Roger
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Posts posted by Roger
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Even the big studio shorts like Pixar does tend to be very small scope things, like that birds-on-a-wire short. Great idea with just the bare minimum of set and character models to get it across.
Pixar has a way of making anything into gold. I seriously think they could do a short on the life cycle of dust bunnies and it would be entertaining.
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My non-serious theory is that they wanted to avoid the embarrassment of claiming something ancient was public domain while claiming their own ancient stuff isn't public domain.
This "John Carter and the Gods of Hollywood" seems to have almost completely overlooked the Traci Lords/Antonio Sabato Jr. version in recounting the history of the production attempts.
Booyah! Another item for the bucket list
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Roger mentioned Bakshi's Mighty Mouse revival in the 80's.
That was a pretty good effort. Amazingly good considering the state of TV animation at the time. That was one of those shows that made me want to be an animator.
I guess he had John Kricfalusi involved in that series, too.
I actually donated to John K's Kickstarter. Honestly, if he's gotta go begging for money, what hope do the rest of us have, LOL
70s and 80s animation was mostly god-awful. I won't name names, but I'm sure you know what studios I'm thinking of.
When Ren and Stimpy came along in the 90s it was a breath of fresh air. It was a kids show but delightfully subversive
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There is some computer animation on there... I remember taking the job with that company in 1987 because they had an IBM 086 computer in the back room that had an archaic floppy-disc based 3D animation program (I think an early-early version of autodesk animator which became 3DMax) and I saw 3D animation as becoming a possible 'career' someday... "wish that I knew what I know now, when I was younger." (Ronnie Lane)
I could apply that song to just about every facet of my life.
I always thought that was a Rod Stewart song, though.
Nice demo reel, holds up well. I really liked the rotoscope stuff, that was neat.
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Well, you're doing better than me. I think I will probably never work in the field.
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Wow - guess things must be bad everywhere. Weren't they the guys that did the Coca Cola polar bears?
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I am perhaps the worst person to give advice here, seeing as how I don't actually have anything finished, but I'd have to agree with Robcat.
I have drastically reduced the scope of my project in terms of length and am thinking of cutting it even more, down to the bone. Ripping out anything unnecessary. I am considering shooting for a minimalistic (or at least more so) look like Fluffy or Andre and Wally Bee.
I've also been working on getting my bills down to a point that I can live on what most people would consider a poverty-level income, in the event of job loss or making the leap to working on this full-time. I make way more than I ever used to, but my financial struggles have left me with an extremely Bear-ish outlook on the economy. My family makes fun of me for being frugal, but I like having money in the bank.
But, I digress. Back to your question - I guess if your project has ultra realistic humans, environments, etc it better be really short. 5 minutes is maybe too much. Maybe try to cut it down to half? I knew a guy in college that was maybe 4-5 years younger than me, extremely talented and was a TA for one of my classes. He was doing some long-form short (like 10 to 20 minutes) in the Star Wars universe. I don't know if he ever finished it, or what, as I lost touch with him.
But 10 to 20 minutes is way too much for one person, unless you are extraordinarily talented and have excellent time-management skills.
So maybe scaling back the scope of your project is something you want to look at seriously.
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CG Heavy Metal would be cool. I've been meaning to pick up a copy of the old one, if only for the 3 vignettes I mentioned.
I got a huge kick out of the Southpark Heavy Metal spoof.
I saw Black Cauldron a loooong time ago. I also read the books that the movie is based on. The books are better.
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This is really neat, almost makes me want to get a Makerbot:
http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:44150
I'm very thankful to have all my digits. Glad that there are people out there doing stuff like this.
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Good times!
I have a version 10.5 Orangutan CD which I treasure. Every few years, I take a stab at mastering AM but so far have failed each time. I've slogged through some basic tutorials in the past, but could not sustain momentum due to time constraints and so I start from scratch again another day like Sisyphus.
I originally fell in love with the pictures in the manual of photorealisitic mermaids, heros, and dragons and felt that anything less would be a disappointment. At my rate of learning, that goal lay on a distant hazy horizon. After each failed episode of attempted learning, I would tell myself to move on to other interests. But optimism and weak memory bring me back.
