.
I’m just saying that we cannot have any idea of physics in a Martin Lodewijks world.
Or at least have no reason to project our own physics to that of a world with dragons.
Bravo à toute l’équipe,
Un projet de cette ampleur, mené à terme sans moyen financier, sans promesse de retour sur investissement, en si peu de temps, mérite qu’on se taise de toutes critiques aussi peu constructives soit-elle.
C’est sur qu’avec les moyens d’AVATAR, les scénarios à l’épreuve de tous ages de Disney et 2 ou 3 ans pour réaliser le film, vous auriez fait un peu mieux. Mais bordel, c’est fait gratuitement, on peut le télécharger gratuitement avec un programme mis à disposition pour utilisation gratuite. Alors gardons nos chers critiques.
C’est bien fait, une histoire obscure (donc pour adulte), de beaux plans…
Encore BRAVO.
Longue vie à Blender
I was moved to tears! I particularly liked the scene where the farmer who was so cruely choking his chickens gets his comeuppance! I simply hate to see chickens being chocked! Though to be honest, I must say the car chase scenes could have been better, I personally wouldn’t have placed the hero on a tricycle. And you know me, I hate sex, so I skipped over those bits. My, those were long scenes! Is this R rated?? Anyhow, a fine effort by all. You can expect to hear from me with job offers very soon. Yours, George
downshifting from movie critique to technical problem solving:
i use maya professionally and we do a lot cloth simulation. it is very very difficult to get completely clean simulations without interpenetrations. but the nice thing in maya is that you can go in and adjust the cloth where interpenetrations exist on a frame by frame basis and then have it interpolate back to the simulation cache. without such ability, i would be stuck having to simulate over and over again praying that THIS TIME, it doesn’t penetrate. this is no good and this would not work in a production situation.
so i’m wondering with blender, is there a way to easily address things like this manually on a frame by frame basis?
in particular, the hair and wings seem to have penetration issues and the fact that they remain in the final films leads me to believe that it was not a matter of simply pushing it in on the offending frames… cuz if it was that simple, they would have done it.
i play around with blender but i’m definitely no expert and i have no idea what the answer to this question is. anyone?
Aimed at emos? I guess I’m a 68-year old emo then. I enjoyed it from start to finish, as much because it wasn’t what I expected as for any other reason.
As for the critics – well, I’ve worked in the film and TV industry all my adult life. I can’t recall ever having got a project finished to my complete satisfaction. While critical comment is fair and necessary, comments of the “I could have done better” kind are pointless. If you can do better, do it. I look forward to seeing your work.
So in summary I think goeland57 puts my feelings best. “A project of this magnitude, completed without financial means, without promise of return on investment, in so little time, should silence all unhelpful criticism … Well done, a dark story (aimed at adults), beautiful images … BRAVO once more. Long live Blender”
I dont really want the assets to the movie nor do i want the assets to toy story 3. that doesnt sway my opinion on whether or not sintel was a good short film. ”
I’m not trying to sway your opinion on the movie, I couldnt care less.
I’m responding to your incorrectness as you said:
“another point this is not an open source project the artist are being paid and there is a budget its a commercial production”
Even if it is a commercial production that doesn’t stand in the way from it being an open source project as you can access all assets from the movie. That’s what makes it open.
And it’s not a commercial production in the sense that the BF tries to gather money to make a movie, and not: make a movie to try to make alot of money. As selling DVD-s is spreading the story, and selling toys is not.
“you can access all assets from the movie. That’s what makes it open.”
No. The fact that it’s under particular Open Source(tm) -compliant version of CC license makes it so. Not everything they hand out free and without DRM-protection is automatically everyone’s property.
People should educate themselves more on licensing and not only go “Yay, free stuff!!!”.
I am all with Ghost3d.
From the technical side of view this isn’t a good advertisement for Blender.
If i have to show my colleagues what Blender is capable of, i will stick to BBB.
As a comparison: http://vimeo.com/8642276
3 Years, but smaller team and no community providing assets and stuff.
Anyway…as long as it pushes Blender-development it is a success!
@Joeri, you have no luck, because without a Vimeo+ account, your posted videos are not available for download, so your mpg file can’t be downloaded ! It can only be played on Vimeo.
So, the mpg file you have built will be usable only if you can host it somewhere else !
@mayaist: please don’t argue in that way!!
I am a Maya User too. But I do respect all 3D-tools (C4D, Max, Lightwave, Houdini and Blender) and I am testing all the software and I know about all the new versions.
Blender isn’t that far Blender-Users think it is! And it’s not for professionals!
So stay with Maya (I love it!!) and respect Blender and it’s advantages.
Good story, good artwork, good animation, good software! This is Blender! :-)
The story is not sad. It is about learning in life, and this learning process is sometimes painful. Painful but not sad. I would like to know what happened with the small dragon after :-)
Well, I’ve thought long and hard about this. Ultimately, I’m disappointed!
I think the criticism can be broken down into two categories: the story, and the software.
The story:
I wrote a long breakdown of the story after reading the comments here. I have deleted it, because after watching it over and over, I think it works as is. There were some good ideas here about what could have been done to make Sintel’s motivation more believable. Some of them were excellent, like showing Sintel and the dragon getting bigger together as the time-lapse bedroom scene progressed. That would have quieted the critics concerning Sintel’s motivation for going on such a long journey. I’ll agree to that one, but I think the rest were simply nit-picking about the artistic vision. They weren’t flaws. There is a big difference. Just because you don’t like something, doesn’t mean there is something wrong with it. Not everything has to be completely explained.
The biggest point of contention was the reveal at the end. There are two artistic devices to set this up, and they have both been mentioned. Fight Club vs. The Sixth Sense. Sintel’s creators chose Fight Club. With this device the creative team gives you the vision in the protagonist’s head. And at the end you realize you weren’t seeing the character as they really were earlier in the film. With The Sixth Sense, the creative team gives you ambiguous scenes that make you trick yourself into believing the wrong thing. The Fight Club way is not wrong, or a trick. It is a valid artistic device. But if you think back, A lot of people really didn’t like Fight Club. And not just a little bit, they hated it. The Sixth Sense on the other hand was almost universally praised by everyone. It let you play back each scene in your head, after it was over, and reinterpret what you saw. People liked that. Many people didn’t like what Fight Club had done. However, some people loved Fight Club and the technique used. That’s really a matter of individual perception. Both are valid devices. Why did Sintel’s creators choose the Fight Club way? I don’t know. I hope they were aware of the chance they were taking regarding the audiences reaction. I don’t have a problem with it, but it does make the ending a little jarring. Maybe glossing over some other plot points earlier in the story compounded the reaction.
I was hesitant to show it to my wife after reading the comments here. I thought she would find it too dark and confusing. In the end, I’ll defer to my wife (always a wise thing to do) who said, “they’re idiots! If they want every thing explained in detail then they can go watch a movie like The Proposal.” That’s not a criticism by her. She likes watching The Proposal, but only when she doesn’t feel like thinking. Sintel was made to make you think. And it did. So I say it was a success. It’s a short. Not a full-length movie. They’re not supposed to explain everything in detail. You fill in the details yourself!
The software:
One comment here that stuck with me was, “Sintel is not Blender.” I think that must be emphasized. Sintel was a product that was overly-ambitious for the resources, and possibly the talent that went into it. I say possibly, because with greater resources it might have been much better, even with the same team. We’ll never know. There are scenes in Sintel that look like they could have come out of pixar. But they were the exception, not the rule. And we wanted Pixar! I bet if we forced Pixar to make their next movie With Blender, then with hundreds of people working for two years along side programmers they could do it. I watched the making of The Incredibles and it showed how even late in development they still couldn’t get the hair working right. Despite god knows how many months of non-stop work devoted to getting it right. The director was scared that they would not get it working in time for their deadline. Let’s not forget just how hard animation is!
Having said that, I implore The Blender Foundation to scale back the next project dramatically. Cut the length down to 3 minutes or less. And don’t set a deadline for release, at least not publically. Then get a copy of every Pixar movie ever made. Next, scrutinize every scene in the next short, side by side with what Pixar does, and make sure it looks just as good. This might force you guys to really improve the renderer. Stop adding tools until the renderer is better. If you can’t do it, then use an external renderer. But don’t release it until we can end this Blender vs. commercial-software debate once and for all. I’m convinced you can match Pixar quality if you scale back the length.
Pixar:
Let’s make a rough estimate of the work needed. Let’s say Pixar has 200 people working for two years to make a 100 minute movie. For the ease of calculation, let’s say they work 5 days a week. That equals 260 days a year: (2*260*200) / 100 = 1040 manpower-days per minute of animation to get it done.
Blender Foundation:
Let’s say Blender has 10 people and is only going to make 2 minutes of animation. How much time would it take Blender to achieve the same level of workload. 1040*2/10=208 days. Now add back in the weekends to get the number of weeks needed. 208/5=41.6 weeks of work.
Conclusion: Blender Foundation, please limit your next project to 2 minutes. Get 10 people, and in 41.6 weeks we’ll see if the quality issue is Blender software, or Blender workload. If you want to shorten the project to 6 months, then get some help again from other teams. This is doable.
I really hope Ton will take this proposal seriously. Why, because nothing would help the spread of Blender more than having real bragging rights to top-quality animation. I live in Hollywood, and have worked in the entertainment industry for decades. I come from an “Industry” family. And I am a recently converted (2.5x) Blender fanboy. Trust me, Blender needs something like this. It doesn’t need another Sintel with uneven quality!
Having said that, I like Sintel very much! I’ve watched it at least 10 times already.
The main difference between Sintel and Fight Club is this: Fight Club’s “trick” is consistent with the character. We are seeing the world through the eyes of a delusional man. Even so, there are various hints through out Fight Club that they are the same guy, mostly by the female character(Marla Singer, played by Helena Bonham Carter), plus the continuous references to the main character spending more and more time “sleeping”(he thinks he is sleeping but in reality it is Tyler Durden, his alter ego, taking over his body). This are all very cleverly put in the movie. I don’t think Sintel is portrayed as a delusional character, it is not incorporated into the character’s mannerism. Apart from that, Sintel might be the protagonist, but fight club makes an extra effort to get across the fact that it is a first person narrative(that’s why they use voice over, always a controversial choice). More over, there is no hint, up to the final scene, of her aging.
Secondly, I don’t think Sintel is made to made you think, and it has nothing to do with wanting things to be explained. I do not dislike the story because there are parts that haven’t been explained, I just think that they COULDN’T be explained. Thing is, when you think about the story is when you realize its flaws, you cannot imagine a coherent, consistent, plausible world starting from what is shown in the movie. It is not a matter of imagination, or of lack of imagination. Just tell me, can you picture a woman who can go on a trip 20 years long and not realize the time that has gone by? It doesn’t make sense! It can pass while your not thinking about it, while you’re taking what is given to you as is, but once you try to IMAGINE and fill in the blanks, well, you cannot. Because your imagination tells you this tale is a silly one.
I think there is a hint that she is not seeing herself correctly. When Sintel gets attacked by the animal on her quest she get scratched on the arm by it, but when she grabs her arm and looks at it, there isn’t a mark on it. Then at the end when she sees herself as she really is, there are scratch scars on her arm exactly where she was scratched by the animal. There might be more clues. But that one is noticeable.
Once you see Sintel’s single-mindedness and her unwillingness to see herself as she is, it isn’t a stretch that she has ignored reality to recapture the feeling she had with her “small” friend. No matter how time goes by in her life she still sees her friend scales as a small dragon. If she could allow her conscious mind to think about the dragon no longer being small, then she would never continue on her journey. Think about it this way, if your child was abducted, you would always see you child as the age it was when it was abducted. Even 10 years later, you wouldn’t picture your child as small. Combine that with Sintel’s delusion and it makes perfect sense.
Also, I think people here are being too literal here. This story is a metaphor for trying to recapture something you’ve lost, even when you should know in your mind that it’s gone, your heart won’t let you see it. I think people who use 3D software, for the most part, are detailed-oriented methodical people. Perhaps that’s why there are so many people here having a difficult time with the story. Some people have no problem at all. This isn’t a criticism, it’s just a fact that Sintel is not a film for everyone.
“perfect sense” is a stretch, I don’t think anyone who lost their child for 10+ years would actually expect to find him looking exactly as it did. One thing is to picture something in your mind a certain way, another is to actually expect the world to be that way. Some time over the course of those 10 years you’d ask yourself “I wonder what he looks like, nowadays”.
As for the sratch, I think that’s just sloppy texturing(and if it isn’t, then it is just poor camera work)
differentsmoke said” “perfect sense” is a stretch”
I said combined with Sintel’s delusion! Not by itself.
differentsmoke said “As for the sratch, I think that’s just sloppy texturing(and if it isn’t, then it is just poor camera work)”
Did you make the move? That’s an assumption on your part. One of the filmakers will have to answer if that was intentional or not. Sintel’s expression when she is scratched is clear. She winces in pain, then grabs her arm, looks at it and there is nothing there. Suddenly she looks fine, and doesn’t look in pain anymore. Seems clear to me. But if someone from the Durian team could answer this I would appreciate it.
@Joeri67 : good attempt, but your MPG file plays with sound only on a computer. On a standard DVD player it plays without sound. You probably used a wrong codec for the sound track…
I want to say up front that I can understand how some people might be disappointed by Sintel. I was not. Just like Elephants Dream, the story was something “open” to interpretation; something completely different and something that really did make you think.
Like Terrachild has been saying, the key to understanding the entire film is Sintel’s delusion. She genuinely does not understand the passing of time! If she is so deluded that she believes herself to be young and preserved throughout her whole journey, of course she will be deluded enough to think that she is looking for a young dragon! Her weakness is that she loved the period of her life she had with Scales, and because she didn’t WANT to believe that things were changing, she didn’t.
The missing cut from the leopard-thing is the clue: Sintel genuinely believes that no matter what she goes through, she will remain the same. Until the end we see Sintel as she sees herself. And at the end, when her delusion is finally broken by the reality of what she has done, we see her as she really was all along.
The story is just deep and really does make you think. There is really so much to feast the mind upon! Here’s an example. When Sintel receives the cut on her arm (that she doesn’t understand she has received), it is on her left arm. It is on the dragon’s left wing that he has his cut. The old man in his hut took Sintel in just like Sintel took in her dragon, but unlike Sintel, he is not deluded enough to mess things up.
And there are connections… for instance, the old man says, “this blade has shed much innocent blood”. Think about it… it shed innocent blood throughout its entire career and by the end of the film, shed more. The symbolism and connections are amazing sometimes.
How about this? At the end Sintel is “old”… but she’s not THAT old. I wondered for a while why the animators didn’t make her grayer, more wrinkled… but the point of the end of the film is, even though she’s old and scarred, she’s not THAT old and not THAT scarred… she still has a glimmer of hope and vitality to share with the baby dragon.
There’s so much more to think about and ponder, so much open to interpretation! Why was the man attacking Sintel at the beginning of the film? What will happen to Sintel and the baby dragon at the end of the film? Why was Sintel living all alone all her life? How did Scales get the cut on his wing? Why did the large dragon come to fetch Scales?
All in all, I think it is an amazing film story-wise. It lives up to what the Blender Foundation has been trying to do: make open movies, movies that are not only open in a licensing and software sense, but open for interpretation.
As far as graphics, I agree that many parts looked like video game cutscenes. But a lot of the movie was absolutely visually stunning! And, bottom line is, we got a better program out of it. So I’m happy!
@Terrachild: No, I didn’t made the film, but you cannot rule out assumptions that reflect bad on the movie when everybody who’s defending it relies solely on assumptions like “maybe she was delusional”, “maybe it was the most important thing in her life”, “maybe the guy had a reason to attack her”, etc. Mine is not even such a stretch. It doesn’t look like something done intentionally, not on the first viewing, not on subsequent viewings. If it was, my film making intuition tells me a bit more attention should’ve been put on the scratch itself. If you’re making a movie, you control what is noticeable and what isn’t.
“No, I didn’t made the film, but you cannot rule out assumptions that reflect bad on the movie when everybody who’s defending it relies solely on assumptions like “maybe she was delusional”, “maybe it was the most important thing in her life”, “maybe the guy had a reason to attack her”, etc.”
But these aren’t assumptions. It’s stated clearly that it’s very important to her. It’s illustrated clearly that she was delusional in the final scenes. These aren’t assumptions. The “maybe the guy had a reason to attack her” objection just seems absurd. He was a bandit? She was in dangerous lands? We really don’t need to stretch much for that one.
There are clues given about both the time-lapse and the delusion. The scratch is an obvious one mentioned already, but how about the fact that she walked across both a desert and snow-covered mountains?
I think some people are giving the story to much credit for being different, and comparing it to fight club is insane. fight club was very well executed sintel was not. But the biggest problem with sintel is, the story is just dumb . people cannot relate to it because of a huge flaw.
yes we all get attached to pets. but come on if you find a stray dog and you spend what a couple days or weeks with it and the dogs mom comes and take s the dog back are you going to travel thousands of miles for what 20 years to take the dog back from its mom? clearly sintel is a psychopath . i mean maybe if you were really crazy and the dog was taken by a dog catcher or something like that then i can see maybe if you were totally nuts trying to rescue the dog. so right away the story for me is like WTF come on really . really makes no sence. and yes i get it sintel is insane, and super lonely , and weird i get all that but really the premise of the story is already a pretty big stretch and pretty hard to relate to. if sintel found an orphan child that was kidnapped instead of a baby dragon this story would have been more believable. so instead of the story seeming progressive and different its just unrelatable and kinda dumb in my opinion. people yeas get very attached to animals but not like that unless they are totally psychotic . 99% in the same scenario watch scales get taken away and feel sad about it the end.
Please do not explain the story again I get it I just think its dumb.
The story of a man in Cambodia
How to make people more happy in
About 60% of the people to slaughter …..
So it’s not a fact not
Countries with sufficient resources and adequate production capacity have
5% of the people
Dude pick up a living!
Well enough that they do not care about the government.
So help from other countries ….
Then there’s the story ….
Palestine is a country which ……
…
…
This story, and I never want to …
There is a story in the Netherlands
Sintel was a girl ….
…
…
Yes
The story of a woman who is Sintel
It’s more realistic
Great story
Freen said “Terrachild: Spot on. This was the intention. Not seeing the injury is a hint about Sintel’s delusion.
There are indeed other hints. (Look for reflections, for example)”
I saw the reflection of her face in the bowl, but when viewed on my T.V. it was completely unnoticeable. But when I viewed it in HD on my computer I thought I saw that something was different about her face. It looked older. But it was too subtle to know for sure. The arm scratch was obvious to me. Because at the end, attention was drawn to the scar when she realized that something was wrong.
I love blender and will be forever greatfull to this wonderfull application that I
use everyday.
But I totally agree with: differentsmoke and ghost3d
The following are for the artist not for Blender
Pros : Allow to develop Blender 2.5
Cons : I though Collins was supposed to come up with an meaningfull story?
: Sintel’s animation are weird sometimes specially when she walk
: Such a great team of Artist with amazing showcase before Sintel and the final
result is technically very disappointed specially the animation of the Characters.
