Short Film 'In Safe Hands' 2D/3D

[sykosys]

The link is apparently http://www.sylewis.com/download.html ! :)

[DeathGoth]

ok we watched you movie but i am going to tell you what he thinks... and let me tell u if you can get a lil kid to laugh at a tv show/movie thats a good thing for you...

From My 4 year old
I like how the people go around and try and open the safe and fail.. I like how they look like... he like how we turned into a bannana at the end.. or however you spell it....

Now for my crit... its a good movie.. like I said above if you can make a kid smile you did a VERY good job.. How ever.. some of the sound was off.. like when the 1st caracter walked in his shoes were only in the left speaker.. I donno if that was intentional but.. something to think about.... and I think the lighting on the caracters were to much for what the scene called for.... but all and all you did a swell job.. considering my kid has been watching animations on here with me for a long time.. and this is the 1st one he liked... but I think you did a pretty good job so.. I give you that.. he loves it.. now i goto watch it for the next week non stop... hhahaha.. If I can see anything else wrong i be sure to post it...

[Marty_McSly]

DeathGoth - Thank you very much for your comments, about the sound though - I did not produce the sound, but as far as I am aware the footsteps in the left speaker were intentional. My intention was not to blend the characters into the scenery too much - as in the traditional style of cell painted 2D characters - they generally stick out like a sore thumb this is the effect I wanted to achieve in this piece.

As far as the story is concerned, I intentionally 'borrowed' various ideas and influences because I tried to focus on animation in my film. I am not a script writer and never intend to be - so I feel that I should concentrate on the one thing I enjoy most - i.e animation.

I would appreciate comments on the animation style and whether or not you like it! Any other comments on anything very much appreciated!

[Marty_McSly]

...any commments, whether good bad or indifferent...anyone... please. :hmm:

[Marty_McSly]

Okay, to 'hopefully' try to spur on a few more responses I have uploaded a smaller version of the film. The file is only 12.8MB for a 3 minute film - surely worth a download guys - eh?

Please click on the following link and don't be shy about posting any comments!

Download Here (http://www.sylewis.com/Download.html)

[MajinPunisher]

I like the way you've incorporated the 3d characters with your 2d stuff.

Your character animation seems pretty solid, so props to that.

I kind of have some beef with your camera shots and movement, and there's not much I can say to it other than that, and to suggest boning up on how the greats in animation have composed their shots.

The sound effect of the saw and the saw were a little off, you may consider redesigning the sound scape a little, so that it is in time with the movement of the saw.


Otherwise, pretty solid piece.

Kudos, getting a full piece with original sound is a tough act, hopefully I'll do one to get up here someday.

-Andy

[PT-Osborne]

looks like you want some feedback... and it may be a bit harsh but beware... thats the real world...

The story has been done ... but you addressed that as being not so much of a concern... honestly its everything though... why does pixar do well.. their stories...
originality and insight within the story feeds and drives originality within the animation... you have to really feel for a character to care about what he is doing... and exactly what he is doing, all the nuances the small details are the important things... try to avoid having the character scratching his head to think... there are better, less cliche ways to say I'm thinking... we should be aware that he's thinking the whole time...
Your motion in general was stiff and lacked weight... even for very cartoony animation, weight and real world physics are rather necessary... if your poses were much stronger this wouldnt matter as much....

careful about snapping IK in the legs.
use a lot more followthru
body parts freeze too much nothing should ever completely stop moving
cliche poses

I think you probably took on too much animation for the amount of time you had to complete the film...

sorry if its harsh, just one man's opinion
later
PT OSBORNE

[Marty_McSly]

OK guys, thanks very much for your comments so far.

Majinpunisher - In the piece I tried to ensure that there were no CG camera moves at all. This was another homage to the 2D classics. For this reason, all apparent camera moves were done as 2D pans in Shake. I too am not 100% happy with the camera pans - it was extremely difficult to actually get the correct movement due to the fact that there was so much data on-screen in shake that the computer couldn't keep up when manipulating the moves.

To actually achieve this effect, the backgrounds had to be rendered at a resolution of 2880 * 1760 (from memory) and the character/shadow/matte passes at a similarly high resolution!

PT Osbourne - Thank you very much for taking the time to post your thoughts, much appreciated. As far as story is concerned, yes I fully agree - it is indeed everything for a film. Having said that, I had a very short timespan (3 months) in order to take the film from storyboards to final render. We were advised to try to concentrate on an area of the pipeline so as not to spread ourselves too thinly. Not everyone is a good story-writer, animator, rigger, lighter, texturer and sound-designer all at the same time.

