So much awesome! Great job! I love the stylized animation and characters.
Amazing work! everything looks perfect, congratulations!
the main tentacle creature s shape is sort of weird, but this is just a personal impression, its simply great!
Wow! Absolutely loved the style of this! It felt very stop-motion-y. Great work!
So creative and so well done. I really love this. And the stop-motion style works so well with this. The word “awesome” is really overused here, but it fits so well. It is awesome!
It is all geometry, but rendered separately.
I rendered the background objects once, with double resolution, as you see here:
Then I put it on a plane with emission shader, placed exactly in front of the camera, and rendered the entire sequence (to get the camera movements). This rendered quite fast, just one object on GPU. The output image sequence was then composited (Alpha Over node) behind the raw render which you see in my previous post.
The ugly edges of the background don’t matter because they are covered up by the front objects.
The reason for this operation was, that with the background objects it rendered nearly an hour per frame, and without them just 20 or 30min. Those objects have a lot of geometry (5 sculpt subdivs).
Btw. anyone knows a method for a matte/shadow material in Cycles? Would have been the better solution for this, but I didn’t find a way.
Bernardo -
no problem, several people said the same. I just hope it’s not too strong. Personally I associate it more with a kraken or the worm from Dune.
elis17 -
I didn’t know Samorost before, now I googled, it’s cool graphics 
Thanks everyone for the answers! And for the banner too 
Awesome! Good work 
Strange, intriguing… the animation makes it look like the characters are very small puppets, animated in stop motion. The scenery is beautiful. Bravo !
That was SO NEAT!! Some of the physics seemed a little too fast, but overall, I thought that this was amazing! I loved how utterly realistic this was pulled off! Keep this up!
Very nice sense humour 
the idea is awesome. and the anmation looks just great.
great animation!
Amazing short with good sense of humor and wonderful animation
Congratulation Ania!
Wow! I love the plot, scale change really gave it an edge. On top of that there’s wonderful style of the characters and perfect animation dynamics. Stunning work altogether!
Wow! Superior animation. World class acting. I watched the little furry guys acting frame by frame - so rich with the little ear twitches and half blinks.
Textures are fantastic - the colouring scheme that you used to get the final black and white look is really very impressive.
I really don’t feel like making any criticism - such an incredible piece - but…
For me the story is a bit confusing. I get it but I had to watch it a couple of times because I thought I missed something. I didn’t immediately realize the scale change. I don’t claim to be an art director so take this with a grain of salt. Maybe when we go macro there should be colour. It would make sense as the electron microscope stuff is black and white…
I found the screen noise when he (she) starts to eat the letter slightly out of place. I have no idea how this would be done differently. When he gets big and hits our screen - that makes perfect sense. I’d like to see it without any effects until he hits the screen. Just to see how it reads.
The macro world looks so much like the micro world. I know that’s part of the charm but the change is so quick. Maybe colour or some other indicator would be helpful. Just watching again - perhaps the colour begins to fade in just before Mr. Furry pops in and finishes as he takes a bite? I dunno. On a similar note I’m thinking there could be some slight hints of atmosphere - that would be liquid floaty things in the micro sequence and maybe some light rays/ a few flecks of dust or small flying insects in the macro part.
Why are we not allowed to see the monster right away? Slinking away part is fine but then when we do see him there has been no change - I think it is expected. I do love the look of the tentacles slinking into the hole though.
Why does the macro world have a slice out of the foreground? Why do the trees close up like that? Kind of a cross over behaviour from the micro equivalents but it doesn’t happen in the micro world. I think that it should at least do that although that sequence is so packed full of action… maybe it could fit in at the beginning or when the monster shows up they all snap shut in response to the commotion.
The 500um… I’m not sold on the broken pile - I think (expect) that it should display the current macro scale. Maybe it partially crumbles and ends up as 50cm with the second “0” becoming the “c”. Funny thing is as I am writing this I took a closer look and I think maybe that’s what it is! If so it need to be clearer. Could be me but I have seen this quite a bit and I didn’t get it. Maybe the line should stay solid and maybe it should be the same size every time we see it on screen? Logically I don’t see a need for the whole thing to crumble into a pile. Take the “u” knock a piece off of the “0” have the numbers all roll a bit. Might be enough.
And lastly I got the “it ends too quick” feeling. I like Mr. Furry and I don’t understand the meaning of him dying suddenly. He could run away with the monster chasing - maybe into a tree hole and use the "monster slinking into the whole animation here as he chases his dinner. Or he could get eaten - and then our monster gets eaten by something bigger. Zoom back to see the new monster and the scale could change again to read 50m?
At the very least I think Mr. Furry should have a leg twitch or two - too soon for rigormortis to be set in and the monster should look at us and scratch his head or chin or something. We know he is aware of us from his earlier behaviour.
I really don’t know if any of my ideas are better (doubtful) but I didn’t just want to say “I like it”. I love this piece and I am soooo impressed with the modelling, texturing, and AMAZINGLY done animation. This could easily be an award winning production.
I’m curious - what are you using wings3D for that Blender doesn’t do? I can hardly believe you did this as a team of one!
Very inspirational.
Timmy -
Thanks for the thorough critique! I won’t change anything now, but I will keep some things in mind for my next work.
I started this end of 2009, and this year I just wanted to finish it, no matter which imperfections.
The macro world is not fully macro, it’s a half-world with a crumbled scale. (well that’s the official version, the inofficial version is that I did the micro world first, and then didn’t have enough energy left to do an entire new macro world, so I recycled and just put a new texture on).
The scale was intended to be a broken up 50cm in the end.
I’m working on my director skills. I noticed that not everything is understood by everyone, and I had similar problems with my previous animation. But I think at least it gets better with every try (this is my third one). Next one will be better If you know a good book about directing, please tell me.
You’re right about a leg twitch of the hyrax, would have been better and not much effort, I haven’t thought of it. I also thought about the kraken checking the hyraxes living signs with a tentacle, but then I left the idea. It’s not dead, it just fainted.
If you ever animate an animal with 13 badly rigged tentacles, you’ll understand why I tried to keep the kraken scenes at a minimum at the end. I think 1 sec of kraken takes as much time as 10 sec of springtail to animate.
Wings3d is cool! It’s specialized and really quick for organic box modelling. Blender is becoming better and better, but still I need more “moves” (clicks or keyboard hits) to get the same result. Wings is also very sturdy about messed up topo (which is useful for topo rebuilds or changes). Also I like modelling starting with the coarse shape and adding details, which is perfect in Wings. I have the feeling that in Blender it’s easier to start with a detail and build the rest around it. Like starting a head from an eye loop in Blender, while I prefer starting from a box in Wings.
Thanks once again for the explanation lol
I enjoyed it a lot! Please make a sequel! 
Amazing piece of animation. I loved the story and stop motion feeling of the kraken creature. Gallery quality
The black and white makes it feel scientific, but that didn’t stop if from being slightly terrifying O,o
Cool, i like that you used just the greyskale
I love the animation & visual style