Guns For Christmas (Viewer Discretion)

Artwork Animations
1

https://youtu.be/jvqoFMQxa14

Glad I finally finished this project…
Anyway, BA historically turns out to be a place non-conducive for political debates. So, PLEASE REFRAIN FROM POLITICAL DEBATES ON THIS THREAD. I don’t want it to get locked up because people can’t stay off their own personal soapbox.
At the same time, I believe one of the primary responsibilities of an artist is to address (as best they can) the political situations of their day. It’s a fundamental role of Art in society.
At any rate, it would be nice to just talk technique when it comes to this video. If you feel you have to scream about the politics of it all, you’re welcome to, just go to the YouTube comments section of this video and give me a piece of your mind. If you let me know that you’re from BA, I won’t go off on you, no matter how different our points of view.

As far as the technical aspects of this, I can say this was a fairly grueling project. It took weeks to make.
I had the idea, all in one instant flash, on Dec 23. I knew it would be a grind to make, but I knew I wanted to get it done quickly.
That turned out to be difficult.
Frankly, I really don’t like doing political animation, although I do seem to DO a lot of political animation. I don’t like offending people (although I do tend to be skilled at it…)
In fact, several times, I came close to cancelling this one. Most of the reason it took so long is that I simply took several days off at a time between long shot renders, but I just kept coming back till it was done.

This one has a lot of Blendswap models in it. The credits are in the credits. I was very pleased with the Blendswaps I found for this project. There really are some very talented modelers who share on Blendswap, so you should try it if you’ve ever thought of it.

At first I wanted to do this in Cycles. Actually, the very first shot (all the bullets) is a Cycles render. (And the bullets are actually Cycles hair.)
However, at that time, Cycles Hair was still in it’s very early stages, and was still rendering VERY SLOWLY. Cycles Hair has come a long way in just a couple of weeks, and this is probably my last animation in BI.
On the hair note, I did notice that Cycles does Hair a LOT better than BI. One big reason for that is that in Cycles, you can determine the width of the hairs, determine the width of the root of the hair, and the width of the tip of the hair, and you can determine the types of shape the hair will take.
None of that is possible (as far as I can tell) in BI hair. I keep looking for a way to make the hairs thinner, but I never found a way. So, yes, the hair in video (there’s tons of it, it’s everywhere!) is extremely fake and cartoony-looking. In fact, when it comes to the tree (all the pineneedles on the tree are hair) I think my discomfort with BI hair led to a tree that looks very nightmarish and phantasmagoric. Which is actually sort of cool. In a way…

Anyway, I was very worried about the final image of the animation, Santa sitting there like that. I took several days off and hemmed and hawed about it. I felt more and more worried about the notion of having Santa sitting there like that.
But there was nothing for it. You make what you see, or you don’t. And if you don’t, then one might as well be flipping burgers, working in an office, or designing widgets.
I wanted to find a way of being subtle about the final shot, but at the same time you have to get the visual across.

Anyway, anyone offended by this, I’m really sorry.
Thank you for watching, though. If it helps, just tell yourself: IT’S MAKEBELIEVE. AND MAYBE ADAM’S A LITTLE CRAZY.


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On the hair note, I did notice that Cycles does Hair a LOT better than BI. One big reason for that is that in Cycles, you can determine the width of the hairs, determine the width of the root of the hair, and the width of the tip of the hair, and you can determine the types of shape the hair will take.
None of that is possible (as far as I can tell) in BI hair.
For info, you can change tip and root thickness in BI and effect general shape.
Image shows 4 extreme examples with BI

Attachments

Screen Shot 2013-01-11 at 17.55.42.jpg819×432 11.2 KB

hair.blend (184 KB)

3

Wha?!
I had no idea. I actually spent a long time digging around in BI’s innards looking for the analogue to the Cycles Hair Rendermode panel…
Ugh.
Well, thanks for the info, Richard. I probably should have come and asked while I was working on it…
But I really couldn’t see how to affect the hair shape in BI.
Hmmm. I guess I’m more used to how Cycles works now than BI…
Honestly, of the two, I consider BI the complicated one…

4

It’s almost scary…
The singing makes it menacing, the way Santa stares into space, with a gun, at the end is scary.
But I think the rest is pretty cool.
(And yeah… It defiantly could offend someone so be careful.)

5

At the same time, I believe one of the primary responsibilities of an artist is to address (as best they can) the political situations of their day. It’s a fundamental role of Art in society.

I disagree with this statement, are you saying that doing art for enjoyment because you want to bring your own ideas and worlds to life is secondary?

Personally, I think it just wouldn’t be fair to tell an artist he is doing it wrong because he’s not basing his work on real world issues and events, if one wanted to have that as his focus he can always sign up with a newspaper to be a political cartoonist.

Also, current builds have a couple of small, but major fixes for the Cycles non-progressive integrator, major because of the fact that make the quality issues a thing of the past. The bullets also would’ve been more realistic in Cycles because they can actually have the appearance of a volume (unlike the face aligned planes that BI uses)

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@Ace:

I disagree with this statement, are you saying that doing art for enjoyment because you want to bring your own ideas and worlds to life is secondary?

Personally, I think it just wouldn’t be fair to tell an artist he is doing it wrong because he’s not basing his work on real world issues and events, if one wanted to have that as his focus he can always sign up with a newspaper to be a political cartoonist.

