Four Minute Cartoon

This represents my first year and a half with Blender. I did it for 3 upperdivision credits to finish off my communications degree. I’ve had a hard time convincing myself to post it because it doesn’t look anything like how I wanted it too. I’m working on a new version right now, that may end up in the WIP thread.

There are some obvious issues with it’s look, and I have no idea what happened or why. I did make some compositing mistakes, so some stuff is see through. Although, there is a clock tower at the end and I don’t know why that is see through.

I also had some armature troubles. One of the character’s eyeballs floats outside it’s head at one point. I do know that my meshes were god awful, and I just scammed the Ludwig rig for all the characters. Positioning the bones and ressetting all the values. I also used a car I got off of Kator Legaz’s first BMR, but I don’t remeber the name of it. If anybody recognizes it, let me know.

(Edit) The music didn’t show up, I don’t know why, if you want just listen to Bach’s Toccata and Fugue. Straight up, there is no fancy editing to fit the piece. Oh, and I was too lazy for vertex groups or wait painting, so all the characters are deformed entirely off of envelopes. One of the things that I am spending more time on for the redo version.

(Edit again) The nuclear explosion and smoke are both courtesy Michael D’Andrea’s website.

First, congratulations on completing an animation of this length !

You’ve also inspired me to try some 'toon style stuff, … as it sure beats the long render times for “realistic” style stuff. :slight_smile:

My biggest crit, is that if there was story here, I didn’t get it.

It looked more like a trailer for a t.v. show.

Near the end of the movie it seemed like the girl knew the “green guy” , but then she shoots him ???

Technically, everything was pretty good, actually pretty great since you’ve only been using Blender for a year and a half.

Some of the animation seemed a bit too slow, and the characters walking/feet sliding was a bit distracting.

Good job overall though :slight_smile:

Mike

I had a lot more of a story story-boarded out, but I was pretty close to the deadline on my class time and started slapping stuff together.

The new version is going to be a series of 6 four-to-five minute pieces in a Republic Serial kind of feel. Cliffhangers at the end of each show and a lot of recycled shots. It will include another character, the villian who will help explain the actions of the green guy, and the blad guy will have more of a role. I don’t really know where to start with the audio, so I’m gonna go with silnet movie cue cards to move the verbal half of the story along.

My main objective this time is to concentrate a lot more on the characters. I’ve been building them from scratch for about four months now, rigging and skinning as well. I am using vertex groups this time, but so far I’ve shied away from weight painting, mostly because I’m nervous about it. Shape keys are also a point of trepidation. I’ve spent more time trying to come up with solutions to avoid them, as would have been used to learn and implement them. I’m still hacking ludwig’s rig, but I’ve replaced the arm with the BSOD Python script build. That all works fine but my topology is piss poor.

I’ve also written up a rough schedule, and as opposed the first go when I’d set up and render a shot a day, I’m shooting for a shot a week. I did walk cycles and follow patht he first time, but forgot about the stride bone, this time I’m just going to skip the cycle and key frame straight steps.

I’m thinking that my schedule has enough play to get the first episode done by September and then hopefully the rest will fall in place after that.

I like it alot :slight_smile: specially with this length but if u still want to adjust some things, i’d work on the walkcycle, they all “slide” over the ground a bit