After months of work, it’s finished. There’s a wmv version and an mpeg4 version. I was going to upload an mpeg 1 vcd format, but I would have to upload a pal and ntsc format at 3 .5 hours of upload apiece. The mpeg4 is 1000kbits data rate so it’s quite good in terms of video quality.
There are quite a few cliches and lots of symbolism in this video, which are open to interpretation. I am not a professional animator, but I learned a lot from this project; however, I still have a lot to learn. Enjoy!
Couldn’t have finished it without the inspiration and encouragement from guys like you and the wonderful community at Elysiun with all their knowledge and skills. Thanks, cheers, and a good safe holiday to all.
Way cool! And very entertaining!
I like how you picked up the pill theme and used it for the plane and zeppelin. I found the camouflage pill very funny!
But I think the tank should have been pill-like, too.
The music in its roughness matches very good with the graphics and theme. It’s only a bit monotone, I mean more variations for different moods from scene to scene would have added extra impact/drive to the clip. But I understand that’s not easy.
But as said, very entertaining and impressive work!
Oh, and it would be very nice if you could say something about how you planned and executed this project. Did you draw a storyboard, and if so would you please post it?
Just awesome. Theere’s so many little tricks in this, it was great. Like the metaballs used coming out of the stacks and using clipping to bring the spaceships into the scene. Very smart stuff. Your walk/run animations are aweful, hehe, but this was very fun to watch overall.
Thorwill; I did not use a storyboard, bad habit of mine. I did some drawings for some scenes, but not all. I had the scenes planned out in written form though and essentially figured out how to do set up the scenes after the modelling was done. I kept all the background details to a minimum because I realize that rendering takes forever and blender starts to bog down when too much stuff is involved i.e. grass, trees, rigged characters. I had a previous experience where I had all kinds of details in a scene and it would take 5 minutes just to move the armature on a character. I kept it simple enough to get the main points of the story across. I also did that to make it a bit abstract. Yes, I agree, the tank should have been a pill theme as well.
As for the music, I have no control over that, since I did not produce it.
Enzoblue, I have no formal or informal training in animation or art. I studied robotics, agriculture, and geography over twenty years. I have only been using blender for about 2 years and only figured out how to rig a character a year ago. I agree about the walk/run cycles, I’ll learn those things as I keep working on it, practicing, and experimenting. The ship coming in to the scene was done making the ship come in through the half sphere that I used to put the sky texture on. Thank you guys for your comments. I’m glad you guys were entertained by it, that was the main goal.
Cree, I watched this when you first put it up, then downloaded it when you put up the larger version so I could watch it again and again. I liked the music video type animation that it is. It is kind of surreal and the theme flows nicely. Lots of great effects. You can tell you did a lot of work on this and I must say very well done. I’m surprised there aren’t more comments but I suspect that is largely due to the size. Keep up the good work.
Now for the critisim’s, not much of a constuctive crit, but the tanks colors and texturing just seemed out of place, but I suspect that is more of a personal style choice and not something that you should pay attention to.
Different strokes for different folks.
wowee I like it. great piece.
there was some clitches in the animation of the characters, nothing too much, more I would have payed attention on the lighting… there was lot of places with quite flat lighting and no shadows… just a basic 3 spot lighting would’ve added so much to this.
The tank’s color and texture was a reflection of the necessity to move the tank from a desert environment to an urban environment in a hurry to deal with a more “urgent” menace: the radical robot I agree since I originally wanted to make it match the main theme. I suppose I should listen to my gut instincts considering everyone else seem to feel the same way.
I noticed the glitches too. It’s the compression, because it didn’t do that on my vcd version. I tried to raise the data rate and it stopped a lot of it, but had to compromise because of file size. Basse and Paradox, I agree about the lighting (the last city scene for sure), something I have to work on as well is texturing, animation timing, character modelling and pretty much everything else basically . I’m working on it… promise.
I’m glad people like the surrealism, must be that Dr. Blackbourn course in post modern cultural geography subconsciously working its way into the animation.
Thanks for your comments, I definitely call those constructive, helpful, and useful, as well as encouraging.
That’s some funky animation you’ve got there ! I can see why it took months to do. I particularly liked the matrix-stuff with the tank, that was very funny !
I’d agree with basse about the lighting, but the animation is very well done. Lots of details too. I didn’t even notice the metaballs from the stacks until I saw Enzoblue’s post.
The tank’s color and texture was a reflection of the necessity to move the tank from a desert environment to an urban environment in a hurry to deal with a more “urgent” menace: the radical robot
I think that would work very easily if you’d shown the tank at some army base recieving some kind of message to head to the city…even if only for a few seconds.
Well said. Thanks, bud for your feedback. The music is definitely not for everyone. It’s definitely dance club music or soundtrack for a Blender action animation of a radical robot.