As far as the animation was concerned, the original storyboard was only 1 min 45 secs long. During development (of the last scene particularly) I got somewhat carried away with the animation and produced much more than I required - I liked the work I did so it stayed in. Some of the quality was definately lost and were I to do the piece again - it would be 1 minute long max, and may not even be texured/lit properly as I would just concentrate entirely on the animation.

I concentrated very much on ensuring that my poses were strong (I admit, maybe not all of them are concrete, but there you have it). If by IK snapping you mean the joints reaching there maximum limits, you may find if you look closely neither character's arms or legs are completely straight at any point in time (I hope). Also I hope you will find that there are no static poses in the piece, I am well aware that static poses in CG are a big no-no. I am guessing that you have watched the lower quality version of the film, where some of the finer details may not be evident. Believe it or not I also tried to incorporate as much follow-through as I thought was necessary - please elaborate on where you think I should increase this effect, bearing in mind that overuse is almost as bad as not using it at all. On the suject of cliched poses, if poses work then I think that is fine, it is often difficult to a strong pose that hasn't been used before, just wondering which pose(s) in particular are you referring to?

Thanks again for your comments, I really do appreciate them - even if they are negative. After all, negative crit is the one of the only effective ways to improve ones work. Thank you.

[alexyork]

I like it!

It's not too original but it has a really nice feel of Pixar (for the birds, geri's game), Disney and esp. Warner Bros. I think you mixed these styles together well and the cell shading look certainly fits.

I have no gripes with the animation, as I have yet to do any myself and it would be hypocritical.

Seeing as this is a masters work perhaps it could have been snappier and the sound quality higher - the sounds chosen and staging etc are great though.

Overall this is a fine effort and was a pleasure to watch. Targeted at the right audience who know your focus was animation this should do well.

Nice to see an animation that's not full of bullet time and pod racers :buttrock:

Good luck for whatever you end up doing next!

By the way PT Osborne - without being out of line (I hope) I have seen your short "The Pretty Unlucky Head" and it has plenty of animation errors and cliches in it itself, but your comments were fair so that's fine.

[PT-Osborne]

yeah we all take on to much for the time given with these things...

and I thought the industry would be different?

My short was completed almost 8 months ago now... (jesus it seems like only yesterday... one tear for paul)

My eye has come a long way since moving on to the real world...
has a long way to go as well... anyway.. keep making these shorts guys its a good thing to have these little pieces of explosive creativity out there...

later
Pat

[Marty_McSly]

mothermachine, thanks very much for your kind comments - About the sound, just wondering what version of the film you downloaded - the small version had very low quality sound so that I can keep the file-size to the absolute minimum (the lowest possible quality .wav file you can achieve - 6Khz mono from memory). The full version has pretty crisp, stereo sound at 48KHz - so I am hoping the quality was just lost in the compression.

PT Osborne - yeah I can definately appreciate the fact that everyone's eye gets more and more trained over time - I have just started a (hopefully) long and rewarding climb up the ladder of animation, so I can look forward to exponential increases in the quality of work I produce. It is the great advice and useful crit that these forums produce that helps us all to be better at our work - thanks again everyone.

Any more thoughts welcomed...

[HenningK]

You did your final for a masters Degree and you only got 3 months? Thats nuts. Well, Im only a college senior but here's my crit. I'm sure you studied the Warner style intensively so forgive me if Im stating the obvious. 1. Bugs and Daffy zip into and out of poses as your character does, but when they do it, the poses are much stronger and clearer (see staging, the Disney principle) and they dont float when theyve reached a key. 2. Your tall "banana" character seems unable to bend his spine. He looks stiff to me. That and the one crazed expression is always stuck on his face. 3. exaggeration: you have him in the air with his eyeballs googling a few times. This is an established symbol by now, so exaggerate it even further than the last guy who used it or try something else. Another example is pulling open the safe handle. It doesn't look like he's trying... exaggerate! 4. overall pacing seems slow: when he's opening the safe with the glass, for example. 5. Warners only used odd camera angles when they absolutely had to, and as a result, it was always crystal clear what they meant by framing a shot a certain way.
it seems like you must be aware of most of these things... why on earth did you only get 3 months?
peace,hen

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