Recently I happened to see a little of the "Rescue Heros" animation on TV. It is 2-D cartooning with quite limited character articulation and lighting, but the stories make totally compelling watching. It rekindled my interest in animation, and I remembered that A:M had some 2-D modes of rendering. Suddenly I see excitement at the other end of the spectrum; instead of detailed modeling, lighting and frame-by-frame posing, there may be life in super-efficient models and backgrounds, as simple as you can get away with, and concentrating on storytelling with fun, captivating animation.
I don't know how well A:M will support that mode of production, but I'm inspired to go another round with A:M with much more relaxed objectives in terms of modeling and realism. I'll see if I can record some episodes of "Rescue Heroes" and study frame-by-frame to try to see how to make efficient animation.
To the point about CDs: I worry about the longevity of my Orangutan CD. I wish there were some way to get a backup copy. I like to take it on vacation with a laptop, but the chances of damaging/losing it are increased. A subscription just doesn't make sense for me with my track record, my focus on 2-D animation, and tight finances.
If it is true that some replacement version could be had that can import the old projects and can be used the same way, that would be a great comfort. I feel that I represent the kind of market that A:M was originally marketed toward -- hopeful enthusiasts. Subscriptions seem oriented toward professionals who have a greater commitment.
I think it would be a great gesture if Hash would commit to supporting those early adopters with their standalone CDs who believed in those convention demos that made it look so easy. Those users might even finally get enough traction to contemplate the subscription versions.
Any update on the status of replacement CDs would be appreciated.
-SB
To address some of your concerns:
I used to be in the camp of upgrade every other year with a physical disk to save money, so I understand trying to stretch a buck if money is tight (and money may be very tight again for me soon, possibly).
I've switched to the yearly sub model, and I'm hardly a pro (hope to be). I'd say I'm lucky to clock 10 hrs a week with the program, but I'm looking to change that.
I look at the subscription model this way: there is nothing to lose or break, it is a little cheaper than the physical copy, you can transfer it to another PC if you need to, and most importantly you're supporting further development of the software.
As far as the time-consuming task of learning animation, unfortunately there are no shortcuts. We all have different aptitudes, some are good at modeling, some lighting, some rigging and others animation. It is a rare individual that is good at everything. And if they are, they put some serious time in. I guess all I can offer you, is try to hang in there and try do something every day, even if it is only an hour. Eventually you'll get where you want to be.
And if you have questions, ask. There are plenty of people on the forum that will help you with what you're stuck on.
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I think it was very much of its time but it wasn't a big hit back then either. In a time when animated features were rare things it was the even rarer case of a non-Disney animated feature so it has minor legend status in that regard.
There was a brief boomlet in the 70's of "adult" animation of which Fritz the Cat was the first and only real success and Heavy Metal was the last gasp. Disney wasn't a monolith back then so some people thought that maybe, possibly, there was some other way to do this.[/i]
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I think the first time I saw bits of it I was around 12 or 14? I made a mental note of it but for whatever reason just never got round to watching it. I imagine for the time it was innovative, especially for being a non-Disney feature.
I've also seen Heavy Metal, and the only vignettes I cared for were the B-17 Bomber story and the Taxi story. There might have been another (Taarna maybe?) but it has been so long since I've seen it.
But I think Rodney is right, I don't know if it is the medium itself that doens't lend itself to adult themes, or the fact that the stories claiming to be "adult oriented" are more adolescent oriented, at best.
I always thought it would be neat to do another film similar to Heavy Metal, or maybe pick a single story and flesh it out more.
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I wasn't trying to hate on Bakshi, his work with Mighty Mouse is great.
But Wizards really came off as having a weak story, coupled with the adult themes for shock value.
I generally tend to agree that trying to do any sort of adult-themed story in animation is probably a bad idea. Animation will always have the stigma of being a "children's ghetto". Maybe it just isn't possible to do "gritty" in animation without it seeming adolescent.
I do have to say, that the background paintings/drawings were incredibly detailed, I did like those and some of the character design was interesting, but as a work overall I didn't care for it.
