I am finally getting involved with the work to establish an animation studio aimed at full CG productions (no live actors) using Blender as a base software package. One thing that helped was that I could demonstrate to the current source of funding the power of blender using Elephants Dream (for those not in the know, ED is a ca. 10 minute CG production made entirely in Blender, available for free at orange.blender.org).
I was wondering if anyone knows of similar projects to be found? The work on the studio has already gone into testing the strengths of Blender, by setting up a full production (see the still very simple production log at http://www.crispquality.com/monkey ), but it would be comforting to have a bit more quality demonstrations of Blender’s strengths at hand. If you know them, please show them (or just the URL)!
Thanks! Already looking at them, nice to know others feel Blender is up to the task.
One thing that has struck me is that there seems to be a lot of projects that make a lot of noise but never get beyond basic storyboarding. Does BlenderProjects or other similar sites make it easier to look through the clutter, or is it a jungle out there?
Also, does anyone know where to find a detailed account of how ED progressed, to estimate time schedules and perhaps learn of problems using Blender for this before they occur?
Check out Lybomir’s site, I still think his Camel animation is one of the best, good timing and good knowledge of animation principles. http://www.darkblueinteractive.com/3d.html
Cognis making a movie is big, you need all the help you can get. If I was making a movie, I would get Lybomir to help out. He’s a gun for hire, but if you want quality, quality costs money.
Thanks folks, more stuff is always better (in this case, anyway). Be checking out the animations shortly, just need to get todays still shots to the production log.
I know a movie is a Really Big Deal. I have been doing commercials and minor movies for some time now, but one very nice man was satisfied enough with my work to listen to my proposal for co-financing a movie studio. This movie is to be clear-cut evidence that the task is feasible, and that the expenses of a CG movie can be a tiny fraction of a regular movie budget.
As for outside hiring, this is already in planning. Assuming the first movie gets made with a skeleton crew (myself and a small batch of internally trained assistents, covering everything from script and storyboard to designing, modeling and, eventually animations), the plan is to finance greater operations until a self-financing (and eventually profiting) cycle of production and revenue can be created.
What will be most in demand at that point is likely to be riggers, by the way. One task assigned and taken -extremely- serious during the pilot project (which, by the way, should be taking its final title soon, rather than the Blazing Monkey worktitle) is to map out where automation is needed, to reduce workload. Rigging is a Big One, and especially rigging multi-usable human models.
But I’m ranting. The project is still in its early phases, right now it’s just about getting these draft scenes done, then seeing how to best touch them up. But the big step here is really from a mentality of Making Fine Art to Making Schedule. How things go should become evident over the next few months.
