Suburban Plight: Live-action short film w/3D animation

[effstops]

Hey everyone! Some of you may recall my WIP thread for my Snurgle model (here) back in February.


Click me!

Well, that character was created for this film I've been working on for the past two years - Suburban Plight.

I spent months working in Blender to figure out how to create and animate a semi-realistic 3D creature, and to integrate that with live-action footage.

Since then I've just been working on individual shots for this film. Each shot that had a Snurgle in it took between 3 days and 2 weeks to complete.

Anyhow, I know this is a little unusual for this forum but I'd like to post the entire film here (it's about 5 minutes), even though there are just thirteen short shots with 3D animation in them.


Enter the site!

And, I would like to show you my finalized Baby Snurgle Walkcycle here, used twice in the movie:




Finally, I made a little screencapture outline video tutorial thing on creating the Snurgle characters and integrating them into a shot- it briefly goes over each process: modeling, texturing, rigging, animating, lighting, rendering, and compositing. Watch it here. (Right-click, save as! It's 60 mb.)

Anyways, I'd love to hear what you think. Hope you enjoy my movie!

--Colin

[bELi]

cool movie, especially the unexpected actions =-)

nicely done!

[The M.h.p.e.]

I've been admirering you (and your brother's) works for a long time. Good
seeing more stuff!
"No animals were harmed in the making of this film". Great short!

Good snurgle model. I really like the texture work you've done for it, though
the snurgles sadly don't really fit into the plates that well.

Thumbs up!
//Mathias

[Burritoboy]

A great effort. Excellent work.
Well modelled, good camera work.

Having followed the whole evolution, you've tackled each problem and stage of the process logically and creatively.

Can't wait to see what you do next.


BB

[Aligorith]

Well done dude!

Snurgles were well done. Some of the animation was better than in other places. The subtle eye movements of the mother/father snurgle when the main character sees the snurgles for the first time were great. However, the feet movements of snurgles in general was a bit floaty.

Aligorith

[Roy]

Whenever I try to go on your site, it closes my browser!

[Roger]

Haha this is awsome Colin! I know the character from the UV unwrapping video (really nicely done) and I recall seeing it before (probebly in teh WIP thread). The character is soo cool and the texturing and animation in the short movie was awsome. As mentioned before, in some moments it could have been a bit better, but there are not many guys here who can match such an achievement, both thumbs way up!

By the way, thanks a lot for beeing so helpful with showing all the "behind the scene" stuff. The tutorial was really helpful for I am trying to make my own character at the moment (It's the Dad at Focussed Critique but it's not going very well) but the texturing is really difficult.

Thanks again, such community efforts are really appreciated. I try to contribute where I can (buying the Blender Orange DVD and Blender Guide) but learning from the best is awsome.

Best regards

Sander.

PS I realize just now that I remembered the voice of the video turoial....what was that?...ehm... of course! Icarus! I've learned Icarus with your video-tutorials, nevere realizing this incredible character was from this same guy! I'm sorry I should have thanked you before with making the Icarus video tutorials... so here by: Thanks Colin, I really really appreciate it. It really helped me a hell of a lot lot.

[Linny]

Hi Colin, as i already mentioned in our email correspondence a few weeks ago, i really love your work and especially the snurgle. i just showed the movie to my girlfriend and she immediately fell in love with the snurgles. she wants me to ask you, where she can buy on of these creatures or if she can at least get the uvmap of the snurgle to knit a cushion from it.

Keep up the excellent work.

Greets Linny

[Edeehem]

This is an excellent short movie. You were wondering if two years of work for this movie (on your site) was worth, for me, they are and you should be proud of this movie. Great job
Here are my crits on this great and fun shot movie
*Nice camera angles, I especially liked the top down shot from the tree trunk looking over at dad mowing the lawn. Very original
*The snurgles are just great and cute. Awesome and interesting creatures. My only crit would be the front shot at the face with the eyes. They look odd and seem to look inside his head at one point
*Simple and a very effective plot. The simplest of storylines are essentials in short movies since you don't have that much time to tell a story.

Overall, this is a really cool short movie and the blender sequence in them are great

Thumbs up
Edeehem

[scorpius]

I just have one word: Excellent. Awesome. Neat. Cool. Professional. Top-Notch. Great. Wow.

How did you get the camera to track around in the real-life shots so smoothly. That was awesome -- very movie-like. It's almost as if you used an expensive crane or something of the sort.

The 3D blended into the well-done shots nicely, and the story line is funny & enjoyable: a winning combo. I'm saving this movie in my archive.

[Marve]

That's what we all wants - to 'one man' create a short film. But you did it man, and it's professionel looking, great idea, great camera angles, nice and good looking composition. Nice 3d integration, good shadows and everything. The only thing was the movements of the snurgles, a little too mechanic. But anyways it's awsome, you got my full respect for working 2 years with this.