I don't know what demons Bakshi struggled/struggles with, but reading the wikipedia entry on Bode, that was a sad end to an otherwise productive life.
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So, Wizards was one of those movies on my list...you know, that list of movies that have been meaning to see but for one reason or other just haven't gotten round to yet? I think I've seen bits and pieces but never had a chance to see the whole thing.
Well I finally got round to watching it and I wasn't really missing anything.
Although, an interesting surprise was that Mark Hamill did voice work for it, although for the life of me I can't figure out which character he voiced.
I'm really trying to figure out who this was aimed at? It is way too dark, suggestive and violent to be a kids' movie but not nearly enough to be aimed at adults (apparently according to Bakshi it is a family film? LOL)
Supposedly, no pencil tests were done, all drawings went straight to production. I suspect that is true, because the animation is pretty "meh".
Lots of rotoscoping, some of which doesn't look bad, some of which makes you go "why is this in here".
*minor spoilers*
So the plot revolves around 2 brothers, Avatar (the good one) and Blackwolf (the evil one) living in a bombed out post-apocalyptic earth millions of years later. Elves and fairies fight against goblins and demons, and the bad guys just aren't worth a darn in a fight until their leader finds his secret weapon: a 16mm projector with Nazi propaganda (I kid you not). Using the projector (for motivation, to confuse the elves? I'm not really sure) they become an effective force and manage to force a showdown between Blackwolf and Avatar.
Anyway - maybe I'm spoiled by much better animation (both story and animation wise) but man, I'm almost sorry I wasted an hour and a half watching this. If you want to see a dark animation with much better quality, and almost the same story (the little guy vs. technology - but told in a much more compelling way) you'd be better served watching "9".
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Interesting. I can only imagine the slowest, most obsolete computer you could possibly buy is thousands or millions of times faster than this multi-room behemoth.
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it depends on many factors.
how long is the movie?
how much time do you plan to spend each day on it?
how much production quality are you looking to do on it?
are you working on it alone or with someone else?
what do you plan to do with it after you are done?
Movie is no more than 3 minutes. I was planning 3 to 5 but it probably makes sense to tighten it up a lot.
Currently, I can't spend more than 2 to 3 hours a day on days I work, and maybe one long 10 hour day per week.
Production quality: that is a hard one to answer, obviously I want to make it as nice as possible but am time constrained. If "The Ant Who Loved a Girl" is the low end of the scale, and anything by Pixar is at the high end, maybe somewhere in the middle? (I realize The Ant Who Loved a Girl" is not CG, but I needed an example of something with low production values - and that definitely qualifies)
Working on it alone. Internet collaborations almost never work out, unless you know the parties involved really well. I also can't afford to pay, so there's that.
What do I play on doing with it? Screen it for friends and family, send it to Image Union and maybe a children's film festival. If response to it exceeds my expectations, I might send it to one of the bigger festivals or SIGGRAPH. After that, I would probably Youtube it.
Can I reuse scenes? Not many, but there really aren't more than 5 major sets.
There are only 3 main characters, one of which has very little screen time.
I might use some community props, but want to do as many of my own as possible. I plan on using Darktrees for as many of the textures as possible.
I have no clue what rendering time will be like, I want to render at 720p and shoot for no more than 10 minutes a frame. So it would be about 54000 minutes to render a 3 minute film at 10 minutes a frame. So if it was ten minutes per frame it would take over a month to render at ten minutes a frame. Probably want to cut that down to 5, or build a render farm
At least I have two machines, so one could render while I continue to work on the other. -
The other end of the scale would be someone like Mark Largent who got his 15 minute "Stalled Trek" done from start to finish in less than 6 months.
However, he is a confident, experienced A:M user. There isn't much about A:M that baffles him or leaves him stuck without ideas for solutions. And... his design for the production lent itself to rapid execution. That is part of good planning; understanding what can and can't be done.
I think you need to get more of the nuts and bolts process under your belt before you set a schedule. You want to get way past the point where every step is something that you have to develop new skills to do. Your project is a good laboratory to learn those skills but to imagine a schedule before hand is impossible.
