After close to two years of work, Daniel Brown presents part two of his short movie (see part one below).
DanBrownCGI writes:
Part 2 of the short sci-fi indie film I've been working on called Plagarus has been released. The link to the full playlist of both parts so far is:
Like the first part, there are numerous mistakes throughout that I am aware of, but due to time and money constraints, obviously, there is only so much that can be done. I think it's pretty good considering all the hurdles that needed to be jumped over to make it happen!Rendered in Blender 2.68 - 2.70, using the Cycles render engine exclusively this time. I would like to thank the Blender community for their invaluable help in making this a reality, and I hope they enjoy this one even more than the last one.
Be careful what you find out there in King Valley...
- Lead artist/animator: Me
- Sound recording: Daniel Rivera
- Music: Amotz Plessner (BMI 90%) and Sterling Campbell (ASCAP 10%)
- Royalty free music rights purchased legally from www.smartsound.com.
- Lethgoshis' Outfit: Bobbie25 / daz3d.com
- Padoen's Outfit: Vampir3Princess / Lesthat / Sarsa / daz3d.com
- Textures: cgtextures.com / Humanoid Textures: Daz 3D
Software Used:
- Blender 3D 2.6x - 2.7x
- Gimp
- Daz | Studio (for exporting humanoids to Blender)
- Sonic Fire Pro 5.8 (music editing)
Thanks for everyone's great suggestions and support over at BlenderArtists.org.
Best wishes,
Dan
7 Comments
Looks good. The stationary-noise grain problem from part one appears to have been solved here in part two, which I consider to be the most important fix overall.
Thanks. Yeah, thanks to a person on Blender Artists who told me to put #frame in the "Seed" field under Render Settings. It has the added benefit of (kind of) simulating film grain.
Dan
That's pretty good stuff goin on here. I think my biggest issues are robotic movements (like when he moved his arms with the binoculars) and the voice just feels like it doesn't fit for some reason. It's not horrible, just somethnig that struck me.
It's overall great and I'm excited to see more. Hopefully it doesn't take two more years for the next part! hah
Thanks for the helpful critiques. It's a rather steep learning curve for character animation, I'm afraid, and I'm still spinning my wheels in some areas. As for Part 3, I hope it doesn't take two more years, either. :)
Dan
Well, you're leaps and bounds ahead of me in the way of animations! I've had the plans for an animated series - but dag if it's not hard to actually accomplish! Your series is pretty interesting, thus far. Keep up the great work and I hope to see much more!
Thanks, but it's surprising how much we can do if we put our mind to it and don't give in to resistance. Anything in particular that's standing in your way?
Something that I couldn't get over was character modelling, which I'm no good at. So I had to rely on third party stuff for the character models. This actually took me a bit of time to accept because I succumbed to the powerful notion that if it's not 100% my creation, then I didn't make it at all. Film and movies are such complicated art forms that it's practically impossible for a single person to have the expertise to do it all.
But this is, essentially, what I've been doing since I was a kid playing on my bedroom floor with Legos and Micro Machine spaceship models.
Dan
Oh I get stuck all over the place, man. I'm also not good with the humanoid character modeling and will/hope to use Daz to make my characters. I'm more interested in the story telling than making sure it's all my models.
I get stuck on time (husband and father of three) and stuff, which is always a kicker!
I have the basic ideas what I need to do, I think I just get over-whelmed. I have a fairly large story I want to tell, but it's just a lot to do. Environments, characters, etc etc etc. I was going to do a graphic novel - but I look at animation and that's really where I want to play the most. Has the most flexibility in what I want to tell. A graphic novel I can fudge more in Gimp or Photoshop. Not so easy with video - but the motion can tell a big story!!
And yeah, I've been playing with GI Joes, action figures, old boxes and anything I can use as a base station .. build things with legos and set them around. And then play for hours. I'd still be doing that if my family didn't think I was nuts. Or .. more nuts.