Animate a Rabbit is not the same as animate human being, I knew you
should have choosen another animator Ton. So many applicants why not l
leave the opportunity to somebody else. I hope we will all learn from that
lesson
:Andy Golz was not present in this project and you can feel that, although David
did a fantastic Job in term of Art.
: I still do know what happened to the Angela Guenette…
I am still deeply in love with Blender.
The future Mango project should be done by Outstanding Artists in the community: Andy G., Andrew Price, Kernon Dillon, Jonathan Williamson, Bassam Kurdali and the great Tony Mullen, please consider it.
I had a typo that messed up the meaning of what I was trying to say earlier.
I wrote “Even 10 years later, you wouldn’t picture your child as small.”
I think most of you understood that I meant to say:
“Even 10 years later, you would picture your child as small.”
PoorStoryIdea wrote “comparing it to fight club is insane.”
No it isn’t. Because I didn’t compare the execution of Fight Club to Sintel. Honestly, where did you get that idea. Can you guys follow a simple argument?
Maybe many of you here aren’t native English speakers, so I’ll try to be patient.
Go back and read my explanation. I said that there were two literary (artistic) devices that can be used when you are going to attempt a “reveal” at the the end of a story like this. Identifying the movies in which they were used is not insane.
And my earlier point should not be glossed over. Many people hated fight club. And not just a little. This may be due to the technique used.
I’m dating myself here, but it’s a little like in Dallas, when Bobby died, and two seasons later Bobby appears in the shower in his bedroom, and it becomes clear that the last two years of the show never happened except in Bobby’s wife’s head. She dreamed the whole thing. Well, from then on nobody trusted the show anymore. And they stopped watching it.
Or to a lesser extent, when the medical show Saint Elsewhere ended, and you learn that the entire show (many years) took place in a snow-globe in the hands of an autistic child. That didn’t sit well with people either.
not in the same universe as pixar. if it looks the same to you you really have a poor eye for CG. The animation is armature level at best. Lighting is pretty poor overall. a couple shots looked great but that was it most of it had huge problems . basic elementary mistakes. no contact shadows, way to much ambient light . hard to tell light direction. may be a compositing issue. if your comparing sintel to lux jr done by pixar in the 90’s or tin tin then yeah i guess its in the same realm.
and stop saying sintel and fightclub in the same sentence its not worthy . its a super strange story idea just like elephants dream was. why does blender foundation try to make these strange animations with bizarre story lines? Who is making the story decisions over there? they need to step aside and get a real story teller to write the next one. no more of these people with mental illness stories please. if it wasn’t for big buck bunny I would say blender foundation was pretty one dimensional with its stories or maybe that big bunny was psychotic too! if your next story idea meeting starts with ” I have an idea we start off with this crazy ” stop right there no more crazy people please its tired put it to bed. doesn’t make you guys “cool or innovative” just focus on telling a coherent story for once.
I’m so glad i didn’t pay money for this I’d rather watch hoodwinked or all the Shrek movies in a row before watching this again. :P
I would also like to point out this hint toward Sintel’s delusion… the old man says, “you have only failed to see”. He says remarkably little the entire film, but what he does say is the key to understanding the entire film.
I think Joolme should write the next script!
I’m really starting to understand what he is saying.
Like, I’m connecting to his brain in some sort of weird symbiotic way.
Can you feel me Joolme? Can you feel my thoughts connecting to your brain?
Because I can feel you. I can see through your eyes as if they are my own.
Peace brother, some people just know how to speak the truth!
I showed Sintel to two of my students today. They are interested in Blender but otherwise I’d say about as unbiased as it’s possible to be. And they both were very impressed by how the story played out. They followed it, they were engaged, then surprised, and ultimately they had a strong emotional response. I definitely think that there is plenty of room to like or dislike the story, and reasonable criticisms. But all in all I think that the team pulled it off. For whatever flaws it has, the story works, as does the production as a whole.
One thing that critics are overlooking is that there are a lot of constraints on a project like this. There’s the software and the fact that it’s in development. 2.5 is *still* in development, and it was much moreso when this movie was being made. Working with alpha software presents all kinds of very real technical challenges that take time to solve. Deadlines are necessary for a variety of reasons (some to do with funding, some to do with people’s other plans, etc). You can’t just keep working on a project until everybody and their dog agrees it’s perfect. Other constraints include the fact that the story was written in part to conform to development goals (must have fire and smoke, etc).
As much as everybody wants to do it, I think that comparing a BF production to Pixar movies is kind of beside the point. The day the BF makes a 400 million dollar picture is the day Pixar gives its movies and all their assets and software away for free. I’d love to see either one of those things happen, but I’m not holding my breath. Unfortunately, there are some financial realities of moviemaking that make either of these situations a bit hard to picture.
If you absolutely must compare with Pixar, then compare Elephants Dream with The Adventures of Andre and Wally B and compare Sintel with Red’s Dream. Both groups are pushing different envelopes in their own ways. Every creative force needs time and experience to mature and develop, and Sintel is a terrific next step in Blender’s development.
@pixnlove, wow, thanks for the vote of confidence, but I beg to differ! Everybody on the Sintel team was better qualified and more capable than I am. If I ever do take part in an open movie project, I’ll be the one who benefits.
that was simply stunning :-) it looked amazing :-D great story telling as well, it plays with your emotions incredibly well, very few films ever manage to do that quite so well :-D
Stunning animation, but the gait of characters seems unnatural to me. Blender Foundation should seriously consider using motion-tracking in its next production.
I suggested to Ton Roosendaal that the next open movie should mix live action actors with CGI backgrounds and sets. I was glad to read that he has taken my advice. I also suggested a SciFi like movie, which would attract a large audience. Spinoiffs could even become profitiable.
@TonyM:
“Working with alpha software presents all kinds of very real technical challenges that take time to solve”
Sure… Have you seen the end credits text spacing?
Some problems are due to software, and others are to budget limits to fix the details.
But budget problems are also producers problems, some critz say the bar was to high, and in extent of not finishing the details they are right. A smaller movie would have left more time and resources to make what they where making a better product. This movie has some perfect parts as you mention. For instance the dialog is pretty flawless in explaining the story and the motion / storytelling takes the viewer from start to end over 14 minutes. Pretty cool for a “you tube” world of clickerdy-click.
But I would not be surpriced when Colin becomes the next Lucas that on the 25th anniversary of Sintel we’ll see a “digitaly enhanced” version.
@Olaf:
“Blender Foundation should seriously consider using motion-tracking in its next production.”
As a software challenge I agree, but I dont see the point of having cg characters that might as well could be filmed. And how to track a dragon?
“I was glad to read that he has taken my advice”
You are a funny guy.
A district 9 kind of movie would be putting the bar yet a little higher.
The lyrics for “I Move On” ( the song played at credits) Explain everything. Read them:
Come Take My JourneyInto NightCome Be My ShadowWalk At My SideAnd When You SeeAll That I Have SeenCan You Tell MeLove From Pride?I Have Been WaitingAll This TimeFor One To Wake MeOne To Call MineSo When You’re NearAll That You Hold DearDo You Fear What You Will Find?As The DawnBreaks Through The NightI Move OnForever Longing For The HomeI Found In Your EyesI Will Be ListeningFor The DrumTo Call Me OverFar Away FromMy Tender YouthAnd The Very TruthShowing Me What I’ve BecomeAs The DawnBreaks Through The NightI Move OnForever Longing For The HomeI Found In Your EyesYour VoiceSaw Me Through The Night
Take that, everyone who said “The plot sucked!!” and “Why the heck does Sintel take that huge journey to save a stupid dragon???!!11”
Oh, and one more thing: Sintel’s journey didn’t take years. Anyone who has read anything about dragons knows that a dragon matures and starts mating at six months. Months, not years. And do you think Sintel would look that good after ten years of travel(besides the scars and the grey hair (which was from extreme stress, not age))? If it was ten years, I wanna know what she uses to keep looking like a seventeen-year old… :)
Yayyyyy!
Well, let’s see what the Blender team whipped up this time…
…downloading…
Just got done watching it! Really well done, feels like an epic all in under 15 minutes!
silence, everyone is downloading and enjoying ^^
Downloading right now. Hooray!
Fantastic, well done!
absolutely stunning, big congrats to the team, u did an awesome job…
Downloading, big congratulations to the team for creating and publishing it.
Where is the 1920x1080p version?
monumental work!
proud to be a blenderhead :)
Very beautiful and touching. I’m so impressed and inspired.
WOW, just WOW!
Congrats!
really nice story ..
nice pictures .. the town is so nice ..
so good job ..
very very nice work, well done big congrats to the team and for all contributor
Dang, I’m at school and it won’t let me download :(
A big applause to the Durian team!
OMG… Brilliant…
good job it was great its on youtube you can watch in 1080p
It was e-e-e-epic!
Great job! Really great.
Incredible. Some scenes are really gorgeous. congrats, very proud to be a blender user. sadly my gf didn’t like it because of the ending :( but i thought it was great
Good job guys! it’s a masterpiece! I’ve seen it in 2k surround and it is just fantastic. My eyes were glued to my screen for the full 14 minutes and 48 seconds.
I wish you all the best and I hope to see you all soon on a new Blender project!
Seems like servers are already overloaded. :-O I’m just so keen to see it today, that I stay in our office till it is safely on my disk. But it still displays like 2 hours remaining and it seems to slowing down!!! :-(
Edit: Yeah… another server is much quicker! The Div-X one with the heaviest version is probably too far from me. I feel that I shouldn’t make no compromise and insist to enjoy it in the best quality. ;)
Awesome! I can see my name at 14:30 :D
Now I can’t wait for the dvds ^^
Just found that the story is too sad :(
Congratulations and thank you for this movie. I didn’t follow its development in the last months, it became better than I expected.
It has some really great pictures, animations, effects and a very sweet lady in it :)
If they had more money then, OMG
a bit longer, more flow between scenes.
With such limit resource creating this amazing piece, is really.
Acknowledge.
Great, just great!
JUST BEYOND EPIC!!!
BRILLIANT FUTURE FOR THE TEAM!!!
i can wait to see it. congratulations
Worth the wait!
Congratulations
Chears!
Enjoyed every second, really beautiful. Well done.
seen it! and it rocks !!!
Just picking my jaw up off the ground now. Such a good piece of work.
AWESOME!!!!
Impresionante movie ! he notado que han integrado al personaje EMO de Elephants Dream.
Great work, Blenderteam!
Well done to everyone, man, that was much more striking, in many ways, than I anticipated.
You’ve done yersels proud!
OUTSTANDING!
Congratulation to al!
2048???? Where is the 1080p version?
I’m the only one that spooted Proog at the market? Nice easter egg!
I was totally absorbed by the story that I had to watch it again to see the details :)) … tough I not feel laughing by the end of the movie…
If download is working slow, you can watch it HD (1080p also) on YouTube here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eRsGyueVLvQ
Great job!
You all did very good things! Thanks a lot for that movie!
Realy impressive!
damn you, durian team… *wipes a tear* :D
Downloaded the Divx-version, but it is ruined to start with.
Their Divx-logo is permanently present in the right bottom corner, and it’s BIG. It ruins the whole movie.
I guess we will just have to wait for the production-images, so that we can render our own H264-version, without that stupid logo. that’s my 2 cents.
Now I’am going to watch the ogv-version.
Impresionante movie ! he notado que han integrado al personaje Emo de Elephant Dreams
-Awesome movie!
I noticed that they have integrated the character Emo, Elephant Dreams
Amazing. Congratulations
@kardargo: That “stupid logo” is the logo of a premium sponsor. Without it this movie wouldn’t been possible. So bring respect and shut up.
Awesome movie!
I noticed that they have integrated the character Emo, Elephant Dreams
The files in the OGV torrents are misnamed. Currently their extensions are “.mp4”, but they should be “.ogv”.
@Live
Where did you see Emo?
I just seen Proog (?)
btw. A M A Z I N G
Can’t really find words to describe this, just
A M A Z I N G L Y A M A Z I N G
Awesome,and congratulation!
Wow, I’m so excited! I thought this day was never going to arrive but it has. Great job everyone. I have to say that the soundtrack is amazing. Great job again! ok, enough talk, i have to watch it again.
excelent, congratulation to the team!!
Yay!
:D
@mjordan:
Why shut up?
Rather a bit worse MP4 version without any logo than a HQ version with stupid logo!
I’m sad. :(
Wow, there’s so much to love about this. It’s truly epic, and in less than 15 minutes! Thank you for the non-cliched storyline. It was refreshing to be surprised. May many rewards come from this great work.
@mjordan
I realise they sponsored the project, although i dont not know to what extend. Cudos to them for doing so.
But, their version already has a 10 second intro showing the divx-logo to promote their involvement. There was absolutely no need to put the logo in the movie itself. To me this just ruins the whole experience.
If others dont see it that way, fine. But I will just wait for the production-png-files to become available and make my own h264-version (without a logo).
My equipment (21′ lcd screen, big audio-technica headphones) is no good for this greatness, must borrow a whole cinema room just for this awesomeness and watch it thousand times and then play Big Buck Bunny over a thousand too and then Elephants Dream also thousand times and… and…
where pendrive? TV… must brann.. dmag..e…. t oo. aw…vvesom… krn..el. pa… n….iii…iii…ii….i……… …
Amazing!!!!, i just start downloading!!! Congratulations to the team that makes this real
That was freakin beautiful! Loved the story, the execution,the music, the whole package. Congratulations to the team! It’s biggest success imho is that it’s a gorgeous MOVIE far from the application(s) or the servers and techniques used to bring this to life. I’m glad & proud to be a part of this community! Can’t wait for my DVDs now! ;)
Clap…clap…clap…clap… Bravo! Such powa…
Greetings and hugs to the team and BF from Greece!
@Ovidiu:
I already saw it at the pre-premiere, but of course I kept my mouth shut.
congratulations!!!
awesome story and some very innovative narrative achievements. great that it is a movie that could never have been done by an american studio. as others have said, it feels epic for being only fifteen minutes long and the ability to communicate so much information and depth of feeling in such a small amount of time – such economy of expression – is really a significant achievement to be proud of!
***
but i’ll be the dick and point out some pretty glaring flaws that actually took away from my enjoyment:
– hair interpenetration with collar in first close shot on sintel… pretty glaring and painful to see especially so early on. imo, this is a “showstopping bug”. the quality of things like rendering and animation can vary depending on budget but to have a glaring *error*… ouch. this should be fixed in future iterations of sintel… even if by the community if need be.
– water and fire are particularly poorly done. was hoping to see some of the very cool fluid simulation that blender has incorporated… but instead, we get particles and what appears to be a displaced poly plane with a texture that’s waaaaaaaay too high frequency for that small bit of water. like she was carrying an ocean in that bowl.
– SPOILER – i think the intent of the end is to reveal that sintel has grown old and that more time has passed than she realizes – that’s why she makes the errors that she does. but because we show her as young to the audience for the entirety of the picture and then show her AGING in the dragon’s blood, it is not clear… some people interpret this as being some kind of “magical aging”. it is a cheat on the audience because it’s not clear to us why she was being portrayed as young even though she became old.
this could have been solved by having the non flashback sintel be shown in silhouettes and shadows or hooded or something. and then we only really get a good glimpse of her (and probably she for herself) when the blood pools up around her.
also, another person that i saw this with didn’t actually understand that she became or was older… basically the only thing that changes is her hair color… it would have been better if the age was apparent and clear. more lines and wrinkles, more sunken facial features, etc.
i thought that the attempted effect of conveying that much in the blood reflection was really cool but it cheated the audience before and was not clear during and after. could have used some work.
– it’s not really clear why she’s being attacked and why it doesn’t strike HER as surprising or questionable that she is being attacked. she’d ask “why?” wouldn’t she? just a few lines of dialog here would have sold this encounter as something more than “a bit of action”.
– it doesn’t make sense that sintel passes out after the encounter with the guy at beginning. she is uninjured and it plays as a “movie faint”. it would have been a simple matter to give her a severe whack to the head during the fight to explain it. also, the attacker is not blind but he charges heedlessly even though she’s heading for the spear so that’s a weakness that could have been addressed in combat choreography.
– unnecessary shot of old man’s hut… again, can cause confusion. the only person around here in this desolate area is her attacker. it seems most logical even to the audience (if they were not so well programmed by other fiction conventions) that the cabin being shown is the attackers! a simpler, clearer way to introduce the shaman is to simply have a figure come over her unconscious form and then cut.
– final render quality leaves something to be desired… silhouettes and edges feel a bit too sharp and “unmarried” to the environment. something that sticks out is the tail of the big dragon behind sintel just before it swipes her. some of the subsurfacescattering seems to be creating almost an “inkline” effect. actually, maybe this looks fine transferred to film but as a direct digital movie, the outlines of objects have a cg, brittle and artificial quality… maybe a run through a film grain filter or something would help?
– animation and modeling are ok… sintel falls into the uncanny valley and just demonstrates how much harder it is to do humans than furry critters. some of the animation feels very… clunky and…. “keyframey” in a bad way like it was just barely finessed. this is not a deal breaker but yah, animation struck me as not being the best i’ve seen from blender foundation.
***
overall the movie is something to be proud of for sure and blender institute deserves credit for trying to be so diverse in their subject matter.
imo, the movie that has the best polish in terms of look and animation and modeling quality is still Big Buck Bunny.
but i’m hoping that because of the nature of “open movies”, the community can pitch in help make a “special edition” with some bug fixing and refining.
anyway, congratulations and rock on.
jin
Thanks so much for this movie !
@DimitrisC:
Yepz, the premiere last monday was really epic on such a big screen with very good 35mm projection.
Don’t think your PC screen can even get close to such an epic experience!
Um, both the mp4 and YouTube versions are h264…
You made me tear up over a completely non-existant animal…congrats bastards, haha.
Great job though team, seriously, for the production time and the team size this is a truly quality work. Just next time, how about not making me feel so horrible at the end? I have to go drink a shot or two now.
For those who don’t understand the ending:
SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER:
When the blood is pooring out of the dragon, she sees the scar, realizing that she just killed Scales, which grew up to a big adult dragon during her many years lasting journey.
The bady dragon in the cave is the baby of Scales.
Very moving! What was particularly impressive in the animation, was the impression of mass and density when the characters were jumping and moving! The textures were stunning as well as the lighting! The voice actors seemed to be emanating from the characters themselves! The facial rig on Sintel was very expressive.
Just watched it with my wife. VERY impressed!!!
So there are some things I found distracting that jin mostly covered above.
But hey! they had a limited amount of time, using new technology, and free/Open-Source tools. Not to mention most of the team was made up of hobbiest CGI artists.
All things considered they did an epic job and I can’t wait to see what happens next!!
Well done guys and gals, you’re my absolute heroes and an inspiration to me! CLAP CLAP CLAP CLAP!!!
Great job. blender2.5 rocks and I hope this short film will help the rise of this software over the (too much)COMMERCIAL solutions!
Great job you ve done guys. At first, durian should be a crazy action movie with ninja girafs and flying monkeys but your script is not so bad too ;)
Awesome…!!
It’s great that Ton takes great Blenderers from their attic/bedroom etc. to a studio environment making a movie more than a million people enjoy!
Man, I have tears in my eyes by the ending!
Downloading now through torrent in full HD, woohoo, it’s going at 300kb /s. Can’t wait to watch it. I will seed for a while to take the load off the servers.