The time factor between doing something you haven't done before and something you have mastered can be like 50x. I can do a proper bouncing ball now in a few minutes, but when i had to do a proper one for the first time, even though i had seen a lecture on it and understood the concept, it took me 35 clock hours to get it right.
]You might not get your project done before you're 40? I'll never get mine done before I'm 40, it's mathematically impossible.
Well I am currently on break so thought I would post a response.
You are correct, I don't think I can accurately estimate how long it will take, given my current situation. There are too many "unknown unknowns" as it were.
The only way to do this will be to push myself to learn something every day. Then in a year's time I might be ready to do nothing but animate.
I've done a lot over the last few years and am in a better place now, and will readily admit this has not been my number one priority, which is part of the problem. I've just been noodling around with it as time and desire dictated. Unfortunately, that isn't the best way to accomplish much of anything and I'll have to schedule time for it. I have been reluctant to approach it that way, thinking that turning it into a job will kill my enthusiasm for it.
I didn't intend to give any offense, with my "before I'm 40" comment. I didn't realize there was anything specific you were working on, but I haven't been in the WIP are lately. I guess I need to stop feeling sorry for myself and lamenting past bad decisions, since there is absolutely nothing I can do about that now. I don't care to get into my life struggles on a public message board, if you're interested I'll send you a private email.
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Thanks, for answering, I guess I already knew the answer before I asked. It is kind of a ridiculous question. Along the lines of "hey, I'm morbidly obese, can I become Mr. Universe in 18 months?"
If I am doing this part-time, then 1800 hours on the low end to 3000 hours on the high end over that time frame will have to be enough. If I were fortunate enough to be able to work on it full time for 2 years, 12 hour days (minimum) 6 days a week, I could put in about 7200 hours on it. I don't have that kind of time, though. Unless I stretch the project out to 4 or 5 years, which means I don't finish until my early 40s.
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So if it takes 10,000 hours to become an expert at something, how many hours do you need to accomplish something significant?
That's a pretty open-ended question, I guess, with I imagine the answer being "it depends".
I ask, because I'm trying to figure out if I can finish my film in a single year (or at most, 18 months)
My story is 100%, rock-solid, done
Both main characters are 90% of the way there, as far as being modeled and rigged.
All props and scenes I could probably knock out in a month or two, if that is all I did.
I'm still learning animating and rigging, and of course lighting and texturing will probably also be stumbling blocks, but I was planning on using darktrees for as many textures as possible and sticking with basic 3 point lighting to keep things simple.
I figure part-time, I can dedicate 900 to 1200 hours a year to it, without my job suffering. Any more than that, and I risk my employment or health or both.
Anyway, I'd be interested in what people think, I've made some progress but not nearly as much as I would like. But I haven't gone all out on it, either. I tend to fall down the rabbit hole of surfing the tubes or other time sinks when the day is over.
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The only one I know of that I have used other than Ghost is Acronis. It is cheaper than Ghost, you can sometimes find it on sale. I think it regularly goes for $50.
There are free alternatives that others have mentioned, here is a link that has some of them:
http://www.snapfiles.com/downloadfind.php?...t=drive+imaging
Unfortunately, I don't have much experience with using the free imaging software so I can't recommend a specific one.
Hope that helps.
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Robcat, you are a hardy soul. You couldn't pay me to live in Minnesota in the winter. We had a couple days last year where it was 40 below and that is just too damn cold.
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Apparently I was absolutely correct, and he said that they'd been charging $249 for this service and I WAS THE FIRST ONE TO EVEN QUESTION IT. He was really upset, saying that he's a customer too and he wouldn't want to be overcharged like that.
Wow - that is just amazing.
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I take comfort in the fact that global warming is on the way.
Illinois is cold right now but luckily I work about five minutes away from home.
Yeah, but then we get to live in a desert.
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Yeah...so I drove up to work today, roll the window down to get my parking receipt, and the damn window stays stuck in the down position and no amount of cajoling will get it rolled up. So I had to drive back home with the driver's side window down. Good times. Felt a little bit like Steve Martin and John Candy in Planes, Trains & Automobiles.
Meteor explosion in Russia
in Off Topic
Posted
Man, nothing cool like this ever happens in my neighborhood.