[Super Wu-Man]

haha, looks cool, but with dial up i'm not able to download (dont have quicktime either), any chance you could put it on youtube.com, and the tutorial too?

i would love to see this and learn how to composite 3d with live action, for my next masterpeice (the first one was space slug attack), yes i know you are very jealous, what can i say its just sort of my thing,

but i looks like we got similar actors, yeah fake mustaches and fake teeth are so funny......what........not fake.......errrr sorry dude, haha, great work.......i think

[Pseudo-G]

Fantastic stuff! I saw some of your compositing stuff a while back, but this is definitely a step above! I really love the atmosphere created by the acting, visual style, and the music. Great plot, too!

I can't wait to see what you'll come up with next!

[The_Warder]

very awsome I watched the small making of video of snurgle and It gave me great insights on a creature I have been working on for a while thank you.

[effstops]

Wow! Thanks so much for all the replies! You make me feel all warm and fuzzy inside. I'm really glad you all find my tutorials helpful! I think I'm getting better at talking to my computer screen.

First things first:

Originally Posted by Roy Whenever I try to go on your site, it closes my browser!

Eep! I have no idea why it's doing that. What browser are you using? What platform are you on, and how old is your computer? If you want to see the movie you can download it directly from this link: http://peerlessproductions.com/films...sor_midres.mov

Originally Posted by Linny i just showed the movie to my girlfriend and she immediately fell in love with the snurgles. she wants me to ask you, where she can buy on of these creatures or if she can at least get the uvmap of the snurgle to knit a cushion from it.

That's awesome! I'd love to see a Snurgle cushion!! If she's actually serious about that, send me a PM and I'll send you the UVmap! LOL.

Originally Posted by Edeehem This is an excellent short movie. You were wondering if two years of work for this movie (on your site) was worth, for me, they are and you should be proud of this movie. Great job

THANK YOU for saying so.

Originally Posted by Edeehem My only crit would be the front shot at the face with the eyes. They look odd and seem to look inside his head at one point

Yep, you're right! The eyes had to be keyframed individually cause if you look at the model, the eyes are on the sides of his head. In that particular shot I wanted his expression to be more readable so I chose an angle that would make it look more human (with the eyes in the front). However, it was impossible to get him to look one direction without the other eye looking through his skull. Good catch. I hope it wasn't too distracting!

Originally Posted by scorpius How did you get the camera to track around in the real-life shots so smoothly. That was awesome -- very movie-like. It's almost as if you used an expensive crane or something of the sort.

Thanks a lot! I'm really proud of some of those camera moves and I did actually use a crane (it was my school's). I also used a relatively inexpensive steadicam. But in any case, the shots weren't nearly as smooth as they look now until they were stabilized on the computer.

Originally Posted by Wu haha, looks cool, but with dial up i'm not able to download (dont have quicktime either), any chance you could put it on youtube.com, and the tutorial too?

Sorry Wu, I have an aversion to youtube... If you download the H.264 dialup version from my site (it's still about 15 mb, sorry!) you should be able to watch that on some other media players. If that works I can compress the tutorial as well.

Thanks for watching! I was wondering if I could get any specific animation critiques? I agree that the Snurgles are generally too floaty and too mechanical - is there something specific I should work on to make it more realistic? Weight? Timing?

--Colin

[Linny]

Well, if you really want some critics (although it's hart to find some ) i want to mention two scenes where i spotted some points.

The first is at about 2:47 in the video, where one of the baby snurgles is hopping over the gras. It seems to stay in the air a little bit too long, as if the it describes a circle in the air and not a parabel. Looks a little bit unnatural. Not a big thing so.

The second one is a little bit more severe. It occurs at 4.07 in the video, when the papa snurgle stands right before the plate. there the snurgle casts two shadows. one from his head onto the plate and the other one falling on the ground in a slightly different direction. That's impossible with just one lightsource, isn't it?

That's all i could find. Otherwise as allready said. Awesome job.

Greets Linny

Ps.: I Pm'ed you about the Cushion

[Grogilius]

Wonderful film,great work!

I liked it very much.. keep doing such things !

[enricoceric]

This is absolutely fabulous, great work in the camera handling. Nice suspense and very humorous ! The integration of the Snurgles may require a bit more work, but that's great anyway.

Congrats
Enrico

[eaglebreath]

this should be in forum gallery, man! I love this so much. I thought that that man beat those snurgles, still, that feeling give me goosebumps
You are just awesome.

[BgDM]

That was friggin great work. Excellent little story too.

I have to agree that the Snurgles, though well modelled, textured and animated, did not seem to fit 100%. I think it was more lighting than anything that threw it off. Some AO would have been great to use. If it was used, then some more harsher shadows on the Snurgle would have been great. The lack of a good bump map on them seemed to detract from the beleivability of them too.

Overall, 4 out of 5 from me. Good stuff.

BgDM