Well done to all involved.
did you seen it? a flying ring near man from first (Elefant Dream) film? i fink it bug=)
Really lovely, the Sintel character is convincing, touching, as well texturing, animation and lighting. The only thing very annoying IMHO is a LOT of aliasing in high frequency fractal bump very visible in several scenes and in the final cavern fight. I think the general quality of the image is too sharp, 2048 px is a big resolution where all is noticeable; a beveled box with bump is not acceptable as a stone, without true displacement.. A beautiful antialiasing in the whole image and in procedural textures was the key factor for the succes of RenderMan, would be nice to see a similar attention to aliasing problem in the future development of Blender render. Anyway Sintel is a big achievement, huge compliments to the team.
I have to shut up, i have really to shut the f.+* up! I am amazed!
You achieved something big! something beautiful! We can see that a great direction can transcend the “glitches” – modeling, animation, story – so for that, bravo!
But I have been really blew up by the quality of lighting, the “texture” of the image, the camera work, wow!
You have done something incredible with an ALPHA software, damn!
Bravo again!
I’ll shut the f*.+ up definetly :)
UUUhhhh! AAAhhhhh!
Sorry guys, seems like 50% ready!!
Too many errors in it!! Texturing, shading, lighting etc. and also weighting!!! In almost every shot!!
I am completely diappointed!!!
@jin
Actually came here to make all of those points. ( i had made a couple, such as the water and blood, earlier on IRC)
You reflected my feelings exactly.
The story was good, but your right, there were inconsistencies, and the animation, was rather… Rigid., there was none of the fluidity that BBB had, or even that Elephants dream had..
The aging, well that was just a little bit odd. More of a Concept error than animation fault tho.. It doesn’t work well as an idea, much less when converted to CG, in a short film.
Ahh well, :) sorry for moaning, its a great Short, but yer.. a bit ‘Unfinished’
Community….. GO
ALSO, for thoes who didnt spot it…
Proog : http://i51.tinypic.com/hx85qo.png
EDIT: also, wow the rain scene is good!
I have no words… :’D Thank you!
You just gave Open Source Culture a HUGE boost into the stratosphere!
What a masterpiece!
Awesome! Sure, there were quite a few things that stood out as bad, but there were also quite a few things that stood out as being awesome! The animations were especially good! Every bit of it was better than what I could have done, so I’m not one to complain.
One question. Why the odd resolution and pixel ratio?
I’ve only seen the YouTube 360p so far but I was impressed. Textures, lighting, animation all very good. I thought the hair and the wind on the clothes worked well. There was nothing I saw that was obviously sub-standard. A jump up again from BBB. Congratulations to everyone on the Sintel team.
My only concern is that perhaps it needed to be a few minutes longer to flesh out the story some but hey BI did very well in the time and with the funds available.
I think even non Blenderheads will be impressed with the artistic achievement.
cry, Thanks For your works :-).
Ym very impatient, but Y think y was waining for my DVD :-D.. and diffuse it for all my family and my friends.
Ym so sure it’s a reussite :-).
Bibis
Absolutely fantastic. A really remarkable production. Well done to you all!!
Absolutely amazing! So fantastic Movie!
THE SCRIPT MAKES NO EFFING SENSE!!!!!
Really weak. Honestly, what is Sintel after? Snatching a baby dragon from her mother? That’s the motivation? We as an audience might be shocked to learn that “oh, years had gone by”, but her? she somehow managed to forget about the fact that 10 years(I would imagine, at the very least) had gone by and that the baby dragon might now be all grown up? And she just happens to find the dragon she was looking for in the first cave she walks into? what’s the significance of the tree(its on the logo after all) and who was the guy who attacks Sintel? was he just lurking on the snow on the off chance that a lone girl-on-a-quest might be passing by? And what does Sintel do for all that matter? She’s just an expert warrior who can go mano a mano with a Dragon, who just lives as a squatter in a(gorgeus, no doubt about that) ruined city? There’s no conception of the movie’s world below the surface level.
I won’t go over the technical details. The movie pushed the boundaries of Blender production. Still, I believe both previous efforts where more successful in reaching their goals, though obviously those goals were less ambitious. Having said that, it bothers me that for all the technical accomplishment, they couldn’t come up with a decent script. This is video game cut scene level, not short film level.
Kudos to Ton and all the team, really, I appreciate the work, but in the end this movie will not be judged by the effort it took to make it, but by the final product itself, and I believe it is lacking.
@Thomas:
That’s just the standard for 2K DI in the movie industry.
Why does the dragon look so weird at 10:17 and 10:48? As if it’s an old test render in a for the rest finished shot…
For the rest no complaints!
Oh, my god!
Now, I am looking at every scene! (bevore it was one complete run!)
Errors, errors and more errors! I could write a book about!!
I have doubts about Blenders capabilities!
woooohoooooo!!!!!! so awesome!!!
Tim,LA is an obvious candidate for director of the next movie to show us all how its done…
Bravo!..that was awesome, i loved all aspects from story to visuals, sound+music! Fantastic job! BLENDER FTW!
I thoroughly enjoyed it. Of course there are some flaws, but i couldn’t care less! It’s a magnificent achievement from the team, and a good showcase to the world what the open-source community can do.
Thanks are in order here. Free beer for any team member who’s willing to come to Eindhoven!
PS. So, when’s the next one coming out? :-P
I’m amazed by how many people didn’t get the story/ending. Were you all paying any attention?
An incredible production, and a fantastic showcase of how far Blender has come. Yes, there are errors, but I don’t think that most people realize that large 3D studios hire entire teams of people whose only job is to hand paint errors out of each and every frame. The Blender Institute does not have those resources available, but they have still done an amazing job with that they had, which is honestly next to nothing as far as funding goes.
Don’t get discouraged by nitpicky people. You all have made something very important here.
Amazing work. It was emotional, and heart felt. The quality was overwhelming. A triumph. Great work!
Great Job, maybe isn’t perfect, but see what we have now in blender and what we do have, That’s incredible, Thank’s one more time Ton Roosendall and Team, for such a great work, go BLENDER!
certainly i have to agree, the story pretty much is the weakest point… but picking on the technical and visual quality of the movie…. kinda poor. just imagine guys, toy story 3 took about 3 years and a team of 300 PROFESSIONALS and what came out: the same story as in toy story 2 and apart from the spanish mode buzz nothing outstanding.
here on the other hand there was just a bunch of hobby 3d artists (damn gifted ones by the way), who created within only one year a short movie full of pictures with one beautiful composing. the camera and the cuts just work perfect, and all this only with blender in alpha state… i just can say, you got my full respect.
little mistakes, like hair penetrating the collar… i bet the guys noticed these things and they would have loved to correct it, but time is always too short, so they had to deal with it
I really like the story, I think it has much to do with your Suspension of Disbelief.
Only a pity that there are some little errors that could easily get fixed in time by a few external contributors.
Visuals were pretty good in general. Blender has definitely come a long way.
The story was kinda weak, but again, if the main purpose was to showcase Blender capabilities, I’d say mission accomplished.
Great job guys
this is pretty average to be honest. would have been great 10 years ago. the look is just not up to par by todays standards. the lighting is very fake looking. way to much ambient light and no contact shadows. the animation is subpar. Characters have hoses for arms that don’t bend right. After big buck bunny i was hoping for something much better. kind of a let down. big buck bunny was much better . the blender foundation still has trouble telling a good story. in all the movies so far there are some confusing moments that are unclear. the first movie with the two crazy dudes was just straight up strange. buck bunny was a lot better but still had flow issues. and this one sadly is a stead back. Why do these films in such a short amount of time? i would take the time to really develop the story and not try to do so much with the software. I totally agree with jin , a lot of valid points .
just offering some unbiased feedback to help you guys make better films. but if you compare this to even a pixar short from 1996 it falls a little flat. why not integrate pixie or an open source render man engine the blender render engine seems really dated looking. I’m dying to try blender on a personal project but I haven’t seen anything done at a high level yet. :(. Anyway I know you guys will get there just keep up you’ll get better and better. one day we may all be using blender :). but right now it just doesn’t seem up to speed.
How would you write the story? Come up with something!
I found the visuals great, but the story was probably a little too sad. But great job on the film overall I thought it was pretty good =D
I am currently downloading the video, but I have seen it through youtube. I’d say considering the time and financial constraints, as well as the number of volunteers working on the project (a feature film would employ hundreds of artists), plus the fact that they’re working on developing blender at the same time, I’d say the result is pretty awesome!
As for the story being the weak link, it’ll only be fair to say that the story was squished into an approximately 11 minute video and that of course, additional story details would have to be deleted. If only this was a full-length feature film and more budget, and more resources to work on the animation, this would be a truly epic film!
On to the full-length feature movie! :P
as someone said earlier, a movie stands or falls ON ITS OWN MERITS. the conditions of production or the budget does not and should not figure into the evaluation of the work itself.
and i say this as someone who has turned out less than perfect work himself because the budget/schedule allowed for nothing better.
it’s no good to make excuses.
it’s one of the first things that my jr. high school english teacher taught me – NEVER MAKE EXCUSES FOR YOUR WORK.
my less than perfect work was not LESS IMPERFECT because of the budget or schedule. the imperfection does NOT get MITIGATED by the conditions of production. why should it after all? in hollywood, whether your movie cost $10,000 or $100 million dollars, the audience pays the same price.
but it DOES mean that the artists are not culpable though. and i don’t see anyone jumping down their throats.
but the work is what it is. and it does nobody any favors to ignore issues that are present.
***
to be clear, i (and most here) are not saying sintel is bad by ANY means. there is indeed a lot to be proud of.
but we must also recognize that these flaws and errors people are calling out are not just in comparison to powerhouse juggernauts like PIXAR and DREAMWORKS and the criticisms are therefore somehow unjust or unfair. as i argue above, it is as fair as it is inevitable.
but even under its own premise, THIS IS A FALSE AND DISINGENUOUS tactic.
you can compare even to student films like http://www.oktapodi.com/index.html which did NOT have access to billions of dollars and trillions of artists and still be found lacking. (i’m sure you guys can find many other independent or student works also that have no “bugs” as sintel does)
heck, you can even compare it to Big Buck Bunny which despite having a small budget and team, did not suffer from such, at times, egregious issues as are present in Sintel.
so Sintel’s not perfect. i think it’s better to acknowledge that (and learn from it) than try to ignore it and pretend it is the pinnacle of CGI achievement.
no?
and again, to everyone involved, high five and rock on. it is indeed a tremendous accomplishment. be proud and sleep well, get some rest. and just take the valid criticisms and try to be better next time.
jin
the story is just kinda weird. who is sintel I feel no connection to her there is no character development, why was she randomly attacked. that whole section was just added just to add an action sequence , thats taking a page out of a bad Hollywood film doing things just to add them in cause it seems “cool” the shaman guy who is that guy i really could care less about him too again no character development. I felt like sintel barely knew scales what they were friends for like 2 days and she is already devoted to the thing? not enough development of that relationship. the whole aging thing at the end was just weird why did it take her like 20 years to find a cave? why was she after a dragon who’s mother came to take her home? scales was never in danger what was her urgency to follow and save scales? the whole story is a bunch of random thoughts jammed together to make a story . I mean the old dude says your in dragon country, well seemed like there were a lot of dragons around where she lived was that not dragon country as well? none of these thing tie into each other. the random attack by an animal again just action for action sake. why not have a few more scene of her and scales develop that relationship more. have some time pass so we know they are great friends. i mean she never even changes her clothes how is the audience to know time has passed? . maybe on her journey she pulls out something that reminds her that scales needs her help so she continues on when she feels like quitting. maybe that thing she pulls out is valuable and the attacker guys sees her pull it out and we see him start to follow sintel. then we know why he is attacking her to get the valuable object. then she is hurt and colapses. the old man takes her in and time passes under his care she gets older at this point her and the old man become friends he gives her advice and continues on her journey years later. this would explain the massive amount of time that has passed. and we “care” a little bit more about the old man. then in the cave instead of the baby dragon just sleeping peacfully we see the baby dragon looking like its in some sort of trouble so sintel moves in. when she gets close she relises its not in trouble its just sleeping and that the big dragon is the mom so she tried to leave but makes some noise and the big dragon attacks she has no choice now but to defend herself. they fight and the dragon is killed buy a huge falling rock or something unintentional at this point she figures out its scales and feels horrible. then the audience isnt confused by why she is in the cave trying to take a sleeping baby and kill the mom for no reason . even if the big dragone was scales mom why would she kill her friends mom? to many holes in the story . like I said the blender foundation has a long way to go in story telling its an art form people study and perfect and I’m sure they will get there one day but they need to take the story part more seriously instead of trying to show off the software. that is if they want to make high quality films witch is what im assuming they want to do . the CG was ok it wasn’t great buy todays standards the animation was ok not great. I understand some poeple get offended when you critique their beloved blender foundation in anyway they are obviously not professional artist I get critiqued ever single day i dont get offended its how you improve if you were an awful singer and everyone told you you were great so they didn’t hurt your feelings you would never know you were terrible and you would never get better. grow up its a short animation and it has a ton of flaws just letting the blender foundation know so they can improve. they are all grown men and women they can handle it. if I release a short film I would love to hear all the bad things about it so my next one is better .
anyway i do think there are a couple scenes in there that looked great definitely a lot of upside and i know one day you will knock everyones socks off keep it up!
I just watched it for the second time. Awesome work! Everyone involved should be extremely proud of what they accomplished.
I loved the story, it felt like it had substance and avoided cliches. Great job with the editing, the pacing was awesome and the sound design brought it to an epic level.
The rain scene was just incredible! I’d have to say it was my favourite of all.
Congrats all around!
Well Done!!!
Due to the current overload of the sintel serves, here are some additional and pretty fast Downlaod servers:
1024 x 436: http://www.duckload.com/download/899214/Sintel.2010.x264-VODO.mp4
1280 x 544: http://www.duckload.com/download/899177/Sintel.2010.720p.x264-VODO.mp4
2048 x 872: http://www.duckload.com/download/899257/Sintel.2010.2K.x264-VODO.mp4
@ghost3d: you are totally right
OMG! Well done Durian and a massive round of applause to Ton who managed to keep everything under control! Yes my fav scene was probably the rain one as well! Too bad it wasn’t done by the durian team :-( Anyway Awesome movie guys. Hopefully Channel 9 get back to me about airing it in Victoria!!
JD
Just to add my 2 cents. Great film! You guy should be very proud of what you accomplished with the budget, size of team, and timeframe you had. Everything flowed very well, and the story was moving, although perhaps it went a little bit to much into cliche violence (that could just be opinion). Most of the scenes were very professional looking, I only noticed a few scenes where either the modeling or the animation was…’clunky’? (But you probably already noticed those, and so we should just stop with the negative comments, like when you released those renders of Sintel in the shamans hut and everybody got all criticizing-ish.)
Jan, I am amazed. You can tell that this is good music when you can’t remember the film having any after you watch it, because it’s so good it fits right it. You definitely made a big contribution to the team.
Overall, I must say that I liked the plotline of BBB better, just because it was funny. However, where this film really excelled was showing how Blender can be used for many different environments (I was thinking during the Quest section how someone had put those different environments in SIMPLY to show of what blender could do). And, of course, another bonus was all the contribution to Blender 2.5 that happened.
But you already know all that, so there’s no point in me telling you.
Great Job!
@Josh
That would be great! Fantastic! Amazing!
@jin:
I do agree with most that you are saying here. Same boat. What I do think that the difference between BBB and Sintel is the fact that expectations and ambitions for the film were higher for Sintel than for BBB. This may or may not have affected the development of the film during the course of it’s development.
In fact in terms of animation and art, BBB is beautifully crafted. No argument there. Maybe some people can improve on the sintel movie once the blend files come in, after all, it’s open (I can’t because I’m just a software developer, and have no 3D skills whatsoever)!
I’d have to say, the work done by Team Argentina (correct me if I’m wrong here – if I recall there was also Team America – all volunteers working on different parts of the film) on the rain scene was pretty good!
Complements well deserved, Durian team.
Fairly enough to showcase the full potential of Blender.
I love the cave scene–most realistic and artistic. :)
OK. SBS has come back saying they would love to organize airing the entire open movie trilogy sometime in the near future. I’m waiting to hear back from channel 9 first to hear what they have to say :-) Heres hoping!
@josh
If they do, could you organize a post on blendernation, so all of us here in Australia can tell others when its on! They could get hold of the documentaries too, that would make an interesting watch!
Wow. Great story. Touching animation.
It is great to see how much community input made its way into the film. It rocked.
Thanks to all of you Durian Artists and Programmers for your hard work and endless hours spent behind computer screens, and putting up with our endless criticisms and suggestions.
888 seconds of wow – I can’t stop watching it. Very proud of this film.
@KellPossible
GREAT IDEA! A behind-the-scenes look into Sintel and the others in the ‘trilogy’ would be awesome to watch after seeing the movies. Let alone massive advertising for Blender! So far nothing from Ch.9 *sigh*. Oh well, I’ll keep you posted!
I don’t understand why everyone is talking about the budget as if it’s some paltry sum, as if these guys turned the movie around for pocket change in their garage. The article referenced on Blendernation just two posts before this one listed the budget at 400,000 euros. That is a ton of coin for a twelve minute film.
All other critiques aside, please don’t mention their budget as a constraint. There are plenty of studios that could turn around a 12 minute short for less than that.
And please, find somebody to write a decent story next time. Elephants Dream made no sense, Big Buck Bunny was decent, but predictable, and Sintel made almost no sense at all. And all three movies were about one person/animal being mean to somebody/something else.While I’d prefer a story about some sort of triumph or accomplishment, if you are going to insist on doing another tragedy do some research on some of the masters of tragedy like Shakespeare or Cormac McCarthy. They do it right.
Epic movie. Would be great to see this become a full-length feature. Makes me feel proud to use blender
Loved the technical side. Some of the animation was simply incredible. Most of the lighting was great, and most of the camera shots were well done. It truly showed off what is possible in Blender. The story, however, well, I have to think that the time constraint put a monumental strain on the plot, but still…..
Okay, it started in a good place, a cute girl, trekking in the cold and wind, nearly dies at the hands of an unknown attacker. Way to grab the attention. The shaman’s hut was way too easy to find, and it made no sense for an enemy of the gatekeeper (or whoever he was — it was never explained) to live right where he presumably patrolled. A better method of getting her to the hut would be for the shaman to find her, collapsed and exhausted in the snow, then carrying her inside. The flashback ensues.
Okay, dragons are apparently rather common because Scales runs free through the town with one without comment. Scales recovers from her injury and flies after some birds. Momma dragon (I’m assuming it isn’t some sort of dragon pedophile) takes her.
Plot weakness #1: in a quest type story, there must be a compelling reason to go on a quest, but there was no compelling reason for Sintel to go after her. My first thought was that momma dragon had been hanging around in case her offspring showed up. What was Sintell thinking, that she had first rights to a dragon who was eventually going to feed on cows, deer and maybe people? Sintel might want to make sure that she was okay, or to visit her later, but to steal her back? Doesn’t make sense.
Sintel goes on a quest to find her. It takes who-knows-how-long, but apparently years.
Plot weakness #2: Sintel is wearing the same clothes and looks the same, with the same haircut, and so there is no indication that much time has passed.