No, no, that’s not what I’m saying, Ace.
I feel that ONE of the primary responsibilities of an artist is to address the politics of the day.
But that is NOT the ONLY responsibility of an artist. I think that other parts of the artist’s role in society would certainly be the pursuit of beauty, to present the plight of the human soul in modern society, to portray everything it means to be human, even to portray dreams the artist has while asleep even if he himself doesn’t understand what they meant. I think all of these things are equally important. I even think that simply trying to entertain the audience, with the brief period of time the audience grants it’s attention to the artistic vision, is just as valid.
In short, I believe that an artist has a great many responsibilities when doing their job, and that’s why I would ever hesitate to tell any artist that “he’s doing it wrong.”
Personally, I have trouble with artists who seem to merely be trying to entertain and make a buck, without telling an evocative story or touching on the deeper meanings of what is happening in their work. It’s one of my main problems with a lot of hollywood films.
But that’s in the eye of the beholder, and there are still even hollywood films coming out now that I think are brilliant art, with deep significance to our society.

My point, really, is that we should expect a lot of an artist.
What we should not do is to try to mark out territory where art is not allowed to go. I think that would sound the death knell for our culture because it would render us not only blind as a society, but also heartless and soulless.

Also, current builds have a couple of small, but major fixes for the Cycles non-progressive integrator, major because of the fact that make the quality issues a thing of the past. The bullets also would’ve been more realistic in Cycles because they can actually have the appearance of a volume (unlike the face aligned planes that BI uses)

Yes, the bullets are Cycles Hair. As I said, at the time I first started rendering this, Cycles Hair was very slow. I tried a Cycles render of the tree shot too, but it came back SO grainy and awful that I then just library linked the whole shebang into a BI scene and shot the rest of the video in BI. In the meantime, I did a week of Cycles experiments about denoising. I studied the recent Bartek Skorupa BCookie tutorial about Cycles Renderpasses and Denoising, and replicated my own homemade Skorupa Denoiser which turns out some pretty gorgeous Cycles animation in Full GI at 20-40 samples. I’m a lot happier with Cycles hair now (and Cycles Hair has gotten MUCH faster lately), so as I said this is probably my last BI animation.
And, if Cycles Hair has recently gotten even better while I was busy making this in BI, then I’m doubly excited to get back to my next project. It will have a lot of human characters, lots of hair, and all Cycles. So, I’m psyched. My little vacation is about over, and tomorrow will be a busy Cycles day at my place…

Incidentally, I happened to be friends with a political cartoonist, Mike Moreau, when I was in college. Mike did a regular political cartoon for our school paper, the Red And Black, and was a minor campus celebrity. He also won a national award or two for his comics, and I believe later on went on to a syndicated national paper. He was very talented and a great and funny guy in person. But, mostly, he was a quiet, shy guy who spent most of his time drawing in his sketchbook, even in public. He reminded me very much of a lot of Blenderheads I know here. Very consumed with his work (which was the frequent criticism of his girlfriend at the time…) Essentially, he was just an indie artist who happened to get paid money by a newspaper. Nothing high-fallutin’. If he ever had to think of what he did as “work,” he probably would have quit.
Thank you for the thoughtful comment.

@McThingy:

It’s almost scary…
The singing makes it menacing, the way Santa stares into space, with a gun, at the end is scary.
But I think the rest is pretty cool.
(And yeah… It defiantly could offend someone so be careful.)

LOL! You should see some of the comments on the vid from my YouTube subscribers! They started in early, just a few minutes after the video went up, saying that I sounded like Gene Wilder in “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory”!
I thought that was hilarious, because Gene Wilder never even crossed my mind when I recorded that. In fact, the only real consideration I had was timing: I knew the bit of singing I wanted had to be at least a minute and eighteen seconds long (because that was the length of video I shot…) but I also knew that I had about twenty seconds which had to be turned down so that the spoken voiceover could be inserted. However, there were lyrics I felt were important and wanted at normal volume, but the “Here comes santa clause” chorus would be the right place to put the voiceover.
So it was really about timing. That’s why I sang it so slow. And it’s why the song begins mid-lyric, instead of with “Here comes santa clause” as the song really goes…
The rest of it, that it was “creepy,” was entirely incidental and probably owes more to my typical delivery during singing than anything to do with Gene Wilder.
Although being compared to Gene Wilder was actually a huge compliment to me. I love that movie and I love Gene Wilder. :smiley:
Thanks for watching again.

7

@McThingy: Well, he isn’t exactly “staring” into space…
It’s funny; I had to play it for my roommate several times before he even realized what that was about.

8

I posted this elsewhere, now I can’t even find it anymore.
But, it’s an animation. This is probably the place it goes.
PLEASE NO POLITICAL SNIPING. BA is not the place for political debate. Post it on the YouTube comments thread for the vid if you have to yell about the political side issues.
I’m more interested in discussions of visual storytelling and timing.

9

posted this elsewhere, now I can’t even find it anymore.

It took me less than 15 secs to find it !! Threads merged. Please don’t multipost. If you want the thread moved to a different forum just report it (triangle icon in bottom left of each post)

10

Oh. Okay, thanks. Sorry about that, Richard.
I thought I had put it in this forum… :spin: