The X and Y Film project looking for Blender Artists

[tyee]

Hello,
I’m a big fan of Blender and the Blender community. I few months back I posted a request for help on using Blender with Debian Linux and received several helpful responses, very quickly. That’s an amazing thing in my world.

I’m primarily an Amateur Director/Producer not a 3D artist, but I’ve been learning enough to be dangerous.

I’m hoping its OK that I share a project I’m currently leading in Portland, Oregon in this forum, to look for potential participants.

The “X and Y,” film project is being pursued by a nonprofit Foundation, Imaginarium Foundation, we created for the purposes of doing collaborative media projects for fun and experience. The film will be a live action fantasy with 3D generated backgrounds. We are looking for a stylized, graphic novel depiction of our story rather than a photo real style.

http://www.imaginariumfoundation.org

This project has been going steadily for two years and frankly the complete project will likely take another couple of years. However we are currently focused on creating a 3D animatic, which can be done, in the next year.

Our target Foundation Member has been local artists but unfortunately its difficult to find Blender oriented artists in our area. We happen to have some members in the UK who have collaborated on 3D modeling and wardrobe design, so we have developed effective methods of remote collaboration.

What we are looking for:

Imaginarium Foundation is seeking new members to collaborate on the creation of low polygon, un-textured 3D models. The models will be used to produce a 3D animatic as pre-visualization for our micro-budget, live action, fantasy film titled, “The X and the Y.” Models may be used in production visual effects as well.

The project will be used by our members in their portfolios of work. Our volunteer members serve for the benefit of each other, creating greater opportunities for exposure on a large scale project.

Our members have used a variety of common software packages for 3D modeling including Maya, Truespace and 3D max. However Blender is our modeling and animation software of choice and we would love to get the support of this community.

What we have done:

• Script
• 2D Hand Sketched Storyboards (some crappy, some good) for every shot of every scene. Over 800 storyboard panels.
• Voice over recorded with cast of 21 actors and actresses for previs purposes.
• 2D storyboards and voiceover recordings used to create 2D animatic
• Production design art for all sets, vehicles and props
• Temp music tracks being including in 2D animatic (Currently in process)
• Temp Sound Fx being including in 2D animatic (Currently in process)
• 3D modeling to convert 2D animatic to 3D animatic (Currently in process and preferably with Blender)Prior experience with film production is not necessary. Come learn with us. We are looking for new members who want to share their talents and have fun creating together.

If interested contact us here, private message me or shoot us an email at [email protected] with a description of your goals and interest(s) in the Foundation.

Best Regards

Ty

[Dan]

So, is it open-content?

Like, could we listen to the voice overs that you’ve done?

[Orinoco]

Or see a couple of the good storyboard panels so we could tell if the style was something we were interested in / any good at modeling. Fantasy covers a lot of ground.

[edit]Oh. :o It’s on your website. :o Never mind :o [/edit]

[further edit]

I take that back.

Just finished reviewing the public area of the website, and there’s not a whole hell of a lot there.

So, tyee, just how religious is this story? Are you asking Blender Artists to support prosletysing for Intelligent Design?

[/edit]

[tyee]

The project is not an open movie project in the same way I’ve seen others presented on this board. The content will be open to the non-participating public once the project is complete. Also the .blend files will be made available.
In the meantime we do provide information about our progress and samples of media being developed in the Journal blog section of our public site at
http://www.imaginariumfoundation.org/blog1/category/xy-journal/

The entire content is open to our members and potential participants. Membership is open to the public, so in that way it is open. We have a private Story Reel Development Site that we use for that purpose and we are happy to grant access to anyone interested in participating as part of their evaluation process of us and the project. There is some paperwork regarding licensing, confidentiality and permissions that we go over with those intersted. So shoot us an email if you want to see more then you can get from the public site.

On a side note, the voice overs were recorded in June and we just finished editing them last week, so that version of the Story Reel isn’t actually on the Private site yet, but it will be in the next few weeks. Also it’s important to note that the final film won’t have voice overs. We cast and did the recording so we could have a working story reel for preproduction purposes. It was also a fun way to experience the casting process and get a small taste of live production.

Thanks for taking some interest.

Best regards,
Ty

[tyee]

There is no prosletysing for “Intelligent Design,” if you are thinking about teaching the bible in school sort of stuff.
There is a culture in the film that beleives in a Path of destiny that is designed for the Universe.
I don’t know what else to say other than it happens to be that none of our members are church goers although we wouldn’t exclude anyone on that basis. The script doesn’t inherently attract religious folk.
I can post some concept art and storyboards here if that’s helpful.

[kbot]

Storyboards will be cool - I’m working on some storyboards myself - I can’t quite help you now . . . but if you are willing to lend me a hand by showing your storyboards, maybe in the future some of my work will rub onto you.

[tyee]

We model from concept art and production designs rather from storyboards. We use the storyboards for blocking and camera angles when putting together the animatic, but we are in the modelling stage right now.
Here is an example.

[Orinoco]

@tyee

There is no prosletysing for “Intelligent Design”

The devil, they say, is in the details. Just an observation, but you seem remarkably resistant to releasing any more detail than is already on your web site, which, as I mentioned before, isn’t much.

What I know from reading your script treatment is that the main character has had a mysterious “life changing experience” and is conflicted between his mother’s religion (specifically called Intelligent Design) and his business partner’s preaching (your word, not mine) of basic materialism.

The plot thickens with the birth of a Jesus-like character who gives a political “sermon” (again, your word, not mine) and deepens the protagonist’s internal conflict.

Finally, the audience is challenged to decide whether the protagonist should embrace Intelligent Design or materialism and the mystery behind the “life changing experience” is revealed.

What am I supposed to think?

[Dan]

It doesn’t appear religious in the traditional sense, considering it’s set in space etc. But perhaps you should think about using something other than the term ‘Intelligent Design’ as that is a 20th century term that is closely attached to fundamentalist Christianity. Just come up with another name and you should be fine.

[tyee]

Thanks for the feedback!
We have been debating that term for a couple of years so it’s great to hear fresh perspectives.

[kbot]

Tylee - Your projects real awesome and I hope you get more people on board. Thank you for your PM - it helps a great deal. Your storyboard artist has great talent!