Plot weakness #3: Sintel expects Scales to look the same after so long, but if dragons are common enough to be hopping through a market, then surely she would have realized that Scales would be a BIG girl now, not an infant.
Plot weakness #4: Sintel grew older after she killed Scales. Why? Where in this short did we have a hint that magic was in the world? What was the meaning of that? All it was, IMO, was another way of making the plot even more of a downer.
Plot weakness #5: I didn’t like Sintel very much at the end. She was much more of a destructive fool than a heroine. She even left the baby dragon behind after she killed her mother.
Plot weakness #6: Where is the theme? What was proven? What was demonstrated? What did we learn? We learned that teenage girls aren’t to be trusted to raise dragons. We learned that some shamans offer soup instead of sage advice. If the comment about her not being able to see properly and the line about the blade having shed innocent blood were supposed to be warnings or foreshadowing, it was too vague to matter.
Ultimately, a story is designed to lead the viewer or reader to a certain form of satisfaction. A love story is supposed to make us feel happy that two lovers who were made for each other made that connection. A quest is supposed to leave us satisfied that he quest was completed satisfactorily. A revenge story is supposed to make us feel better that the villain got his. How could anybody get the warm fuzzies from this? Would a mother or father bring their kids to watch the supposed heroine skewer her best friend? Ah…. No; the kids would be disturbed for weeks. This ending makes as much sense as having the “Toy Story” characters end up compacted in a trash compactor and buried in a dump.
A few suggestions:
First, make sure Sintel gets a better motivation for going after Scales. When momma dragon snatched her out of the air, Scales was kind of waving goodbye. If Scales was squirming frantically to get away, I could see, possibly, Sintel going after Scales to rescue her.
If the plot demands a long passage of time, then make the passage of time more apparent. The magical aging, sprung on us as an afterthought in the end, adds nothing to the plot and only distracts. Sintel can grow a little. She can become an older teenager in some epic rescue-a-dragon clothes. There might be a scene where she learns how to fight.
Or, Sintel might just not take very long to find the land of the dragons. Why not? She can simply ask where they are or read a book. This mystery of where dragons live would almost surely be about as mysterious as discovering where the Eskimos live, or where lions roam.
She barely survives a battle with a bandit, not a gatekeeper. A shaman finds her, or she staggers to a hut.
Forget about mentioning that the spear has a bad past unless that’s going to be a factor, but logically, the shaman should give her some sort of wisdom instead of just being a sounding board for a flashback.
Sintel encounters the dragons. She either sees that Scales is happy and watches her and some of her friends soar in the mountain skies, and walk away, sadder but wiser, and happy for Scales,
or, she meets Scales, who is caught halfway between returning to Sintel or staying with her mother, and Sintel, wisely, lets her go,
or, Sintel is walking away, out of the cave after she sees that Scales is being cared for. The mother awakens and is about to have a Sintel snack, but Scales intervenes and saves her. The mother lets her go in peace after Sintel makes it plain that Scales is hers.
Sintel is absolutely brilliant. The coloring and the lighting drew me in to its world. Happy and sad all at the same time. Music score was wonderful. It was a masterful piece of work. As someone said earlier, I am proud to be a Blenderhead. Congrats to the Durian team.
Great job by the Sintel team!
I think a lot of the negative commenter forget a few things.
A. These Open Projects are going on along with development of the software.
B. Production time is very short compared to something pumped out of Hollywood.
C. Team size is much smaller than that of studios.
D. Everyone on the Sintel busted their butts to bring us another great Open Source Movie.
huh WHY is this sooner, I am still waiting on the DVD (did a pre sale months ago !!) wanted to show it to my friends. Disappointed.
Wow…..
Aside from some visual stuff that was a tad distracting overall not a bad movie considering that Blender 2.5 was being built during it’s production.
I will admit though, I was not a fan of the ending. Way to dramatic and depressing. Especially after watching BBB the story for this movie was a bit darker, I think. Maybe the Blender Foundation warned about this new direction, but still I was not prepared for that. I was thinking at the end, “Ok, where is the happy ending?”. Oh, well. Nice film and great work.
Thanks for the hard work Blender Foundation and for pushing Blender to be a better 3D application.
@anton
Exactly! You did a PRE sale. This means you bought the DVD before they had finished it! This movie was only released late last night (for us Aussies) and plans to start to manufacture the DVDs haven’t even began yet. Please be a little more patient mate!
Arrrhh….I’m late move…go…download….now….
hi all
I loved it but I’m not the biggest fan of sad endings. But i can hope someone will make a second and scales will be alive.
Anyone else want Scales to live.
Great Work Durian Team.
Great milestone Blender development, and Blender developers!
SPOILER ALERT:
The ending left me all sad and stuff, but the short film overall left me pretty impressed! Of course, some folks are going to point out the few shortcomings technologically, but people should remember that this was an open-project made by a team gathered around the world with the single purpose of producing a film using Blender and other open-source software to promote and showcase the development and capabilities of the the latest milestone in Blender development.
Yes, it was also for the purpose of providing 15 minutes of an animated short story (and I commend the Durian crew on their good hard work!), but it was also for the greater purpose of showcasing the developments in Blender they made along the way and to share just some of the possibilities with the new Blender developments. Blender is still well into development, and has a good way to go in some areas, but open-movie projects like these show just how far we HAVE come with Blender. We’ve come a LONG way, baby!
Overall, I have no complaints. I mean, it was a free little film, and I got my money’s…well, attention’s worth! :)
Cool!
I’m very proud about the team and Blender!
Good job!
but next time you should publish a 1080p scaled version too.
by the way, my PS3 couldn’t play any published file, the same problem on my Samsung TV, so i had to watch the movie on my desktop PC. At the weekend I try other codecs to get the movie played on a “large” Screen and hi-fi system. ;-)
Last but not least, a big THANK YOU to all peoples, they maid this possible!
BRAVO !!!!!!!
Congrats Blender team !!!
Beautiful. Great work everyone!
No one will ever doubt Blender again.
want to cry!
totally awesome movie.
congratulation :)
Beautiful movie. Loved the story, and many of the scenes are truly spectacular.
@Josh
Did not now that , with BBB I had the DVD before the download.
I will have patience Thanks
To the Sintel team:
You had a great story to tell, and you told it beautifully. I’m proud to be a supporter of this movie. After repeat viewings, I really appreciate all the small details. Sintel’s reaction after smelling the durian fruit in the market, Proog’s easter egg appearance, …..
(SPOILER)
…, the ominous warning that the blade has shed much innocent blood, Sintel’s discovery of her age and wounds, the crystals in the cave. There’s much visual awesomeness to behold here, too. Not perfection, but well-made, and easily my favorite of all the Blender movies in terms of overall storytelling. And, the software keeps getting better thanks to these projects. Can’t wait for the next one, and you can count on my support :-)
Amazing!! What a magnificent scale..!
Great. I’m not 3D artist, I need 3D only sometimes for simple web and app graphics. But after i watched Sintel, i had to order DVD. I don’t care, i will not be in titles. I just had to support this effort. Keep the good work guys. Thumbs up!
@Josh: Good luck getting it on to Ch 9…
It’s not really their thing, methinks.
(How do I know? I quit Ch 9 to come to Amsterdam and eventually to work on Sintel)
(SPOILERS)
Hi Aardvark, I don’t really agree with your criticisms of the plot – I’m just going to take apart your comment a bit. :-)
“there must be a compelling reason to go on a quest, but there was no compelling reason for Sintel to go after her”
It’s really quite simple – as Sintel tells the shaman, she’s been alone for as long as she can remember, meaning she’s probably an orphan. As the intro scene shows us, she’s lived a simple scavenger life. And as the montage shows, for the first time, she has a true friend and finds genuine fulfillment in her life. Her friend being taken away from her is the most terrible thing that could possibly happen to her.
“Plot weakness #2: Sintel is wearing the same clothes and looks the same, with the same haircut, and so there is no indication that much time has passed”
The filmmakers made a deliberate choice to conceal Sintel’s aging. In fact, when you consider her confrontation with the beast during her travels, it’s noticeable that it leaves no injury or scar either. Sintel is “stuck in time” since her friend was taken away. She’s obsessed with reuniting with him, and the passing of the seasons is meaningless to her. As the viewers, we’re asked to see Sintel as she sees herself, and we discover her scars, injuries, and true age when she herself realizes them.
“Sintel expects Scales to look the same after so long, but if dragons are common enough to be hopping through a market, then surely she would have realized that Scales would be a BIG girl now, not an infant.”
Again, Sintel is stuck in time, she does not understand how many years have passed.
“Sintel grew older after she killed Scales. Why? Where in this short did we have a hint that magic was in the world?”
It’s not magic, it’s purely psychological. :-) See above. It’s a bold stylistic choice, but one that completely worked for me. You’re dealing with a person who has been obsessed for years with a seemingly futile quest — how could her psychology not reflect that? Portraying an obsessed or psychologically damaged character based on their own inner world, as opposed to the outer reality, is a common storytelling technique.
What’s the great takeaway? That’s up to you, but I see it as a movie that’s about personal growth and development. Sintel’s never had a true friend before, and she’s had to learn everything about friendship — shared joyful memories and experiences, letting go, loyalty, hurting someone you love, loss — through this chapter in her life. But the movie closes with a new opportunity for her, a new beginning, and a new life. It’s ultimately not a sad movie, but a hopeful one.
I agree with the critics sadly… :< Story and visual world level wouldbe awesome about ten years ago. This shows me the some problems. If I work with blender I need 12 month and 400 000 eur to make this kind of short? If I worl with blender I need more money or better artists? Or more time? After all it's not a good advertisement for blender I think. There is many artist who can produce higher quality with this kind of budget and they don't need so many months. And many of my friends noticed why did durian team wasted time and money on such agressive story? I am simply disappointed.
When I first watched it, I kind of got disappointed with the ending as well. I am why is it disturbingly sad.
But after watching it a few times, well, I think it was a very good short film, and the ending was just right.
The story won’t leave your mind for a very long time because it was sad.
Anyway, Great Job Blender Team! Looking forward to the next films.
Fucking sad movie D:
@Erik Moeller “The filmmakers made a deliberate choice to conceal Sintel’s aging.”
see, the thing is, i can tell how this originated – as a written concept. you see this convention all the time in written fiction (last one i can remember is neil stephenson’s anathem) where because you don’t see the characters, you assume certain things about them because all you see is their “thoughts”.
but then as the story progresses, you realizing that “hey, something seems a bit strange here” and then at the end, you realize, holy crap, “he’s a she” or “he’s actually an african american” or “he’s an alien” or “she’s actually old”.
this is fair in written form because you’re not actively lying to the audience. you’re withholding information but the author (as opposed to a character or the persona) is not lying.
here, the film makers are lying to the audience… it’s a cheat.
as i said above, i think the same kind of literature trick could have been used if you only saw sintel fully in the flashbacks and in “present day” kinda stuff, she was hidden or obscured or hooded or silhouetted or something… this would be the cinematic version of “withholding information” but still “playing by the rules”.
GREAT EXAMPLE – it would be as if in THE SIXTH SENSE, if you see bruce willis was TALKING to haley joel osment’s mom and his mom TALKING BACK in the middle of the movie but in the end, the film makers CHANGE IT so that she did not talk back to him. that’s the kind of cheat that is engaged in in sintel. you have room to maneuver in ambiguity and not fully disclosing. but presenting information one way and then contradicting it feels off.
i understood what they did. but many people didn’t. and those who didn’t have good reason not to have understood.
imo, the piece is weaker for violating the trust of the viewer when they didn’t have to (silhouette, etc).
jin
@Erik Moeller: spot on mate. You got it.
There seem to be a number of authoritative and critical views here, but what I was wondering was this – how many on this thread have been involved personally (‘in the trenches’, so to speak) on a 15 minute full-up animation for a protracted period ?. I have no idea what the answer to that is, it may be many , it may be none, but possibly puts many of the critical comments into some sort of perspective. I know that I do work with Blender and Maya (and get paid for it from time to time), and small things take ages, and every thing is bespoke. It’s difficult to be sure. But…I’ve never done a 15 minute short, so while I can appreciate all the fine detail and nuance, I can only watch it as a punter, rather than as an armchair football manager. And I did, and rather enjoyed it.
Way to go Durian team! A fantastic effort by everyone involved. The story had me engaged for the full 14 minutes, which is no small feat ;)
I’m sure the durian team are well and truly aware of the technical shortcomings, so in my opinion there’s no point in rubbing salt in the wound. Instead let’s just appreciate what the film has done for blender and thank all those that were involved.
Yay for completion! :D
The amount of work that has gone into this film is incredible. The Blender foundation and the Sintel team are an extraordinary bunch of people, sinking huge amounts of effort into a project knowing there won’t be any huge financial rewards.
So I must ask all the “critics” here when they are going to produce something better? Or will you all be downloading the Sintel source files and spending months of your own time fixing all those “errors”?
Do tell us when you’re done.
@MartianR “There seem to be a number of authoritative and critical views here, but what I was wondering was this – how many on this thread have been involved personally (‘in the trenches’, so to speak) on a 15 minute full-up animation for a protracted period ?”
this kind of sentiment is very frequently a response to criticism but here’s the thing – it doesn’t matter.
this is on par with saying “hey, unless you can do better, shut up about your botched open heart surgery. take it and like it.” or “unless you can fix your own breaks, stop complaining about the squealing”.
if the only people who could have an opinion about a movie are people who can make movies themselves, hollywood certainly wouldn’t have a large enough audience to sustain itself.
and as i said before, it doesn’t matter if you understand the CONDITIONS OF PRODUCTION.
if i get a really poorly done heart operation, is that heart operation of a better quality somehow if i learn later that the surgeon has been forced to work 72hours straight? or am i still really pissed that i can’t feel my legs anymore?
THE WORK STANDS ALONE.
and personally, i work professionally in cg and i’ve been subject to all kinds of adverse conditions. but i’m also the first one to call things as they are. i gain nothing from making excuses or worse, being delusional. from time to time, we are all called upon to do stuff that is less than pixar level work. that’s how life works. but if you do it, you better be able to see it as the less than perfect work it is. NO EXCUSES.
the work stands alone. but i don’t beat myself up either because i DO know the conditions in which this came about. so working conditions excuses the worker (if the doc has been forced to work 72hours straight and messed up, they probably can’t hold him criminally liable). it doesn’t excuse the work (botched surgery that is botched regardless of the doc’s hardships).
Superb! Thank you for this sensitive and touching movie. Incredible atmosphere, great vistas and touching story. And music. Thank you.
Wow, the characters were so life like you cold feel the personality. Well done.
Loved the crowd scene and the huge flyovers.
Great story.
@MartianR
Blender Foundation’s spending is not only the labor.
They
render farms and
different systems
And Blender has been spent on
development costs.
Efforts should not be lost.
Expansion of the productive forces must be brought.
Meanwhile, they made some really animated, but do you think?
@jin choung: please go see fight club ;)
@Erik Moeller: could not have said it better. Thankyou for clearing it up for the guys :)
Thanks Durian team!!! Never thought it would be possible to become so much attached to characters in such a short time :)
Well first of all I would like to say well done and let the guys in the team know that at the end of watching Sintel (in an empty room) I shouted out “Great stuff” and applauded out loud. This is a great achievement.
To add some constructive criticism I would say that the fight scene at the start was my least favourite moment and I would have like to have seen more of a blizzard to add to the intensity. I also found the beautiful music being too rich for some of the scenes – proof maybe that both visuals and the music need to make a impression to make an impact.
Maybe the story would have been better if Scales was the runt of the litter and had been purged from the dragon’s nest, hence the reason it’s found wounded (the mother is intent on killing Scales).
Again, well done to you all :)
@s0ndeb0k ooo, actually that’s an apt example.
and again, something that probably worked “more honestly” as written fiction than as it was engineered for the screen.
but even for the screen, i would say the difference is that it’s not the film maker that’s lying to the audience – it is a manifestation of ed norton’s DERANGED MENTAL CONDITION. basically, the ending is the epiphany of a madman. and fincher kinda sets up this “altered state” conceit with little bits of hallucinatory stuff like the penguin. also, fight club is more explicitly “first person” especially with the narration so that the events of the movie are implied to be “as perceived by narrator”.
ultimately, imo, it makes more sense for a raving psychotic to end up having had a delusional story in the movie than sintel who is not explicitly off her rockers.
you can certainly feel free to disagree and fight club was an excellent example to bring up.
but for me, it still feels like the film makers cheated.
It was so incredible sad
and it had some very beautiful shots
nice work!
The soundtrack and how it links to the movie is just amazing!
I would totally want to see a ‘behind the scene’ clip.
To exchange ideas about art that is very cool.
It’s art and his soul will be on the sympathetic.
For it is a very nice thing to exchange opinions.
I have enjoyed reading a lot of opinions.
Sintel the
I was very nice and sad work.
False positives
The collapse of everything
But
there is hope.
Is a wonderful story
I think so.
Well blow me down with a feather, was it worth:-
the wait?
IRC going bananas?
and generally, a load of people acting like a group of giddy kippers? You Bet.
You see Jin your wrong ‘context is everything’ in this case.
We can all be critical if we wanted to be, but gernerally we dont, why? becuase the people closest to the project, Animators, Designers and Coders know the issues, probably aware of more issues than the rest of us put together.
They know about nearly all the issues and I for one am not interested in SFO (Stating the … obvious).
The Project was to drive development of Blender, and along the way they did a fantastic movie. It could have been a short film, but this was a film condensed into 12mins or so. Gotta say I i’ve not seen that before, and its something i wasn’t expecting.
Loved the sound,
loved the montage with Sintel and Scales sleeping,
loved the market chase scene (liked the sneaking reference to the first film),
loved the pyramid scene (freeking awesome),
loved the montage through the desert and the bamboo forest (now was there some reference with the butterflies in there with BBB? need to watch again).
Loved the bedrangled, wet Sintel
Loved the cave, fight scene and loved the bit where killed Scales (caught me out). Loved the bit where she realised she was actually old :)
Oh by the way my daughter loves Scales and her animation (ookay me too). Dont worry she didnt see all of the film.
BF/Durainers you aimed high and you now what? I think you should be very proud…EPIC :)
Now you all have a good weekend…….
TFS
He,he…
Spoiler Alert:
I remember asking/wondering about the actress voice sounding older than Sintel when I saw the first trailer but got no answer… The passing of time is clearly shown in the movie and I bet there are more ‘faces’ of Sintel to the young and the old one. During her travels she seems a bit older than the Sintel we see on the market.
Sintel’s mind is clouded (don’t know if I set the right term here). In reality humans kill lots of animals just by trying to ‘protect’ them and offer them a better life. Sintel and the whole humanity doesn’t understand how nature works and will only realize it when everything will be over (sadly). It’s a great film people!
To the people commenting on technical flaws: There are some, but you can always get the DVD and create your own ‘100% perfect’ version. That’s the open film idea and BF encourages you to do so by offering the movie assets.
You know I was thinking about those people with Critiques
I think a more constructive use of your time, would be to buy the DVD, Set up a fan site and organise improvements to the film.
I’m sure the BF team could give you a snag list of their own to be getting on with.
