It was turned down by about fifty film and animation festivals around the world and has still never had a public screening. Perhaps it’s not difficult to see why - the character animation is sloppy in places and it’s a big commitment to programme a film that’s nearly twenty minutes long. It also has a rather bleak ending, which people I’ve shown it to tend to get rather taken aback by.
I’m still fond of it though and there are a few bits I’m very proud of, particularly the sunset.
Nearly everything is rendered “in-camera” in Yafray, except the stars and the mist, which were rendered separately in Blender and composited over the top. There’s some of the Blender sequences ‘glow’ effect on the early daytime shots, too. Oh, and there’s some laboriously hand-painted motion blur at 00:07:20!
A contact at the BBC here in the UK advised me to put sound effects on it if I want to sell it to television, so I’m going to be making a start on that soon - it really does make all the difference.
Thanks for posting a link to it here. I haven’t had time to watch it yet, but I’ll try to do so in the next few days.
It’s a pity that you haven’t been able to screen it anywhere yet. I guess that’s one of the biggest problems faced by independant film-makers quite often… apart from finishing and financing their film.
Wow. Really cool, great work man… Very nice story, I like it, good ending too! Only, some sound effects would be really cool… And why did you not make textures too? Some places, it maybe looks a little too ‘simple’ without textures. But again, really great work, especially because it’s a one-man-work. Great story too, I’m really impressed…
Thanks for the kind messages everyone! Yes Marve, I really should have made the effort to learn how to texture properly. There’s a bark texture on the tree, but that’s about it!
RyanJ, the film took me about a year, working nearly full-time…
I feel obliged to reply …
It is such an amazing movie … Ok, there’s some imperfection, but you brought to life a fantastic story with action suspense and emotion. I loved every piece of it.
Congratulations !
Original. Charming. Beautiful design and execution. Well paced. One of the best pieces of Blender animation I’ve ever seen. While visually not as detailed as Elephant’s dream, the style works well to tell a simple yet well thought out story. The music works well with it but occasional sound effects would be a bonus. At 18 minutes, it is one of the longest Blender pieces and yet the pacing is exquisiste.
Of course there are a few criticisms but for a one man project this is an extraordinary achievement as it stands. I’m sure you know yourself where there is potential room for improvements. However, working on a big project myself, I know how hard it is to get things the way you like it. Anyone who has done CG seriously will appreciate the effort you have put in.
This deserves mention of Blendernation, a place in the blender.org gallery and on the forum gallery at the very least. Well done mate and I bet you are relieved now it is over! To be turned down due to length considerations is a shame - the ending is good as it stands. Sloppy character animation? For a one man job it is as good as could possibly be expected.
Koba
P.S> Google Video quality doesn’t do it justice. How about loading to stage6 (http://stage6.divx.com/) for super high quality videos?
Yar, I loved the sunset too! The ending didn’t seem to be too bleak IMO. Apart from the textures, some population would have brought a bit more of life into the city in the early part of the film.
Although I don’t think it was turned down because of the sloppy parts but instead because of the ambiguity of the setting. Was it meant to be Aztec? Incan? Something purely fictional? I have to admit my knowledge on ancient civilization is pretty vague but if your film had something in it that shows that you’ve done a lot of background research into it it would have counted for a whole lot. Maybe some reliefs/carvings (via textures) on the buildings or more detailing on costumes would have helped, just so it can help people recognize or relate more specifically to which civilization you’re basing it on.
Despite that, it was an all round wonderful short story with an interesting concept! I do hope you get to put in sound effects soon =D
You rendered that in Yafray?! O: I understood that it couldn’t be BI but I didn’t thought it was Yafray since I’ve heard that it takes long rendertimes and can make it corny so I suppose that you didn’t use GI?
very cool work, but the plot is inconsistent and the ending is unresolved. whats the point of the sacrificial guys at the beginning? who made the secret passage out of the city? where were all the people in the city at the ending? why were those gargoyles so set on destroying the sun? how are they connected to the boxes of fuel back in the city? there just seem to be many unanswered questions.
that being said, the scope of the project was pretty big and you pulled it off well. i love the camera action and general animation. more detail wouldve been cool, but the animation did well to convey what was being felt/experienced by the characters despite some sloppiness. the concept is cool, and i liked some of the ideas that came out in it.
making a 20 minute movie is a huge task (seeing as Elephants Dream was only about 10 minutes i think? and involved a whole production team) so huge props for coming through with it and accomplishing to it.
look forward to seeing more from you in the future!
Very good job, should not be turned down. Makes me angry they didn’t accept and show it just out of respect for such an excellent job done by one person. I’m highly impressed with it, and that isn’t just because I’m a newb either. =p
A fantastic achievement, I agree with most of the previous comments concerning the minor flaws with texturing etc… The story itself is great and holds the viewers attention throughout, The music suited it perfectly so much so that I wasn’t really bothered by the lack of sound effects.
I suppose your lack of positive feedback from commerical entities stems from the difficulty of categorizing such a work, they probably look upon a silent 18 minute animation as a non runner. Its a terrible shame because like al of the previous posts, I think you’ve made a great little film that everyone would enjoy.
Despite of the flaws already pointed here, I thought this was very nicely done animation. The plot could have used some more fleshing out, as now the motives of the baddies vere left more than a bit ambiguous, as was the start of the story as well.
The environment would benefit from texturing and the light seemed a bit incostintent in some of the night scenes: there was some shots, that looked like day shots, then suddenly the light changed back into night mood.
Animation was good most of the time and I liked the camera movements. The music did fit in very nicely and gave a great overall mood to the animation.
This is great. The emotion of the characters is just stunning. They are simple characters, but only the goat face tells me whole character of the goat.
