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The Factory

2

Gizmo writes:

I'd like to share my short film "The Factory" a project that I animated and rendered in Blender using Eevee. A lot of the shaders were developed using the Lightning Boy Shaders. Editing, compositing and post was done in DaVinci Resolve.

The project took about 2 years to put together in my spare time and at times felt that it would never be completed.

Like most people who work in this industry we know that there is a tried and tested production workflow i.e., script, storyboard, design, animation, editing, sound design etc. Each of these tasks are time consuming and the path ahead seems infinite, especially if you’re doing the project solo.
So, I often fast tracked a shot to an almost finished state, even though it might not make the final cut. This helped keep the motivation high during those periods when you’re tempted to discard the project completely.

2 Comments

  1. PinkSamurai Fairlady on

    Hi there , I'm not an absolute noob but still very much a noob. My first thought watching this was, how can anyone think about and create all those details, both in the mesh with it's textures and animation side ( I did't even consider the rest)? Discovering that it took two years to finish made a lot of sense, gave me hope and intimidated me at the same time :D The fast tracking sounds like a great strategy.

    I liked the idea of the story, how it developed and progressed. It kept my attention and I really wanted to know how it ends. I went and watched it twice more and every time I saw more details and tried to see what was 3D mesh and what was 2D grease pencil (did I mention I was a noob?) .

    Congratulations on finishing a creative and fun film.

  2. Thank you for your kind words, 2 years sounds like a long time. But it was often done piecemeal, sometimes having to leave it completely for a few months. When I see other peoples work and just how quickly they are able to achieve great results - I too get a little discouraged. I think perseverance and not getting too distracted was the key for myself. Allowing time out to do smaller side projects which I could finish quickly, stopped me from getting frustrated and giving up completely.

    As for all the details, don't be afraid to use other peoples assets, whether paid for or free, just modify as you see fit, you can't create everything all the time - else you'll never finish.

    Part of the reason for choosing this style and Eevee was the speed of render times (almost real-time) which meant iteration and changes could be done pretty quickly. Past experience has taught me that there's nothing quite like rendering a 5 second sequence @3mins per frame over night, just to find that you'd accidentally left something in frame that should have been hidden.

    I didn't use any grease pencil for this animation (this is something that I might explore for another project). A big part was using the excellent LightningBoy Shaders:
    https://www.blendernation.com/2020/12/14/lightning-boy-shader-2-0-a-new-workflow-for-stylized-animation/

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