Durian project: bitter, sweet, sour and salty
A great effort. good rhythm and shots (most difficult), good work
also 2.5
Thanks
=:-)
#pixelnate: Elephants Dream yes that made sense (psicological environment )
I think the movie suffers a little as did Elephants Dream in that what was conceived by the artists was a little ambitious for the time and resources and in the end not quite enough story was told for those in the audience who dont reflect on what they have seen and join the dots for themselves.
In this it is asking quite a bit but I dont think the audience is cheated.
Overall I think the standard was quite high. The artistry was up there with ED and BBB while the animation was really a decent attempt I felt. Considering the state of 2.5 it was a solid achievement. While there were more people involved this time I think it is still a little short of what is required to make a very good job of it. 500,000 euro next time.
Some of the crits here are a little unreasonable I feel but obviously some people notice faults more than others. Some people dont seem to be able to get past the technical and appreciate the whole experience. Personally I found the result of the teams hard work held together well although I agree the story sort of skipped across a pool of ideas.
Great work, but …
I dont like this story finish. I want lucky finish as Big Back Bunny :-) This is only first part ? :D
@The Fatsnacker: Congratulations! You are the first to get the BBB reference! (that I’ve seen any way) kudos!
Also, you are spot on correct about the Durian team being vividly aware of technical flaws. We are harsher critics on ourselves than any of you guys. (even Jin!) However, on balance I am certainly proud of this work, and I’m pretty sure the same goes for all involved.
Also it’s good to see that the story being debated in such a way. It was always going to be controversial, with the sting in the tail and the question mark ending. That the story and its characters are inspiring discussion and debate means we did our job as story tellers, IMHO.
I can’t figure it out why some people can never appreciate any work done!.
IMO, no matter the shortcomings (of which the durian team are aware) the work done is incredible.
Those of us who want to sound more “professional” than others have to put their thought into critique before they speak.
Great work durian team, it is nice. I like it. Well done to you all.
Congratulations on the release!
I am sure Sintel will inspire a new generation of (younger) Blender users, probably also the target audience for this movie…
From that point of view and Sintel seen as “a project to test/develop software” I think this is quite successful!
As others above, I believe in honest, constructive criticism, I’d wish nothing else for my own project from those I call my friends and colleagues. So here is mine for you:
* the overall look is very “crisp”, it seems that the higher resolution used here tends to give too much detail and that’s very sharp and hard “to get out of focus” in every sense of the word. It’s quite possible that this works much better on the big screen/a 35mm print. Maybe a “muddier” version would work better on a PC…?
* how can Sintel forget that she’s grown older…? And how can we, the audience, forget that together with her and then, with her, come to that terrible realisation/revelation at the end?
Somehow I am reminded of “The picture of Dorian Grey”, where the main character makes a wish that his portrait should age instead of himself. We understand why he keeps looking young when he is not and why he suddenly ages when he destroys his portrait at the end. Now Sintel does not destroy her own portrait, but a projection of her fears. By destroying the adult dragon that was her baby (dragon) she destroys her (inner) child and (suddenly) ages. (Once again she has “failed to see”.)
When watching Sintel I could not quite follow the (emotional) logic of her suddenly aging, Though when writing about it now I wonder how the target audience (teens…?) might relate to that emotionally: Sintel in that sense might work like a teenage werewolf story: you kind of don’t want to know the obvious until it can’t be neglected any more…
(Edit:) Let me just add the “obvious” (that I left out earlier):
* there are some visually really stunning sequences in Sintel, my favourite is the over the city/up the stairs one. That’s also where the above mentioned crispness of the image works for me, I guess it has to do with the ratio of close stuff vs. far away one…
* and obviously also the open-movie character including the financing are another big success here that needs to be mentioned!
I think to incentivise and positive outcome from the critique, I think the BF should have a editable document listing their personal gripes with the story and the existing technical issues with Blender which could be amended by the unwashed :)
In Prince2 terms a Post Project Review. Would be a carthatic enterprise as well. Would show the context of why things were the way they were, and the decisions that had to be made.
On a separate but linked note…….dont tease me with the DVD release. Correct me if I was wrong, there was a checkbox on the DVD ordering section which meant I could receive one of those now unsed workstations from the Blender Foundation :)
Please put the big red sticker on it,warning the postman…he aint too bright :)
Hey freen, to be honest I think I got the refernce when i was about to go to sleep about 2hrs after watching the film.
It gonna make the fourth film and interesting one, what with 3 easter eggs lying around
@MartianR
I’m sorry
My comments on the above
Not talk to you.
@ Petergk
told belongs ….
Who had mistaken what I said ……
Sorry again ….
I would be certain to lower prudence
>we did our job as story tellers, IMHO.
I think it would be a mistake to image that the audience arent doing at least half the work here. Another one along these lines would be too much of an imposition of the goodwill of some.
It seems to me Ton likes this metaphorical style but some of the audience dont connect with it especially when it has fairly well realised ‘normal’ characters that they expect to move through an obvious tell me a story.
There are complaints about the realism of the hands or faces or whatever.
Perhaps to get away from this mental trap the next project could be a little more avant garde in an abstract or disjoint sort of way.
I dont know how to express it but sort of as 3d rap or street dancing…or a S Dali painting come to life
I cant seem to edit my posts…
I mean some innovation, unconventional use etc etc something that pushes the bounds…
We obviously have very talented people in the Blender community but it seems we are saying look what we can do too rather than taking a creative leap.
These projects dont actually have to please in a regular commercial sense.
OK I stop now :)
@Jin: Would you say Fight Club cheated its audience?
edit: oops, i should have refreshed the page before writing my post.
I do agree with the points you make, but the film is still a great achievement.
As a tool to show off Blender, this movie is AWESOME! Great work!
But that’s how it ends!??
great work
the story telling something….
the sintel’s story matching my story that i was written for a short film (i try to work on it as soon as possible, but still no resources)…
the story is about a person who never knows whats happening after his when he goes far away from his family. he know it during he is send to a “job”. And this be his “Last Job”.
and this is the same as i think.
So i don’t need for a trailer. i already have it.
“SINTEL” THE TRAILER.
Goog Job Durians.. This is the great movie.
My Rating : *****
Points : 10 out of 10
There is two different kinds behind this movie, as I see. First I totally agree with Jin Choung. ON the other hand the effort behind the scenes is respectable and it should be supported, this moves things forward and forward. I not going to “attack” this side of the production. Never. And the development is respectable and good thing behind a movie creation and teamwork training, if it’s not slows down the productions. I just would like to mention: creating a good animation and production capable software needs a lot of information from the artists and professional animators from the world, and sometimes it can be cheaper than creating an other inhouse production. The professional feedback can be usable too. As I see BF tries to add good references into the “showreel” and I have mixed feelings around this kind (releasing this kinda short) of advertising. I have a lot of critics in my pocket for this short, but after the ED I think they should see the weak points. (I think the ED was the best from the 3 movies, not because it was the first…) The financial questions belongs to supporters and supported groups.
Sorry.
Story with a twist, gorgeous grafics, awsome soundtrack… The presale was so totally worth it – can’t wait for the DVDs to arrive. This piece truly deserves the word “epic”.
I have just finished watching and i think all you that didn’t understand the story should go back and watch it again. Like why does she keeps getting attacked? Why did she suddenly get so old? These guys had to compress a story into 15 minutes and the way they did it works well.
The story was excellent, and the lighting when she was going through those bamboos was awesome. Really well done. Don’t listen to all the nitpickers.
I must say that with all that waiting and anticipation for more than a year, I hadn’t realized that this was going to be a short film! I was kinda shocked when it ended :0
To be honest, I didn’t get it. I watched it four times in a row, each discovering some detail that I had missed. The story has too many holes. Only after reading some of the explanations in this thread have I come to an understanding of the story. The fact that Sintel aged in the end completely escaped me. I saw the scars but didn’t notice the hair color changing. The specific semiotic choices Colin made to denote certain facts/feelings/circumstances/etc were way too subtle and at times rather unconventional. I agree with the comments made that the story is one of the weakest points.
Having said that let’s not forget that this is a specific production model that we’re talking about here. BF raised funds to produce a movie by preselling it. In that respect, the project was VERY SUCCESSFUL: the movie was eventually produced.
Moreover, for me the objective was not to produce a perfect film but to advance the development of Blender and showcase what it can do. From this perspective the project was HUGELY SUCCESSFUL:
(a) I use Blender 2.5 every day and I’m quite happy with how it’s evolved
(b) modeling, texturing, lightning, and compositing are superb. The level of realism achieved in certain shots is breathtaking and the visuals are truly stunning. I was pleasantly surprised by the attention to minute details given this time. I disagree with others who argue that this level of rendering is not up to standard. I watch most animated films and cannot tell the difference.
WHAT IS TRULY EPIC IS THAT THE DURIAN TEAM MADE THIS MOVIE WITH ALPHA SOFTWARE.
For me, that’s by far that most amazing achievement.
Congrats to the whole team! :-)
Thank you guys.
I’m really looking forward to receive my dvd copy….
@petergk
Thank you
Your thoughts could tell.
But you do not have to worry about.
Create animations for you to create 3D system does not have a problem.
You do not need to use only the blender.
…..
..
..
Give me your thoughts
Thanks again.
Joolme
don’t worry
Wow so first kudos to the makers. The quality is truly stunning! On the history, I must say that I was initially sad how it ended, but I think that is exactly the emotion that should be created! And the fact that the film has generated an emotion is more proof that the concept works! Excellent work!
Leto
Just watched it. Wonderful. But so sad…
I’ve just seen it, and I can only say WOW !
Great work. Sad story, but so beautiful ! Great sets and excellent animation. Full of feelings.
Congratulations to the whole team, and a special shake hand to Colin Levy. I followed his works for many years in the time of Peerless Productions, before his hilarious “Suburban Plight” movie, and I’ have always known that his name will be written one day on top of the billboard of a great movie !
Well done Colin, You can be proud !
@Paul
I already understand the story.
@Paul; you got the right mark, the confusable point, if all got it they understand what the story is…..we can’t tell this (just clue – no mirror, trully Epic)…..just watch it……
THATS EPIC
hahaha…. proog at 1:44:09 (PAL version)
Well done guys.
I think I share most crits with Jin storywise. And I have some CG wise, but who cares?
I also have some framing wise, and vignetting seems to be a dirtyword at BF… (-:
But I know Blender for some time and know this is a (again) a major leap forward.
Very touching story! I’m glad they made it a happy end!
Great work Durian team and thank you for making this project :) .
I need a therapist after having watched this one. The story completely got me and the ending totally knocked me off my feet.
So it worked for me.
And there is a, albeit melancholic, kind of possible happy ending: Sintel might take care of the little dragon she just orphined. after all: it follows her in the last shot.
And about the flaws in the story telling: I’m a fan of the ”The lord of the rings” trilogy. I have the extended DVD version and watched it dozens of time if not more. By now i have discovered containerloads of flaws and mistakes in the dialogues, camera-angles, CG-animation, you name it. And i’m not talking about the diversions from the book (witch i also love) but solely the flaws in the movie itself. But despite all these flaws that i’ve discoverd i still love the movie.
So I think the team did a magnificent job
Just my 2 cents
Hello!
What an amazing video! My whole family enjoyed it, and it is a must see in HD, yotube version isn;t as amazing looking as the one downloaded from their website.
Magnificent! I especially liked her being stuck at the one day feel. And her expression when she see in the blood that more time passed, t\she was so focused on finding the dragon that she forgot time. And this bummer when she kills her dragon for who she put all those years of searching. It was like she went through hell and destroyed everything she had (a friend) because she was blind to see the time.
Magnificent wave of the story. Of course one thing looks strange is that when she gets hit or bitten you can;t see the marks instantly but I suppose this has the allusion to her not seeing what actually is happening, she is too much focusing on the go find the dragon thing. Sintel is really alive in that story.
Even though this movie was so short it seemed it lasted for one hour, so strange, you want to see more but you actually feel like you just saw a featured movie.
Amazing project!
Kudos! Indeed amazing. Respetos totales.
Some comments
Shaman says her: You are a fool for traveling alone so completely unprepared. He should have seen her scar and her age. He should have said. You are a fool for traveling alone at your age.
Sintel enters the cave in the nigth (looks like 3-4 am), figth scales about 2 minutes and when she leaves there is already dawn (like 5-6 am).
In minute 4:20 were she looks for scales hunting the chicken there are 4 people in background, 6 second after, the place is another completely, and is totally empty.
Really sad ending.
Kudos again,
LC
Well done to the whole team! I loved it.
what i wonder about…
this movie will be also used for testing video codecs i guess. but there are some rendering errors like flickering shadows that could be very bad for such tests since they could be confused with codec errors maybe? :p
i hope some of the most obvious rendering problems and hair/cloth problems will be fixed for the 4k version!
i also think that some of the scenes in sunlight look overexposed / way too washed out.
but otherwise i liked the movie a lot! :) it really sucks that you easily notice such problems if you also have some experience working with 3d software. :)
HD!!! awesome… i loved it… can’t wait for the BF’s next project… mango.
Amazing! It took a little while for me to come to terms with the sad ending – I’d hoped for something a little more fulfilling – but now I like it a lot more for what it is. Excellent work!
For reaction of the critics here made me rather disappointed. They’re not *wrong*, per se, but you have to remember you should only critique something for what it IS, not what it is NOT. To compare Sintel to larger commercial productions is valid, but poor form indeed. To compare it to other animated shorts? That seems much fairer to me, and doesn’t interfere with many of the suggestions voiced here.
As mentioned by the team already, Sintel has its share of weaknesses. The fact that they said this themselves makes me believe that this was probably the BEST that they could accomplish in the time frame given. I’m certain if they could have fixed any issues within their timeframe, they would have. Congratulations on a film well done!
nicely done!
I like the bamboo scene. and the market scene.
Btw, i thought there’ll be 4 bandits?
very nice history and excelents effects!
WHY!? :”””'( (
this end is so sad… iam a happy end man…
but anyway it’s a very good films : ) )
i love it ^^ good job!
continue!
HOLY SH&*^ , i though the cg is the only one that amaze me, then the storyline.. WOW!!
Wow…just Wow…
I only just had a chance to sit down and watch this, and in the end it moved me more than I ever thought it would!
There is one bit of hope at the end, which I was glad for…I just found this unexpected.
That is “unexpected” good…not bad…I was truly blown away by this.
On another note, I loved it when Sintel picked up the Durian…
With all the assets becoming available soon, there is the opportunity for a very dark alternative ending, whereby the little dragon at the end comes out and pushes the sobbing girl off the cliff, then morphs into the shaman, at which point the dragon we all thought was dead emerges out of the cave and roasts the shaman with a nice flaming blast.
On the other had the existing ending works just fine, I loved it :)
The story and characterization of Sintel is pure emo sh*t.
I was suprized by the quality of fighting animation though.
“Remove and… …Delete torrent and data”
It’s a not ready movie. Coarse motions, plastic like texturing some times…
Really awesome work…I loved it very much…..
This was pretty good. I don’t have any complaints animation wise. It had a palpable ‘epic’ feel, and as a result – seemed way shorter than it should be.
I think the Blender Foundation is ready to make a feature length film.
Congratulations! Great job.
Thanks to Ton and all the team for all the efforts and benefits to Blender.
About the errors: Sintel isn’t Blender.
If these errors can be repaired using Blender it’s ok!
There were many points to conduce along this production: the movie itself, the Blender development, tutorials, DVD package… A lot of things beyond the movie. Maybe Ton can talk about it.
When a movie studio takes a production, it’s all about the film and all atention is on the movie.
I saw a interview (Ton) in Blenderguru, and he talk about the art ambitions, about the inexperienced artists and how they survived. I think that they learned a lot of things and we can learn too with this production. This is great!
I think that Pixar, Dreamworks and other studios do great movies, good scripts, excelents renders with no errors, but most of us don’t know how they do that. They don’t open theyr productions and all we can do is to watch and eat a popcorn.
I think that i will learn a lot of things with that rain scene (wonderfull), more than with the “UP”.
I know that i can’t do a job like Sintel, all the artists involved are better than me (not you?), otherwise i should be there.
We can remember that first purpose: Blender. What are the benefits for Blender with this production? Is Blender better than before?
I think too that we should not stopping to look at the errors found in Sintel because we like Blender and we perceive all the efforts during this production.
An art piece must be apreciated and it can be evaluated.
Now, i’m happy: if a studio decides to use Blender, that studio can do a good movie.
Again, congratulations!
Just finished watching it.
I’m not gonna be picky and write about the details that might have been better, it’s completely useless.
I’m still crying, the avalanche of emotions that I’ve felt watching Sintel is impossible to describe. Having been a part of the huge Blender family for more than 10 years (since it wasn’t even Open Source software), and seeing how far we’ve gone makes me feel so damn proud!
Guys, you did an amazing job, THANK YOU!
Seb
P.S.: I’m going back to watch it again… :D and again… and again… :D
…sorry, I forgot just one more thing:
Jan Morgenstein is now officially on my top 5 list, along with Hans Zimmer, John Williams, Trevor Rabin and Ennio Morricone…
Waoooooo!!!
OUTSTANDING!
Congratulation to durian and the blender foundation!
Awesome!
The visuals were wonderful.
But…I have to say the story wasn’t working for me. It just seemed way to big a story to tell in a short like that. It felt really disjointed. The shock of her being old at the end came to quick. What I think was supposed to be a shock was forced to quickly and made it seem really anticlimactic.
seems silly to me that people keep trying to explain the story . if you have to explain it that means a lot of people didn’t’ get it witch is not good story telling. I think the team took on way to much for a 12 min short. and the execution in the end was not very good. I love that people are developing blender and making it better. I keep hearing the team knows of all the flaws. if they know about them why not fix them? to me if you hit your deadline and your work is flawed and not quit done thats a failure. I work professionally in 3d on a lot of high end project a lot of them I will admit are bad. a lot of Hollywood film makers are not good story tellers either. When co workers of mine watch the film they laugh and point out all the obvious problems witch is sad. At the end of the day when professional artist look at this blender is still ” a cute” piece of software not to be taken seriously quit yet. if you want to develop blender and make something that advertises the software take some time on it. Make the story great no ok and risky . a film like inception makes you think but it is well though out and well executed. This story is neither of those things.
