This is pretty amazing.
~13 minute movie done by one guy on 3dsmax (a couple other guys helped with modelling), took 5 years to make.
If you like robots and lots of explosions, you’ll love this movie.
** ~160meg download ! **
http://www.duck.dk/mirrors/CodeGuardian_DivX_001.avi
Thread on CGtalk
His website.
http://www.cee-gee.net/
Mike
I’ve been disappointed by Code Guardian.
It’s not bad at all, but I was expecting much more.
This short movie has been under development for years (yes, years).
What gave me the reasons to wait for a masterpiece was the author’s previous work, The Hunt.
When he released The Hunt I was truly amazed, it had an insane level of realism, detail and effects.
All was done by one man, Marco Spitoni, on 3D studio Max, without all the easy eyecandy we can have today, in 2001.
You can check what could be done in 2001, how many polys could a pc manage, and which was the render time for some simple reflections.
That was a huge high quality work, totally out of knowledge for me (I was using 3Dstudio Max at work).
Now Code Guardian, after years of work and software improvements, is a nice piece, but it’s floating in the middle of many good-but-not-excellent productions.
simply I was expecting another world-class masterpiece, it didn’t come.
“This gallery may not display properly if not viewed in IE”
Bad… Very bad…
Gallery doesn’t work for me; all images are broken links
Very high quality movie, overall. If I have to crit it, I would say the lighting could be better - a bit shallow. The animation side is excellent though, so is the modelling.
Now, I may get banned for even saying this, but every aspect of this movie is far superior to Elephants Dream. I don’t think it is because of the software, Blender would propably have worked just as well for this animation.
Now, you might say that ED was produced in only 6 months, but then, its also:
Now, you could say that I’m comparing apples with oranges, however, ED was intended to be a showcase of Blender’s capabilities. Code Gaurdian is supposed to be a showcase of its creator’s capabilities, rather than the software, yet one has to take note of the software used - like it or not.
Anyway, that’s just may 2 cents.
I didn’t think it was that good for 5 years of work. Too many cliche camera movements, weird story, odd robot rigs and the proportions seem to be wrong, saw some aliasing in there too. ED was better than this IMO. I agree with the comment about The Hunt being better though, I would put that above ED.
I’m refering purely to the production, though. The story and camera movements is a seperate isue.
Anti-aliasing is also propably to do with the output of the version that we downloaded.
I loved this movie the first time I saw it, and still do!
It’s a great take on a real war with a twist! My favourite part is when the two soldiers are shooting on the ground at him. Then he activates the cannon out of his arm and absolutely obliterates them! Some awesome special effects in that scene right there, you have to admit.
But, I didn’t know it took 5 years to make. Maybe that was from the start of the idea right through to the finished product. So maybe it was only like 2 or 3 years of actually working on the 3d part.
Anyway, good none-the-less!
When comparing this to ED tho, you have to take into account that one was in production for 6 months and the other was in production for 5 years. Even if it was just one guy, 5 years is a long time to spend on a short film in terms of tweaking animation, modeling, etc.
I haven’t watched it yet though, download is going slow 
Five years, during spare time…
Considering everything [EDIT: almost everything] was done by one guy, this explains why it took so long. The result is very good for such a project.
Editing and framing may be considered cliché, they are clean and well concieved in the whole. And one thing you don’t see often with this kind of projects : sound is good!
It’s not an original score, OK, but voices recording are clean, sound FX are clean, mixing is clean.
I clap my hands for this good piece of work, and go and watch The Hunt, which I don’t know yet 
Be well
I am impressed on multiple levels. Simply the fact that he stayed on track for 5 years on a single project is amazing.