After what has seemed like a significant amount of time used studying the craft, experimenting, and formulating solutions to various problems, we believe now is the time for us to begin sharing with the community at-large the imminent arrival of “REVERSION” - a new 11-minute animated film created entirely with Blender.
You can learn more about “REVERSION” at our official movie blog . This is not necessarily to promote the film (it is not yet finished). But, it is only at this time, when we feel we have learned enough to be able to talk to others about the experience, that we decided now was the time to reach out to the community.
For all purposes, “REVERSION” is a student film through and through. We did it primarily because we did not know how.
In particular, I am aware that many members of this forum are not only curious about Blender’s production capability, but I also see frequently there are people who ask how they can make an animated film. This is our way of helping to share what we learned, and maybe to also serve as the medium for us sharing the challenges and the solutions. Because no matter how well one plans, there are challenges. And not just technical ones, but human ones as well, such as when an artist you were relying on suddenly suffers a debilitating wrist injury…
The blog will be updated in the coming days with more material. So this is an open invitation to our peers here on this forum to go there, check it out, and join us as we take the covers off of this new Blender adventure in the coming days.
I must also add that some of the team members who are part of “REVERSION” (including the Sound and Audio Team) are also members on this forum.
We have a pretty nifty update coming up this weekend. We’re going to show renders from the sets we made for REVERSION.
But of course it’s not enough just to talk about what the places represent in the story, so for each update we’ll also be doing “Director’s Commentary” which is where we take you behind the scenes of those same renders.
Blender is very very capable, and some FX that require the use of farms or long render times can actually be reduced in Blender with a few simple tricks for starters. Of course, like I mentioned in my first real post, my Technical Director really left me behind in terms of tweaking Blender’s Internal renderer, compositor system, and so on to produce some of the images you are about to see. So his input and stuff will also be part of ‘Director’s Commentary’.
Included in the commentary will also be stories about which parts of the design and the film we ended up arguing over, which parts were changed and for what reasons.
Again, this is not just about making a new Blender movie, but making a new movie.
And that’s coming up this weekend.
We will have more, much more as we take the covers off.
There are a couple of other things we want to do, like talk a bit about our Sound Engineering strategy (as soon as our Sound Engineer can come out of the salt mines) and we’re also wondering how interested people here would be if we opened a mailbox for people to ask questions in.
I’m sure everybody has been in the position we were in 24 months ago. And there are so many things that can trip you up making an animated film longer than 3 minutes.
Hi everyone,
I’m Mitch, the technical director on REVERSION, and I’d like to share a couple of my sets for this film. Check out our blog for the full-res images, as well as new updates.
I really like how you decided to announce this movie only once its nearing completion. From the title i thought it was going to be one of those “I have an awesome idea for a blender movie, now are there volunteers to make it for me?” kind of thread that never goes anywhere. The renders look great also, very high quality. Is there an estimated release date?
Yes, we do have a trailer. I think this trailer will look very interesting. We originally had a trailer cut that was very conventional. But we thought it didn’t do justice to the sort of odd-ball mystery/action/thriller that REVERSION is.
Also we’re paying homage to one of the vintage greats with the trailer.
And yes that will be something in motion. We are putting the finishing touches on that as well. It’s not as hard as it sounds. The trailer is culled from parts of the movie. Some parts though are slightly altered.
You guys can all play “spot the differences” after the film comes out in full.
In the meantime… we will do something that’s more frequently done with Video Games rather than Animated films.
We will be showing a full-detail Turntable of one of our characters.
And we will move on to discussing Character Design.
That comes up later this week!
P.S.: This film entirely rendered in Blender Internal. We missed the development in Cycles for most of the film’s creation period.
Okay! So our latest update is a turntable for one of our principal characters. You can find a higher-res version on the movie blog:
Also, Director’s Commentary about how we approached character design and how it relates to some of the story elements in REVERSION.
I think this is also an important topic for people thinking about how to approach animated shorts which, by their very nature, have limited story possibilities.
Cheers!
P.S.: To those of you who were thinking of holding your breath until the trailer gets out, if you are able to hold your breath for a length of 30 days… You can begin doing so now.
I wish I would have stumbled on this thread 30 days from now, because I’m pretty geeked about the trailer! This looks pretty cool, and I look forward to seeing the full movie as well.
Hello everyone!