And I’m sorry to tell you not all good animated shorts are huge productions that cost millions money does not buy you a good film. Lets look at pixar they started from the ground up developing their software but they made story the most important part . when they release something it is “the best” they can do its not “well the team knows there are a ton of problems and the software is in alpha so considering the team already knows its flawed and the software isn’t the best I like it” blender needs to make a good film that impresses people and not just the loyal blender heads. all people , professional artist, film makers. so people stop and says “wow look what those guys are doing “. blender is open source is it not? why not make an open source film and let the community pitch in on story ideas , cg, development. I’m sure people donating time and doing an open source project would yield better results then funding a small team of armatures with a poor story line.
anyway just my opinion I use maya everyday and I can tell you autodesk is a crappy ass company they release buggy software all the time and its pretty frustrating when you pay for software to have such bad support. I’d love to see blender get up to par with the big boys and start making some noise in the industry . but its just not ready yet. I’ve yet to see something at a professional level done with the software. and this short is def not a good advertisement for it sorry. I mean look around at all the work being done in CG this is not even close to current quality . I mean some people are saying the characters are so “life like” really who do you know that looks like this? def not life like and I dont think that was the intent just seems like some people have been living in a cave when it comes to CG. I mean Look at gollum in lord of the rings pretty convincing and that was done what ten years ago now. Yes big production some commercial software some developed on the film you will say not fair to compare but it just shows you commercial software ten years ago was killing blender so looking at this short seems like blender is what like 20 years behind commercial products still. I just feel like it should be further along
big buck bunny to me was much better. technically speaking the fur looked awesome thats hard to do in cg. animation was good character setups looked up to speed with commercial software, the environments and compositing looked great. the story was cute it was ok. but sintel kinda falls on its face on so many levels and to my eye seems like no progress has been with software development. i know its in alpha but so far its just excuses excuses why the film falls flat and why no one should give it a crit. I’m not going to love it just because people worked hard on it . people work extremely hard on feature films doesn’t mean they are all good.
another point this is not an open source project the artist are being paid and there is a budget its a commercial production using open source software. so to me this should be held to a higher standard then even short films done by students and artist doing things on their own time its a commercial production. and it fails. people do stuff at home with smaller budgets and produce much better results so a lot of the excuses here are invalid. its better to take on a project and make it doable in the time frame then take on something to aggressive and fall flat in the end. the team should not be making excuses if your doing that then deep down you know its not that great. if your buying something and the sales guy is like ” well its been tuff to get this done and there are alot of problems and I wish we could have done this or that” your probably not going to be to excited about your purchase right? and the fact that they are making excuses tells me they are not totally proud of this either. being an artist myself and dealing with this daily I would bet most the artist know the story is kinda lame but they had no say in it and just did the best they could at their job . knowing in the end the final product was going to be just ok. I feel like this is more of an issue from the top of the production. the people making the decisions are making bad ones if this is the product they deliver after a year of work.
anyway im sure tons of you will think im an asshole and whatever just saying it how it is I dont have any bias either way i dont love blender and i dont hate it. just giving you an honest opinion. in the hope that it helps BF continue on and grow and get better at what they are trying to do.
I am completely agree with ghost3d.
I’m pretty sure they didn’t intend for the characters to look life like.
I thought it looked great.
The flaw I saw was condensing a story that’s so big into a short. It didn’t work in that aspect.
@ghost3d
Be able to will you know.
Lord of the Rings, some are trying to make whether
At least 1000 people or more.
Korean technicians have heard about making movies avatar.
He was a studio technician
The size of about 12 people
They only made a flying rock vines ….
Hollywood studio system has an enormous amount of small stick that was found.
Is called the size of its personnel …….
They are therefore in order to save labor costs in Southeast Asia and India to establish studios in many cases.
Hollywood, Hollywood with the capital size of the market because it can guarantee a profit but …….
Anyway
Consider
Suppose that a company called Autodesk …
Blender is out.
Create an Avatar in Hollywood.
I’m sure
They can make it.
Conversely, suppose …
Make Sintel
A very small number of
100 people stuck.
How did Sintel?
The important thing is the underlying technology.
The reason for the commercial software
Is a good position to win the competition.
Makes the problem of competing with the situation……….
……
….
Anyway
What is your opinion, I can not agree.
I have know idea what Joolme!! just said.
Hey ghost3d!
I understand most parts or your post, and sometimes you are right, sometimes not.
I said before: if these errors found in Sintel can be repaired with Blender, its ok! Sintel isn’t Blender.
I think you are wrong with the software development point and i could say many examples (better raytracing than previous versions, new modifiers, better sculpt tools for example) that demonstrates improvements in Blender software and i think that in the end we’ll get a nice software with the 2.6 version.
Let me try something: if apple sucks with the new iphone 4 means that all apple products are bad? Really not.
If someone like you, who understands all about art, animation, rendering, all about serious productions, who works professionaly in Pixar or another big studio, if someone like you brings all your knowledge to a production using Blender, will we get something amazing or not?
If the answear is negative there is a big problem with Blender. I can say that i have seen many good art pieces made with Blender.
Your post mades me think about a lot of things. Maybe, the movie production could be done by professional studios using Blender with the Blender Foundation technical support. I personally don’t remeber Autodesk doing movies but we see Laika using Autodesk software with the correct support.
I think the rain scene is ok, and that demonstrates my point of view. This scene was made in Argentina.
The open source movie point, i thing that is a good idea. I remember that error in the Sintel’s shirt! There’s a guy in the Durian forum that warned about this error: shirt penetrating sintel’s body! This occurs when some imagems were published. And nothing was done!
It’s not a Blender failure. It’s human. And i’m sure this errors can be repaired without Maya.
@ghost3d:
“another point this is not an open source project the artist are being paid and there is a budget its a commercial production using open source software.”
Its open content project meaning that you can acces all files.
As to the closed projects like toystory3 where you are alowed to buy all the merchandise.
Did you know Ian went to the preview night? ( Why would that interest you, lol ).
Are you telling me you didnt get the emotions that Sintel or the Dragons where trying to bring across the screen?
I dont believe that. It was at least as good as modern in game “i have led for eyes” mask motion captured crap.
But, yeah, Japanese “I work 21 hours a day 7 days a week” stuff like “Beyond” from Koji Morimoto is ofcourse a bit better ( with a bit you know I mean at least a byte ).
C’mon guys…
Remember Tron?
Was a great movie too ;)
Anyways…
According to me, Sintel was not as good as Big Buck Bunny fe.,
BUT it has a great, sad story, which leaves room for interpretation,
(btw. it’s a SHORT-movie, ever heard of?).
The technical part is not that fkn brilliant, but it’s quite nice.
Comparing Hollywood crap with Blender movies, c’mon…
BBB already showed us, what IS possible.
Sintel still IS amazing.
And I just don’t understand those guys like “ghost3d”…
So… enjoy the movie, im awating the next great Open Movie from the Blender Foundation.
Cheers
Who is Ian? = )
the first toy story had a budget of 30 million dollars.
sintel had a budget of about 500 thousand dollars.
toy story is 80 minutes.
sintel is 12 minutes.
so toy story did cost 375 thousand per minute.
and sintel did cost about 40 thousand per minute.
that’s a difference by the factor 10! and this is the first toy story which was really cheap. i think current animation movies have a budget that is more like 200 millions. so the difference factor goes more in the direction of 50.
even game cutscenes have a lot more budget nowadays than sintel.
can’t they just make it happy i feel sad for the ending
@ghost3d: You say you work in the industry working with Maya all the time. Which means that you watch as a 3d-artist. unfortunately for you most if the viewers aren’t. they may be playing around with blender (like me) but they’re not pros. And as such many of them seem to love the movie (and i’m one of them) and don’t see the flaws or don’t care about them as long as they’re not too obvious.
Maybe you should try and watch the film as a consumer with a more open mind.
“I’d love to see blender get up to par with the big boys and start making some noise in the industry . but its just not ready yet.” [en of quote]
Blender will never be up to par with the big boys simply because it’s not aiming to do so. Blender is aiming at hobbyists, semi-pros, freelancers and small studio’s. At least that’s what Ton said in an inteview some time ago.
Which means that it will always have some restrictions but can still be a good app.
Maybe time to fork a GNU project for professionals?
@Joolme!!
I have no idea what your trying to say sorry :(
@TLOZ
I’m not comparing it to Hollywood movies just making a point the quality difference is huge I was just hoping the difference in quality would be not so great. and again money doesn’t buy you a good film look at Rust boy from years ago made with infini D . that was looking pretty cool not sure what happened to that but surely you could match that quality level with a commercial production with blender years later right? I mean i would hope but honestly sintel looks to be at that same level sadly.
@horace
missing the point again.
@joeri67
I dont really want the assets to the movie nor do i want the assets to toy story 3. that doesnt sway my opinion on whether or not sintel was a good short film. and yeah you have to buy toy story toys but you also have to buy the sintel dvd dont you? not sure what your point is.
@josiasbh
you make some really good points I would be curious to see what professional artist could do with blender. I would actually love to try it out on a project but does risking losing quality to try it out worth it? I just haven’t seen enough good things made with the software yet to justify taking the risk :(. Also places like Laika have a support dep of their own. if maya doesn’t do something they need they write a tool to do it. thats the streath of maya its very flexible and open so its easy to integrate into a large production. they do not rely on autodesk to provide features. witch is also maya’s flaw some simple things it should do out of the box it cant and people that cannot write tools are stuck .
and im not a maya fan boy or anything I also use 3dsmax i dont believe in software loyalty i think you use the tool that does the job best. I’ve started playing around in blender and some of the new features are really great I know I sound like im bagging on blender but I am impressed with a lot of the new stuff. example the smoke sims I’ve seen look great better then the maya fluids witch is great. the sculpting stuff looks really great. i cant wait for the painting features. the things I’d love to see improvement are the renderer for sure needs some updating still
overall I appreciate the work that went in doing a short like this is really hard and with such a low budget is incredible. but the end product not so great. and hey I could have watched the short and said “eh another blender movie no big deal” and moved on with my life but I decided to offer a crit to help BF improve I dont see whats wrong with that you might not agree with me and thats fine we all have opinions .
@JeroenM
fair enough , maybe I’m expecting to much . i think its great effort and if it had a good story it would make a lot of heads turn. i think big buck bunny was close to breaking through but this one kinda takes a step back . but your right i dont really know BF’s intent maybe making dvd’s and selling them to loyal fans is the only aim of the software and thats fine seems to be a success in that sense.
It’s a great accomplishment, and I loved it, but I would have to say that the only thing that made it unbelievable for me was the lack of real reason for Sintel to go on such a quest to find Scales. It could have been made so much more feasible if a younger Sintel had found Scales newly hatched, then the bed scene could have had them aging between shots.
The fact that Scales gets so much bigger so soon is fine with me – it could just be the quick onset of “dragon puberty” or something. Just that one gripe; everything else was great!
The critics here are a bunch of a@@holes, the movie is great all things considered.
Anyone know how the lighting was done? Blender can’t do GI, right? Was it all done with regular lighting and workaround tricks?
@MoreLikethis: “The critics here are a bunch of a@@holes,”
Dude, I don’t think you understand what feedback is. Feedback is about hearing the good and the bad, not what makes you feel good. Critical feedback isn’t written in stone, it’s an opinion, and I’m sure the grownups at the BF are capable of deciding for themselves if any criticism is valid or not.
No, Blender can’t do GI like Vray or Luxrender, but it has a cute feature called Indirect lighting that works tolerably well at casting reflected light and color from one object onto another. I’m fairly certain it was used in Sintel.
Incredible.
Great work team.
And the reason there are so many critics is because it was so close to perfection that they feel that every mistake should be pointed out.
And even the most critical critics could only point out about 8 imperfections in the movie.
**That means it was 8 steps away from being perfect.**
Hi all,
I have downloaded the sintel movie yesterday and watched it immediately after download. It is a masterpiece. Good story, great music, and the animations may rival the big hollywood animation blockbusters. There are some things to improve in some places (like more fluid movement, etc) but it is an amazing product from a community of enthusiasts and a collection of opensource software.
Thanks Ton for your vision and perserverance. Big thanks for all the movie team. Great work!! :) Keep going.
@AJ173: You realize that what your saying is that the only thing that is unrealistic is the main plot of the movie?
@ghost3d: I get what you’re saying. I’m far from being a pro on 3d, for animation at least(I’m in the Architecture business myself, and not very interested in viz), but the movie does have some quality issues noticeable even for me(a non pro). I already had my say on the story, which sadly is once more the weakest point. I have to agree with josiasbh that it is not a matter of how good blender is right now, more of an issue of this particular production. I don’t want to diss the production team, after all they were selected on account of their merits, but I feel like something didn’t click this time. The thing is that this movies are always pushing the boundary of blender, which is nice because it brings about new features, but it is not the wisest way to produce work. You should strive for quality within the bounds allowed by the tools you’re using, but this open movies are made precisely to push those bounds. It is hard to get things to wrap up perfectly working under that logic. Storywise, though, I still thing scripts as poor as this one are inexcusable.
Looks like it’s popped up on io9 http://io9.com/5652662/the-emotionally+intense-tale-of-a-woman-and-her-dragon
And nearly everyone in the comments (except one or two people) seemed to love it
Terrific accomplishment! Congratulations to the team!
Very impressive, and sad. Wish it was longer.
Maybe all the LONG posting critics should ask for a refund..:)
Anyone who doesn’t like this world class short comes from another planet.
The only thing I can say is, I WANTED MORE!
What a great story and a bit of a tear jerker.
To be honest, I found the story way a little expected at first (I presume, it’s because I have had similar feeling in my sub-conscious mind while I was following the Project Durian blog, right from when it started last year after BC ’09).
However, upon few retakes on the screenplay, I found so many metaphorical elements that have been so well weaved which I missed at first glance. Indeed, the original storyline couldn’t be justified in a shorter version. But I think Esther Wouda – Colin Levy did the best possible treatment one could (obviously after several iterations) on the subject.
As for the full length feature, I did pitch the same question to Ton some time back (because I didn’t have a fair idea about the production cost). He explained beautifully, what it takes for a ~ 90 mins animation feature – more than 80 artists working full-time for 2-3 years. But do not lose your hearts, who knows.. BI may come up with one as thing looking very promising by days.
Technically, it did disappoint me in certain level. However, that could be understood as team was working on a evolving software with such time and cost constrain. But never underestimate what Blender can do – ED and BBB already proved it’s capabilities. And let’s not compare with any previous edition and move on to make this project successful as lot of hard work went in to with no intention of making monetary benefit.
Oh yes, special thanks to Jan Morgenstern for his awesome and exuberant scores!
Arindam.
Congratulations this is definitely bringing blender to a bigger audience. Well done.
There were a LOT of good things in the film, but there were also a lot of not so good things. Some areas could have used improvement. Just being honest.
Fantastic!
I’d say the best scene was Scales chasing the chicken :)
Good job! I liked it!
I wish Sintel stayed behind with her beloved dragon, with the baby wandering off again to repeat the cycle.
Anyhow, excellent showcase of Blender’s capabilities! You guys did a fantastic job!
wow! just watched it! just loved it. though the story line will be hard to follow for those who don’t have a good idea and not been following the movie development…but its really amazing!!! there are few places the movement could be better and appears a bit unnatural but over all the realism is exceptional…
Incidentally my 3 and a half year old daughter loved it and can’t stop asking me to show her the “baby dragon” ( the part where Sintel meets the baby dragon) its now on par with chocolate and when ever she does something good, she wants to be shown the movie as a reward. ( thanks Ton for saving me some chocolate money and my daughter’s teeth).
any chance of in-corporating a sound editing program like Audacity (http://audacity.sourceforge.net/) into the work flow of blender for sound editing like the “adobe premiere / audition/ sound-booth” work flow??
congrats to the Durian Team for the successful short – Sintel!!
While several (hundreds) variations of the Cinderella tale exist, they move around the same idea that may well have originated in classical antiquity.
The idea of a character (a she, a he, a person or a animal), fighting her unfair situation (sometimes violently, other times more peacefully), and trying to recover/find her loved one.
While the resolution of the tale might vary in success or failure, the lesson to be learn is that even when we don’t achieve what we wanted at the beginning of our journey, we should keep believing, and having faith that our dreams might come true… eventually.
At first sight our Sintel have a tragic lesson and a pretty sad resolution. Yet after watching the movie so many times and read about Cinderella tale I think I found what really Sintel team intended by finishing the movie so sad: Opening A Door .
A door for discussions, a door for new endings, a door for new versions, a door for new tales. As Cinderella tale have hundreds of variants and endings Sintel should have them too!
From my point of view, ED and BBB are finished tales, and no one would really want to create new versions from them. Things are completely different in Sintel. People want to modify it, enhance it, gave it a happy ending….
And if that is the intention, I think Colin Levy have a great success: His movie started a spark in several of us that believe Sintel should have a second change, a redemption:
Even is we cannot model/sculpt/animate them as good a Sintel team, we should do something: We should get the sources and give the Sintel the touch, the final we believe she deserves.
And somehow this is the start of our journey, just like Sintel’s, we might succeed, or fail, but we should not stop, we should have faith in us.
I invite all of you who like me think Sintel should have a variant (a happier one), to contact me, and keep in touch.
Please let me know your thoughts,
Have a great day, my contact is l3c_lara(at)yahoo.es
LC
WOW! What an incredible movie! Mouth sync was pretty bad, but this movie is still AWESOME!
Don’t forget to seed this after you download it!
I think its important not to single out the script as being to blame of any shortcomings.
There was a whole team of people working on this movie.
The result is the product of many decisions and labours.
I am pretty sure there was more scenes intended for the movie than actually made it within the time and budget.
A few more shots completed might have made all the difference to those in the audience who cant quite grasp the story as it is presented now.
I respect that everyone tried very hard to achieve something of a high standard.
In the most part I think they succeeded.
Thank you for great movie. Not a waste time waiting for.
Sadness!!! Scale!!!
I’ll be waiting for your next great movie.
@josh
Yeh, after talking with my brother, I’m convinced by him that this would not be the kind of thing ch.9 would be interested in… especially the documentaries. But you will most certainly have better luck with ABC2 or SBS because they often play documentaries and short films, even have small shows about designers around the world (can’t think of any off the top of my head). So as far as I can see they would be the most likely to promote and show sintel and its suite of documentaries. I would hope that if you could arrange something along those lines, Ton would be happy to release the documentaries to the channel, because it would be sure to significantly increase awareness of blender and open source software.
So sad. It feels like it was inspired by a Greek tragedy. Though I won’t go any further.
They really could have used the dynamic paint for the snow and sand scenes. As foot prints are not made in the snow. And the sand scene is done oddly. the foot prints are clear where she was and the new ones she makes look weird.
Overall fantastic. Though I’m not going to recommend it to a friend who liked big bug bunny because she would find it too sad.
The amount of comments here is astonishing!
The story was very sad!
The image quality is quite respectable. The hair I had problems with and animation is a bit stiff in some areas.
Great short. Great thanks for the team.
Astonished me!
Beautiful like a first time I saw the universe.
Good work!
The story give me goose bumps and strong emotion!
So sad, but so beautiful.
Great great work.
Bob
I am not going to compare this film to anything else I have seen nor get technical, just going to express what I think of it as is..
I was simply moved by this film, so much was left up to the imagination which I really appreciated! there was just enough info for me to have a grasp of who Sintel and scales was. reminds me of my childhood when I would just find animals hurt not knowing anything about them or where they come from, all I knew is that they were my friend even if it was just for a moment.
The flash back of how she meet scales was great, I felt great compassion for scales from the get go. I was angry when the adult dragon took him away!!!! The way in which scales was revealed at the end was a great twist, I totally thought he was the little one in the nest. Even I was not aware of just how much time had passed because I was so caught up in the emotions, trying to find that cute adorable little dragon. The clues were very subtle and nicely done.
The way Sintel came to terms with her age and loss of her friend was very well done, That was the only point where I felt compassion for her. Being alone for so long she’s not mushy or over emotional, u can sense that callus side of her.
A very sad and emotional film I like it a lot and I want to say congratulations to the entire team on a job well done!
Come on crits! The movie was targeted at young emo goth kids from the beginning and for the target audience it was a smash hit judging by the comments ;). Nobody over the age 20 is not supposed to like it anyway.
A girl tends to a wounded animal until a family member comes to get it. She later finds and kills it, and makes it’s kid an orphan. This made me feel terrible. It looks nice, and the story is one depressing thing after another.
http://vimeo.com/15478362
Made a DVD PAL version.
Reframed to 1024x576x25fps
Enjoy.
This is the Blender film I enjoyed most up to now. Great work!
The film unfortunately has its technical problems at some places, which could be bad for the reputation of Blender as tool for professionals. I know professionals aren’t the primary target for Blender right now, but wouldn’t it be nice for Blender users being able to apply for a job at a professional studio and work with their favourite program there some day? Think about the popularity and coverage the first Blender movies received, and deduce the effect they had (and still have!) on decisionmakers.
Of course, there are more elements to success in business-driven environments (like professional support etc.), but a good movie to show off the cool features of Blender can be a start. Think about how Linux avanced from a hobbyist project to a software that is employed in huge scales (not the dragon :) all around the world, in servers, on desktops.
Anyway, I got a bit carried off. :) I for one would welcome a probably shorter, but more (technically) polished film the next time.
Hi Joeri, Thank you, but DVD PAL encoding standard is MPEG2. You file is labelled MP4 on Vimeo, so I fear that it will not play on a standard DVD player.
Hi Roubal,
Its also 1024 wich will also not play on a dvd, i thought it to be for an authoring system.
But you are right, I might as well release an 720x576anamorphic mpeg that will play on dvd’s that plays files, I guess most do. Spares the work of making an VIDEO_TS VOB.
Beautiful style and nice ending!
“Come on crits! The movie was targeted at young emo goth kids from the beginning and for the target audience it was a smash hit judging by the comments ;). Nobody over the age 20 is not supposed to like it anyway.”
Wow. Sir, I’d recommend getting some culture. Something of slight importance…like the famous Greek tragedies. This would fit right in. Americans always impress me with their inability to deal with any story resembling the hard and less successful parts of life.
Cute story & wonderful execution.
Loved it.
Great work!
TO BAD YOU CAN’T THUMBS UP LIKE IN YOUTUBE OTHERWISE THERE WOULD BE THOUSANDS OF THUMBS UPS ON “GREAT, STUNNING, BRILLIAN, HOLLYWOOD”.
Still surprised how many people just flat out didn’t get the “she was old all along” part of the story. I guess there are a lot of slow people out there.
And for people calling the story “emo”, you’re seriously bandwagoning, and I’ll assume you’re no older than 16 or so. Strife and loss are parts of life. Experiencing them and reacting rationally doesn’t make you a bitch.
I’m so sad because I expected so much and… now I’m just sad :(
@W: come on man, this is not complex, at all. We “crits” could see the ending from a mile away, and it reeks of videogame cutscene and generic anime inspired design. ED was very unique, BBB imitated a classic style but did it flawlessly(design/animation wise), but this is very generic and not at all up to current standards. The story is inconsistent and predictable. And yeah, maybe this could be a greek tragedy. Greek tragedies rocked when they where state of the art storytelling, 2500 years ago.
It is tragic that Sintel killed the very thing she was looking for, yes, but I as a viewer cannot relate with someone who becomes obsessed with a pet she had for about a month, and cannot understand how she is so stupid not to realize her whole life has gone by. Not to think once, in all those years, that her dragon might have grown up, or that maybe snatching an infant from its mother is not such a good idea.
Also, I felt cheated by the film, they lie about Sintel’s age, there is no clue, nothing that you can go back to and say “oh, so that’s why this and this made no sense”, but no. The whole movie is consistent with a young character(I mean, c’mon, she kicks ass all the way through), and the BAM she’s old.
The whole plot is forced together with proverbial duck tape. It just doesn’t hold water. Compare it with a greek tragedy, compare it with Oedipus, which is the closest thing I can think of. Oedipus does not once do something that seems illogical or unexplainable to the audience, he acts consistently to what he knows. Sintel? She’s either really dumb or mentally ill, she does something that’s obviously wrong, even to someone just watching her life for 15 minutes, she has had years to question all of this things. It is just silly, the way she acts.
Okay, so my emotions are a mixed bag.
Visually stunning scenes are mixed with what looks like in-game-scenery, and I get the feeling of an unfinished product. But, and this is a big but, I am not sure more time would have fixed everything.
Is it the application lacking the tools needed to go all the way, or simply lack of talent? I´m not trying to be mean here, but realistic. A big caveat I have with all the Open Movie projects is the lack of accurate animation and timing. Characters lack weight, and lip synching, facial and bodily expression give an eerie puppet-on-a-string impression. At times it is “OK”, but mostly it´s just annoying. Where you want to focus on the story, you instead keep noticing things that are off, if ever so slightly.
The story is nice, pacing okay, but for me the only thing that holds outstanding class is music and sound composition. 2 stars of 5 from me.
Seen the movie twice now and thought it was exceptional. I also thought that the story was clear and easy to follow. I can’t help but think that the complaints stem, not from the story being poor, but from the fact that it wasn’t “happy” and lacked a feel-good sentiment at the end. I thought the decision to age Sintel towards the end was kinda brilliant, a way of deepening the loss that resulted from her absolute obsession. It’s incredible the way the story was able to evoke such emotion and attachment to the characters in such a short span of time.
There were some issues with the animation. For me, the most obvious issue was the weighting in certain scenes. For instance, when the adult dragon knocks over the pillar after taking Scales, the way the structure collapses looks a bit odd – as though it was made from Styrofoam. I think these errors were a bit more obvious as they juxtaposed so clearly with the animation that was really impressive.
Overall, a fantastic effort and the whole team should be proud.
NSM, I heartily agree with you on the story elements and also that the polish on some parts shines where a couple of niggles (agreeing here) don’t bring the whole piece down. I love it and indeed the team should indeed be very proud.
@differentsmoke
“The whole plot is forced together with proverbial duck tape. It just doesn’t hold water. Compare it with a greek tragedy, compare it with Oedipus, which is the closest thing I can think of. Oedipus does not once do something that seems illogical or unexplainable to the audience, he acts consistently to what he knows. Sintel? She’s either really dumb or mentally ill, she does something that’s obviously wrong, even to someone just watching her life for 15 minutes, she has had years to question all of this things. It is just silly, the way she acts.”
She’s driven by obsession to a form of madness. Have you never seen people become so close to an animal? And to say that she’s only known about Scales “for a month” is not something you’ve derived from the movie, but an assumption made. Scales was her one friend in a life of loneliness and she wanted to get him/she/it back. The character’s motivation is stated clearly from the outset. You can argue that this wasn’t presented clearly, but it certainly wasn’t wholly illogical.
@NSM:
” looks a bit odd – as though it was made from Styrofoam ”
Yet a land with flying dragons is perfect normal.
@differentsmoke:
I totally agree with not being able to relate. If I would loose my daughter I cannot believe that I will chase her for 20 years and then kill her trying to get her daughter and then abandon her daughter in dispair.
But I have no trouble that the director sets me on the wrong foot in the beginning of the movie. Stories are told, and told with the colors ( mindset ) of the talesman. That is always current and very current here now in Holland. Thinking that you are looking at an objective fotography of the realworld is something everybody needs to step away from when watching or reading. At least thats why I have no trouble when a director does that. Memento is great in that sense, “don’t believe this man”.
@joeri67
I’m not sure I understand. Are you saying that it WAS made of Styrofoam? That’s a fairly unique defense :)
No.
I’m just saying that we cannot have any idea of physics in a Martin Lodewijks world.
Or at least have no reason to project our own physics to that of a world with dragons.
http://www.stripboekentekoop.nl/STORM_ANSICHT.JPG
http://unkie.org/files/storm/15-De_Levende_Planeet-800×600.png
Bravo à toute l’équipe,
Un projet de cette ampleur, mené à terme sans moyen financier, sans promesse de retour sur investissement, en si peu de temps, mérite qu’on se taise de toutes critiques aussi peu constructives soit-elle.
C’est sur qu’avec les moyens d’AVATAR, les scénarios à l’épreuve de tous ages de Disney et 2 ou 3 ans pour réaliser le film, vous auriez fait un peu mieux. Mais bordel, c’est fait gratuitement, on peut le télécharger gratuitement avec un programme mis à disposition pour utilisation gratuite. Alors gardons nos chers critiques.
C’est bien fait, une histoire obscure (donc pour adulte), de beaux plans…
Encore BRAVO.
Longue vie à Blender
I was moved to tears! I particularly liked the scene where the farmer who was so cruely choking his chickens gets his comeuppance! I simply hate to see chickens being chocked! Though to be honest, I must say the car chase scenes could have been better, I personally wouldn’t have placed the hero on a tricycle. And you know me, I hate sex, so I skipped over those bits. My, those were long scenes! Is this R rated?? Anyhow, a fine effort by all. You can expect to hear from me with job offers very soon. Yours, George
” You can expect to hear from me with job offers very soon. Yours, George ”
What do you mean? Making a new movie? I thought you where first going to release StarWars in 3d. “Pulling a Lucas”.
downshifting from movie critique to technical problem solving:
i use maya professionally and we do a lot cloth simulation. it is very very difficult to get completely clean simulations without interpenetrations. but the nice thing in maya is that you can go in and adjust the cloth where interpenetrations exist on a frame by frame basis and then have it interpolate back to the simulation cache. without such ability, i would be stuck having to simulate over and over again praying that THIS TIME, it doesn’t penetrate. this is no good and this would not work in a production situation.
so i’m wondering with blender, is there a way to easily address things like this manually on a frame by frame basis?
in particular, the hair and wings seem to have penetration issues and the fact that they remain in the final films leads me to believe that it was not a matter of simply pushing it in on the offending frames… cuz if it was that simple, they would have done it.
i play around with blender but i’m definitely no expert and i have no idea what the answer to this question is. anyone?
George Lucas never made anything with a decent story either :)
Awesome. Really Awesome
Aimed at emos? I guess I’m a 68-year old emo then. I enjoyed it from start to finish, as much because it wasn’t what I expected as for any other reason.
As for the critics – well, I’ve worked in the film and TV industry all my adult life. I can’t recall ever having got a project finished to my complete satisfaction. While critical comment is fair and necessary, comments of the “I could have done better” kind are pointless. If you can do better, do it. I look forward to seeing your work.
So in summary I think goeland57 puts my feelings best. “A project of this magnitude, completed without financial means, without promise of return on investment, in so little time, should silence all unhelpful criticism … Well done, a dark story (aimed at adults), beautiful images … BRAVO once more. Long live Blender”
BTW, Josh. I can only agree with the other posters – I can’t see Channel 9 going for this. It’s aimed at an audience above the mental age of 12.
Sintel is beautifull
Professional ……..
Through the blender to make money ………
A job that way?
It’s wrong
Through the blender to make money ……
You’ve got to make yourself a group of
Because
Maybe you’re the best user of the Blender
If you create a group
Blender users have to increase
Sintel those tools
You want to be professional
Sintel you put in your blog
Sintel compliment your language
Wherever possible to link to Sintel
If you do, the more quickly you can become a professional.
It’s supposed to mean Sintel ..
Congratulation to al!
What does Joolme mean with his/her instant poetry?
As a professional Maya user, judging by this film and previous Blender Foundation efforts, I have just this to say:
Blender sucks.
@JeroenM
Sorry
I am Korean
I suck at English
My writing
Korean Suck at Englesh
Over the weekend
I will regret my actions.
Sorry
”
As a professional Maya user, judging by this film and previous Blender Foundation efforts, I have just this to say:
Blender sucks.
”
I’m sorry, with a reaction like that there’s nothing professional about you.
@Ghost3d
“@joeri67
I dont really want the assets to the movie nor do i want the assets to toy story 3. that doesnt sway my opinion on whether or not sintel was a good short film. ”
I’m not trying to sway your opinion on the movie, I couldnt care less.
I’m responding to your incorrectness as you said:
“another point this is not an open source project the artist are being paid and there is a budget its a commercial production”
Even if it is a commercial production that doesn’t stand in the way from it being an open source project as you can access all assets from the movie. That’s what makes it open.
And it’s not a commercial production in the sense that the BF tries to gather money to make a movie, and not: make a movie to try to make alot of money. As selling DVD-s is spreading the story, and selling toys is not.
“you can access all assets from the movie. That’s what makes it open.”
No. The fact that it’s under particular Open Source(tm) -compliant version of CC license makes it so. Not everything they hand out free and without DRM-protection is automatically everyone’s property.
People should educate themselves more on licensing and not only go “Yay, free stuff!!!”.
I am all with Ghost3d.
From the technical side of view this isn’t a good advertisement for Blender.
If i have to show my colleagues what Blender is capable of, i will stick to BBB.
As a comparison: http://vimeo.com/8642276
3 Years, but smaller team and no community providing assets and stuff.
Anyway…as long as it pushes Blender-development it is a success!
Beautiful stories are often sad. Do you remember “This Wonderful Life” done by Liam Kemp in 2002 ?
Sintel reminds me this kind of feeling.
Hi Roubal, i changed the PAL version to mpeg.
Sadly I dont have a pro account so its only 500mb, making it a quality 4 mpeg.
http://vimeo.com/15478362
@Joeri, you have no luck, because without a Vimeo+ account, your posted videos are not available for download, so your mpg file can’t be downloaded ! It can only be played on Vimeo.
So, the mpg file you have built will be usable only if you can host it somewhere else !
He Roubal,
Thanks for the heads-up. I think you can dl it now.
@mayaist: please don’t argue in that way!!
I am a Maya User too. But I do respect all 3D-tools (C4D, Max, Lightwave, Houdini and Blender) and I am testing all the software and I know about all the new versions.
Blender isn’t that far Blender-Users think it is! And it’s not for professionals!
So stay with Maya (I love it!!) and respect Blender and it’s advantages.
Anyone realized that the YouTube Sintel has 100.000+ views per day?
Good story, good artwork, good animation, good software! This is Blender! :-)
The story is not sad. It is about learning in life, and this learning process is sometimes painful. Painful but not sad. I would like to know what happened with the small dragon after :-)
Well, I’ve thought long and hard about this. Ultimately, I’m disappointed!
I think the criticism can be broken down into two categories: the story, and the software.
The story:
I wrote a long breakdown of the story after reading the comments here. I have deleted it, because after watching it over and over, I think it works as is. There were some good ideas here about what could have been done to make Sintel’s motivation more believable. Some of them were excellent, like showing Sintel and the dragon getting bigger together as the time-lapse bedroom scene progressed. That would have quieted the critics concerning Sintel’s motivation for going on such a long journey. I’ll agree to that one, but I think the rest were simply nit-picking about the artistic vision. They weren’t flaws. There is a big difference. Just because you don’t like something, doesn’t mean there is something wrong with it. Not everything has to be completely explained.
The biggest point of contention was the reveal at the end. There are two artistic devices to set this up, and they have both been mentioned. Fight Club vs. The Sixth Sense. Sintel’s creators chose Fight Club. With this device the creative team gives you the vision in the protagonist’s head. And at the end you realize you weren’t seeing the character as they really were earlier in the film. With The Sixth Sense, the creative team gives you ambiguous scenes that make you trick yourself into believing the wrong thing. The Fight Club way is not wrong, or a trick. It is a valid artistic device. But if you think back, A lot of people really didn’t like Fight Club. And not just a little bit, they hated it. The Sixth Sense on the other hand was almost universally praised by everyone. It let you play back each scene in your head, after it was over, and reinterpret what you saw. People liked that. Many people didn’t like what Fight Club had done. However, some people loved Fight Club and the technique used. That’s really a matter of individual perception. Both are valid devices. Why did Sintel’s creators choose the Fight Club way? I don’t know. I hope they were aware of the chance they were taking regarding the audiences reaction. I don’t have a problem with it, but it does make the ending a little jarring. Maybe glossing over some other plot points earlier in the story compounded the reaction.
I was hesitant to show it to my wife after reading the comments here. I thought she would find it too dark and confusing. In the end, I’ll defer to my wife (always a wise thing to do) who said, “they’re idiots! If they want every thing explained in detail then they can go watch a movie like The Proposal.” That’s not a criticism by her. She likes watching The Proposal, but only when she doesn’t feel like thinking. Sintel was made to make you think. And it did. So I say it was a success. It’s a short. Not a full-length movie. They’re not supposed to explain everything in detail. You fill in the details yourself!
The software:
One comment here that stuck with me was, “Sintel is not Blender.” I think that must be emphasized. Sintel was a product that was overly-ambitious for the resources, and possibly the talent that went into it. I say possibly, because with greater resources it might have been much better, even with the same team. We’ll never know. There are scenes in Sintel that look like they could have come out of pixar. But they were the exception, not the rule. And we wanted Pixar! I bet if we forced Pixar to make their next movie With Blender, then with hundreds of people working for two years along side programmers they could do it. I watched the making of The Incredibles and it showed how even late in development they still couldn’t get the hair working right. Despite god knows how many months of non-stop work devoted to getting it right. The director was scared that they would not get it working in time for their deadline. Let’s not forget just how hard animation is!
Having said that, I implore The Blender Foundation to scale back the next project dramatically. Cut the length down to 3 minutes or less. And don’t set a deadline for release, at least not publically. Then get a copy of every Pixar movie ever made. Next, scrutinize every scene in the next short, side by side with what Pixar does, and make sure it looks just as good. This might force you guys to really improve the renderer. Stop adding tools until the renderer is better. If you can’t do it, then use an external renderer. But don’t release it until we can end this Blender vs. commercial-software debate once and for all. I’m convinced you can match Pixar quality if you scale back the length.
Pixar:
Let’s make a rough estimate of the work needed. Let’s say Pixar has 200 people working for two years to make a 100 minute movie. For the ease of calculation, let’s say they work 5 days a week. That equals 260 days a year: (2*260*200) / 100 = 1040 manpower-days per minute of animation to get it done.
Blender Foundation:
Let’s say Blender has 10 people and is only going to make 2 minutes of animation. How much time would it take Blender to achieve the same level of workload. 1040*2/10=208 days. Now add back in the weekends to get the number of weeks needed. 208/5=41.6 weeks of work.
Conclusion: Blender Foundation, please limit your next project to 2 minutes. Get 10 people, and in 41.6 weeks we’ll see if the quality issue is Blender software, or Blender workload. If you want to shorten the project to 6 months, then get some help again from other teams. This is doable.
I really hope Ton will take this proposal seriously. Why, because nothing would help the spread of Blender more than having real bragging rights to top-quality animation. I live in Hollywood, and have worked in the entertainment industry for decades. I come from an “Industry” family. And I am a recently converted (2.5x) Blender fanboy. Trust me, Blender needs something like this. It doesn’t need another Sintel with uneven quality!
Having said that, I like Sintel very much! I’ve watched it at least 10 times already.
Thank You Blender Foundation.
Terrachild:
The main difference between Sintel and Fight Club is this: Fight Club’s “trick” is consistent with the character. We are seeing the world through the eyes of a delusional man. Even so, there are various hints through out Fight Club that they are the same guy, mostly by the female character(Marla Singer, played by Helena Bonham Carter), plus the continuous references to the main character spending more and more time “sleeping”(he thinks he is sleeping but in reality it is Tyler Durden, his alter ego, taking over his body). This are all very cleverly put in the movie. I don’t think Sintel is portrayed as a delusional character, it is not incorporated into the character’s mannerism. Apart from that, Sintel might be the protagonist, but fight club makes an extra effort to get across the fact that it is a first person narrative(that’s why they use voice over, always a controversial choice). More over, there is no hint, up to the final scene, of her aging.
Secondly, I don’t think Sintel is made to made you think, and it has nothing to do with wanting things to be explained. I do not dislike the story because there are parts that haven’t been explained, I just think that they COULDN’T be explained. Thing is, when you think about the story is when you realize its flaws, you cannot imagine a coherent, consistent, plausible world starting from what is shown in the movie. It is not a matter of imagination, or of lack of imagination. Just tell me, can you picture a woman who can go on a trip 20 years long and not realize the time that has gone by? It doesn’t make sense! It can pass while your not thinking about it, while you’re taking what is given to you as is, but once you try to IMAGINE and fill in the blanks, well, you cannot. Because your imagination tells you this tale is a silly one.
Another extraordinary job! You Blender guys are amazing!
I think there is a hint that she is not seeing herself correctly. When Sintel gets attacked by the animal on her quest she get scratched on the arm by it, but when she grabs her arm and looks at it, there isn’t a mark on it. Then at the end when she sees herself as she really is, there are scratch scars on her arm exactly where she was scratched by the animal. There might be more clues. But that one is noticeable.
Once you see Sintel’s single-mindedness and her unwillingness to see herself as she is, it isn’t a stretch that she has ignored reality to recapture the feeling she had with her “small” friend. No matter how time goes by in her life she still sees her friend scales as a small dragon. If she could allow her conscious mind to think about the dragon no longer being small, then she would never continue on her journey. Think about it this way, if your child was abducted, you would always see you child as the age it was when it was abducted. Even 10 years later, you wouldn’t picture your child as small. Combine that with Sintel’s delusion and it makes perfect sense.
Also, I think people here are being too literal here. This story is a metaphor for trying to recapture something you’ve lost, even when you should know in your mind that it’s gone, your heart won’t let you see it. I think people who use 3D software, for the most part, are detailed-oriented methodical people. Perhaps that’s why there are so many people here having a difficult time with the story. Some people have no problem at all. This isn’t a criticism, it’s just a fact that Sintel is not a film for everyone.
“perfect sense” is a stretch, I don’t think anyone who lost their child for 10+ years would actually expect to find him looking exactly as it did. One thing is to picture something in your mind a certain way, another is to actually expect the world to be that way. Some time over the course of those 10 years you’d ask yourself “I wonder what he looks like, nowadays”.
As for the sratch, I think that’s just sloppy texturing(and if it isn’t, then it is just poor camera work)
Congratulations
Sponsors of Sintel
I got the torrent files to keep the seed
Great upload size
Watch huge YouTube
Huge download
Maybe its more than 1 million had watched Sintel
2 days
It was in two days
That’s a very wise Sintel Sponsors
Great,
differentsmoke said” “perfect sense” is a stretch”
I said combined with Sintel’s delusion! Not by itself.
differentsmoke said “As for the sratch, I think that’s just sloppy texturing(and if it isn’t, then it is just poor camera work)”
Did you make the move? That’s an assumption on your part. One of the filmakers will have to answer if that was intentional or not. Sintel’s expression when she is scratched is clear. She winces in pain, then grabs her arm, looks at it and there is nothing there. Suddenly she looks fine, and doesn’t look in pain anymore. Seems clear to me. But if someone from the Durian team could answer this I would appreciate it.
thanks is very good anime…
Terrachild: Spot on. This was the intention. Not seeing the injury is a hint about Sintel’s delusion.
There are indeed other hints. (Look for reflections, for example)
@Joeri67 : good attempt, but your MPG file plays with sound only on a computer. On a standard DVD player it plays without sound. You probably used a wrong codec for the sound track…
Sorry, for the bad news !o(
I want to say up front that I can understand how some people might be disappointed by Sintel. I was not. Just like Elephants Dream, the story was something “open” to interpretation; something completely different and something that really did make you think.
Like Terrachild has been saying, the key to understanding the entire film is Sintel’s delusion. She genuinely does not understand the passing of time! If she is so deluded that she believes herself to be young and preserved throughout her whole journey, of course she will be deluded enough to think that she is looking for a young dragon! Her weakness is that she loved the period of her life she had with Scales, and because she didn’t WANT to believe that things were changing, she didn’t.
The missing cut from the leopard-thing is the clue: Sintel genuinely believes that no matter what she goes through, she will remain the same. Until the end we see Sintel as she sees herself. And at the end, when her delusion is finally broken by the reality of what she has done, we see her as she really was all along.
The story is just deep and really does make you think. There is really so much to feast the mind upon! Here’s an example. When Sintel receives the cut on her arm (that she doesn’t understand she has received), it is on her left arm. It is on the dragon’s left wing that he has his cut. The old man in his hut took Sintel in just like Sintel took in her dragon, but unlike Sintel, he is not deluded enough to mess things up.
And there are connections… for instance, the old man says, “this blade has shed much innocent blood”. Think about it… it shed innocent blood throughout its entire career and by the end of the film, shed more. The symbolism and connections are amazing sometimes.
How about this? At the end Sintel is “old”… but she’s not THAT old. I wondered for a while why the animators didn’t make her grayer, more wrinkled… but the point of the end of the film is, even though she’s old and scarred, she’s not THAT old and not THAT scarred… she still has a glimmer of hope and vitality to share with the baby dragon.
There’s so much more to think about and ponder, so much open to interpretation! Why was the man attacking Sintel at the beginning of the film? What will happen to Sintel and the baby dragon at the end of the film? Why was Sintel living all alone all her life? How did Scales get the cut on his wing? Why did the large dragon come to fetch Scales?
All in all, I think it is an amazing film story-wise. It lives up to what the Blender Foundation has been trying to do: make open movies, movies that are not only open in a licensing and software sense, but open for interpretation.
As far as graphics, I agree that many parts looked like video game cutscenes. But a lot of the movie was absolutely visually stunning! And, bottom line is, we got a better program out of it. So I’m happy!
Quick note: anybody else notice Proog at 4:20?
@Terrachild: No, I didn’t made the film, but you cannot rule out assumptions that reflect bad on the movie when everybody who’s defending it relies solely on assumptions like “maybe she was delusional”, “maybe it was the most important thing in her life”, “maybe the guy had a reason to attack her”, etc. Mine is not even such a stretch. It doesn’t look like something done intentionally, not on the first viewing, not on subsequent viewings. If it was, my film making intuition tells me a bit more attention should’ve been put on the scratch itself. If you’re making a movie, you control what is noticeable and what isn’t.
@Differentsmoke
“No, I didn’t made the film, but you cannot rule out assumptions that reflect bad on the movie when everybody who’s defending it relies solely on assumptions like “maybe she was delusional”, “maybe it was the most important thing in her life”, “maybe the guy had a reason to attack her”, etc.”
But these aren’t assumptions. It’s stated clearly that it’s very important to her. It’s illustrated clearly that she was delusional in the final scenes. These aren’t assumptions. The “maybe the guy had a reason to attack her” objection just seems absurd. He was a bandit? She was in dangerous lands? We really don’t need to stretch much for that one.
There are clues given about both the time-lapse and the delusion. The scratch is an obvious one mentioned already, but how about the fact that she walked across both a desert and snow-covered mountains?
I think some people are giving the story to much credit for being different, and comparing it to fight club is insane. fight club was very well executed sintel was not. But the biggest problem with sintel is, the story is just dumb . people cannot relate to it because of a huge flaw.
yes we all get attached to pets. but come on if you find a stray dog and you spend what a couple days or weeks with it and the dogs mom comes and take s the dog back are you going to travel thousands of miles for what 20 years to take the dog back from its mom? clearly sintel is a psychopath . i mean maybe if you were really crazy and the dog was taken by a dog catcher or something like that then i can see maybe if you were totally nuts trying to rescue the dog. so right away the story for me is like WTF come on really . really makes no sence. and yes i get it sintel is insane, and super lonely , and weird i get all that but really the premise of the story is already a pretty big stretch and pretty hard to relate to. if sintel found an orphan child that was kidnapped instead of a baby dragon this story would have been more believable. so instead of the story seeming progressive and different its just unrelatable and kinda dumb in my opinion. people yeas get very attached to animals but not like that unless they are totally psychotic . 99% in the same scenario watch scales get taken away and feel sad about it the end.
Please do not explain the story again I get it I just think its dumb.
Just loved it. I am disappointed by the length and the scene it ended with, but overall I’m impressd.
Stupid story …..
The story of a man in Cambodia
How to make people more happy in
About 60% of the people to slaughter …..
So it’s not a fact not
Countries with sufficient resources and adequate production capacity have
5% of the people
Dude pick up a living!
Well enough that they do not care about the government.
So help from other countries ….
Then there’s the story ….
Palestine is a country which ……
…
…
This story, and I never want to …
There is a story in the Netherlands
Sintel was a girl ….
…
…
Yes
The story of a woman who is Sintel
It’s more realistic
Great story
hhaha Joolme is pretty awesome ! have another round!
can someone translate that message??
Freen said “Terrachild: Spot on. This was the intention. Not seeing the injury is a hint about Sintel’s delusion.
There are indeed other hints. (Look for reflections, for example)”
I saw the reflection of her face in the bowl, but when viewed on my T.V. it was completely unnoticeable. But when I viewed it in HD on my computer I thought I saw that something was different about her face. It looked older. But it was too subtle to know for sure. The arm scratch was obvious to me. Because at the end, attention was drawn to the scar when she realized that something was wrong.
Thanks for confirming it Freen.
so i just watched it again for like the 5th time and i honestly dont see what is wrong with the technical aspect of the movie.
other that a few mistakes it looked about as good as any pixar movie
i dont see what you critics are whining about
I love blender and will be forever greatfull to this wonderfull application that I
use everyday.
But I totally agree with: differentsmoke and ghost3d
The following are for the artist not for Blender
Pros : Allow to develop Blender 2.5
Cons : I though Collins was supposed to come up with an meaningfull story?
: Sintel’s animation are weird sometimes specially when she walk
: Such a great team of Artist with amazing showcase before Sintel and the final
result is technically very disappointed specially the animation of the Characters.
Animate a Rabbit is not the same as animate human being, I knew you
should have choosen another animator Ton. So many applicants why not l
leave the opportunity to somebody else. I hope we will all learn from that
lesson
:Andy Golz was not present in this project and you can feel that, although David
did a fantastic Job in term of Art.
: I still do know what happened to the Angela Guenette…
I am still deeply in love with Blender.
The future Mango project should be done by Outstanding Artists in the community: Andy G., Andrew Price, Kernon Dillon, Jonathan Williamson, Bassam Kurdali and the great Tony Mullen, please consider it.
I had a typo that messed up the meaning of what I was trying to say earlier.
I wrote “Even 10 years later, you wouldn’t picture your child as small.”
I think most of you understood that I meant to say:
“Even 10 years later, you would picture your child as small.”
PoorStoryIdea wrote “comparing it to fight club is insane.”
No it isn’t. Because I didn’t compare the execution of Fight Club to Sintel. Honestly, where did you get that idea. Can you guys follow a simple argument?
Maybe many of you here aren’t native English speakers, so I’ll try to be patient.
Go back and read my explanation. I said that there were two literary (artistic) devices that can be used when you are going to attempt a “reveal” at the the end of a story like this. Identifying the movies in which they were used is not insane.
And my earlier point should not be glossed over. Many people hated fight club. And not just a little. This may be due to the technique used.
I’m dating myself here, but it’s a little like in Dallas, when Bobby died, and two seasons later Bobby appears in the shower in his bedroom, and it becomes clear that the last two years of the show never happened except in Bobby’s wife’s head. She dreamed the whole thing. Well, from then on nobody trusted the show anymore. And they stopped watching it.
Or to a lesser extent, when the medical show Saint Elsewhere ended, and you learn that the entire show (many years) took place in a snow-globe in the hands of an autistic child. That didn’t sit well with people either.
@Travis Roske seriously ?
not in the same universe as pixar. if it looks the same to you you really have a poor eye for CG. The animation is armature level at best. Lighting is pretty poor overall. a couple shots looked great but that was it most of it had huge problems . basic elementary mistakes. no contact shadows, way to much ambient light . hard to tell light direction. may be a compositing issue. if your comparing sintel to lux jr done by pixar in the 90’s or tin tin then yeah i guess its in the same realm.
and stop saying sintel and fightclub in the same sentence its not worthy . its a super strange story idea just like elephants dream was. why does blender foundation try to make these strange animations with bizarre story lines? Who is making the story decisions over there? they need to step aside and get a real story teller to write the next one. no more of these people with mental illness stories please. if it wasn’t for big buck bunny I would say blender foundation was pretty one dimensional with its stories or maybe that big bunny was psychotic too! if your next story idea meeting starts with ” I have an idea we start off with this crazy ” stop right there no more crazy people please its tired put it to bed. doesn’t make you guys “cool or innovative” just focus on telling a coherent story for once.
I’m so glad i didn’t pay money for this I’d rather watch hoodwinked or all the Shrek movies in a row before watching this again. :P
I would also like to point out this hint toward Sintel’s delusion… the old man says, “you have only failed to see”. He says remarkably little the entire film, but what he does say is the key to understanding the entire film.
I think Joolme should write the next script!
I’m really starting to understand what he is saying.
Like, I’m connecting to his brain in some sort of weird symbiotic way.
Can you feel me Joolme? Can you feel my thoughts connecting to your brain?
Because I can feel you. I can see through your eyes as if they are my own.
Peace brother, some people just know how to speak the truth!
I showed Sintel to two of my students today. They are interested in Blender but otherwise I’d say about as unbiased as it’s possible to be. And they both were very impressed by how the story played out. They followed it, they were engaged, then surprised, and ultimately they had a strong emotional response. I definitely think that there is plenty of room to like or dislike the story, and reasonable criticisms. But all in all I think that the team pulled it off. For whatever flaws it has, the story works, as does the production as a whole.
One thing that critics are overlooking is that there are a lot of constraints on a project like this. There’s the software and the fact that it’s in development. 2.5 is *still* in development, and it was much moreso when this movie was being made. Working with alpha software presents all kinds of very real technical challenges that take time to solve. Deadlines are necessary for a variety of reasons (some to do with funding, some to do with people’s other plans, etc). You can’t just keep working on a project until everybody and their dog agrees it’s perfect. Other constraints include the fact that the story was written in part to conform to development goals (must have fire and smoke, etc).
As much as everybody wants to do it, I think that comparing a BF production to Pixar movies is kind of beside the point. The day the BF makes a 400 million dollar picture is the day Pixar gives its movies and all their assets and software away for free. I’d love to see either one of those things happen, but I’m not holding my breath. Unfortunately, there are some financial realities of moviemaking that make either of these situations a bit hard to picture.
If you absolutely must compare with Pixar, then compare Elephants Dream with The Adventures of Andre and Wally B and compare Sintel with Red’s Dream. Both groups are pushing different envelopes in their own ways. Every creative force needs time and experience to mature and develop, and Sintel is a terrific next step in Blender’s development.
@pixnlove, wow, thanks for the vote of confidence, but I beg to differ! Everybody on the Sintel team was better qualified and more capable than I am. If I ever do take part in an open movie project, I’ll be the one who benefits.
that was simply stunning :-) it looked amazing :-D great story telling as well, it plays with your emotions incredibly well, very few films ever manage to do that quite so well :-D
Stunning animation, but the gait of characters seems unnatural to me. Blender Foundation should seriously consider using motion-tracking in its next production.
I suggested to Ton Roosendaal that the next open movie should mix live action actors with CGI backgrounds and sets. I was glad to read that he has taken my advice. I also suggested a SciFi like movie, which would attract a large audience. Spinoiffs could even become profitiable.
@TonyM:
“Working with alpha software presents all kinds of very real technical challenges that take time to solve”
Sure… Have you seen the end credits text spacing?
Some problems are due to software, and others are to budget limits to fix the details.
But budget problems are also producers problems, some critz say the bar was to high, and in extent of not finishing the details they are right. A smaller movie would have left more time and resources to make what they where making a better product. This movie has some perfect parts as you mention. For instance the dialog is pretty flawless in explaining the story and the motion / storytelling takes the viewer from start to end over 14 minutes. Pretty cool for a “you tube” world of clickerdy-click.
But I would not be surpriced when Colin becomes the next Lucas that on the 25th anniversary of Sintel we’ll see a “digitaly enhanced” version.
@Olaf:
“Blender Foundation should seriously consider using motion-tracking in its next production.”
As a software challenge I agree, but I dont see the point of having cg characters that might as well could be filmed. And how to track a dragon?
“I was glad to read that he has taken my advice”
You are a funny guy.
A district 9 kind of movie would be putting the bar yet a little higher.
Today
I Was a Stupid…..
Interesting ….
But
Sintel was a success.
…..
Today is a very nice day ….
I have a work colleague, Next year
Very good
If
I had a pot
it would
catch the yellow liquid
which out it comes
so so much!!
I really like that flick!
Im, Joolme…
Ho~my…
What’s happening?
Probably
Start
Blender under attack……..
Is it because the Chinese market?
Oh …….
It’s a dirty world
I..Only infer
Yes… angry I’m Only infer
……..
But weird
That was so epic and sad all at the same time…..but really made for a great short! So much story told in such a short amount of time!
And wow….Maya and Max have some serious competition now! BLENDER OWNS!!!!
So what will open film #4 be I wonder….?!??!?!?
AWESOME emotional wonderful. This even made my fiance tear up. Not to mention me and our 7 year old bawled like babies. We Want MORE!!!!!
The lyrics for “I Move On” ( the song played at credits) Explain everything. Read them:
Come Take My JourneyInto NightCome Be My ShadowWalk At My SideAnd When You SeeAll That I Have SeenCan You Tell MeLove From Pride?I Have Been WaitingAll This TimeFor One To Wake MeOne To Call MineSo When You’re NearAll That You Hold DearDo You Fear What You Will Find?As The DawnBreaks Through The NightI Move OnForever Longing For The HomeI Found In Your EyesI Will Be ListeningFor The DrumTo Call Me OverFar Away FromMy Tender YouthAnd The Very TruthShowing Me What I’ve BecomeAs The DawnBreaks Through The NightI Move OnForever Longing For The HomeI Found In Your EyesYour VoiceSaw Me Through The Night
Take that, everyone who said “The plot sucked!!” and “Why the heck does Sintel take that huge journey to save a stupid dragon???!!11”
Incredible job, Durian team. Blender FTW.
Dangit! For some reason now the lyrics have no spaces :
If you can’t read em, look em up and sorry about that :P
Oh, and one more thing: Sintel’s journey didn’t take years. Anyone who has read anything about dragons knows that a dragon matures and starts mating at six months. Months, not years. And do you think Sintel would look that good after ten years of travel(besides the scars and the grey hair (which was from extreme stress, not age))? If it was ten years, I wanna know what she uses to keep looking like a seventeen-year old… :)
tee hee
She uses being-an-animated-character cream. ;-)
nesto