LITTLE ANGEL (Short)

[ragdoll]

from the images i can tell this would be great!

still downloading...

yey!

[ragdoll]

superb!

instant 5 stars! :)

the music, voice acting, sound effects (esp the cow moo) :D

everything is great!

congratulations!

it would be great if he was able to do a good deed tho, maybe accidentally so that it would be funny in a way... but that's just me... :)

-rj

[doubl33arth]

Nice work!
Like that!

[Afanissiev]

very nice!:applause:
fun story and animation...
I love this short!

[AndyH]

Excellent stuff - real nice to see it finished!

I think the ending is a little abrupt and I kinda wanted him to cause more chain reaction - based chaos, but the whole thing is very smart indeed. Great style, and dave did a great job with the music! Are you gonna try and develop this into a series? It would work great as a series of 5 minute shorts where he cocks something up every episode.

Whats next in the works for screenburn, besides celebrity award ceremony hob-nobbing?

Hope you get some front page recognition for your efforts!

[Suryawanshi]

hehehe !!!
koool short guys !!!
yeah...the Music was sperb like all said.
I love the way the little devil looks at the ring and shakes his head.
Lets us all know wot happens at Bristol, Flip Animation Festival and FILMid 2005.
Cheers !!!
Sachin S. Suryawanshi.

[Obaid3DFX]

great job

just great....and 5 stars :thumbsup:

[dr_ron]

Well done lads, glad to see your hard work has paid off. I really like the look and feel of the film. The music fits perfectly Dave. My only crit is that the animation lets it down a bit. The range of facial expressino on the main character could have been pushed a bit more , considering its going for the kids tv slot. Other than that chaps, its really good. btw msn is down at work. But hope to chat/see you lot soon.

[ragdoll]

im surprised to see this pushed down to the 3rd page with no stars...

it didn't get its much deserved recognition...

so i'll just bump this for this weekends visitors... :)

[shakii]

And thanks for bumping, or else I would've missed one great short! Love the concepts, style, colors, and the storyline (wished it was longer tho, in a good way), good job!!

[freakmoomin]

yeah pretty good

a little disapointed with the ending tho.

good stuff

[webhead]

C'mon, Quicktime Version!! :bounce: :bounce: :bounce: :bounce:

[HellBoy]

thats great m8

I like it alot

5stars here mate

[c_Hotchkiss]

servers down?

[Winner]

Nice short.

Character design is brilliant, and I love the shading and the overall rendering of the piece, you've taken the rim light and pushed it to an extreme giving it a very stylised cartoony edge. The colour pallettes in the openening scenes work wonderfully - and i loved the green ambience in the science class. I thought the pace of the action was well planned - increasing towards the end with the climatic conclusion on the front of the truck.
Music and voice acting absolutley perfect... I used to dabble in Cubase myself, and trust me I know the skill needed to create a score of that quailty. I'm not sure who the voice actor is -- but if hes someone's dad he should be doing it for a living ;)

A few crits however that bothered me:
Overall I felt the animation was not very strong -- the devil was too stationary, and there was a lack of facial range to compensate for this. I would have liked to see him moving around the frame more - there were too many shots where he was standing ( or sitting ) on the spot - this left me feeling that on the whole the staging was fairly undynamic.
I also noticed that the 'rim lit' style that persisted through most of the sort seemed to deteriorate towards the end -- the sequence with the truck just didnt seem to match the quality of the openening scenes ,which was disappointing. I also felt the exterior scenes ( the building in heaven and the school ) would have benefited from a more detailed treatment - mostly to illustrate the difference between the two worlds - i felt these scenes were very bare looking.
The story is a great idea - but to be honest i think it is poorly executed. I agree with Ragdoll, in that he should have actually acheived his task in some way - be it unintentional or not. The use of slapstick for the ending just doesnt complement the sophisticated style of the short that the audience is first introduced to. I know this is hard - but I would have liked to have seen a more thoughtful conclusion to the story.

[Gingerhammer]

I don't generally have the time to formulate an intelligent crit (plus it makes my head hurt), so I won't attempt to now. However, I couldn't resist in commenting after reading Winner's post...

I disagree with most of Winner's points:

"I also felt the exterior scenes ( the building in heaven and the school ) would have benefited from a more detailed treatment"

- I would say that the level of detail compliments the visual style. I feel that members of the 3d community tend to, consciously or otherwise, cloud their judgement with 'what should be' based on which direction technology is taking them. We are currently enjoying rich detailed textures with advanced lighting techniques. Lets not confuse artistic choice with aesthetic preference and also lets not forget that time and money plays a big part in design choices too.

"I also noticed that the 'rim lit' style that persisted through most of the sort seemed to deteriorate towards the end"

- I think perhaps you have spent too long creating game content. Of course one would expect the lighting to change between heaven and earth...

"he should have actually acheived his task in some way - be it unintentional or not. I would have liked to have seen a more thoughtful conclusion to the story."

- Surely the point to the story is that a leopard can't change his spots? (he he! Bible reference there).


I agree with the points concerning the animation though. A bland style as seen in this set design really needs a strong acting performance - which didn't happen.

Thanks to Screenburn for letting us watch it. Keeps us going!

[Winner]

Gingerhammer:

Dont forget that all my comments are just a personal opinion... we would not have creativity at all without different ideas concerning what is artistically `right or wrong`. I'm glad you disagree because it makes me question my own opinions... saying that however i still stand by them.

When i said about richer evironments for heaven and earth.. i was by no means talking about what `should be`.. .i'm not sure thats a good foundation for artists, and I would not recommend it. Its interesting but that had not come to mind when writing the crit. I simply thought that the possibility of a more detailed world could help emphasise the difference between the two, as well as more importantly making them more believable. At the moment they kind of both look the same to me. I agree totally with what you say about time and money.

`- I think perhaps you have spent too long creating game content. Of course one would expect the lighting to change between heaven and earth...'

> i think you misunderstand what i meant. I was not talking about lighting. I was reffering to the `rim lit` effect that is used on the characters, but is also used very nicely on the school classroom, and various props throughout the short -- ( i guess this is more of a `shading` thing ? ) I just felt that the sequence towards the end was visually quite different in this repect compared to the richness of the opening sequences -- especially noticeable on the shading of the truck and the buildings. Of course you would expect the lighting to change between heaven and earth, but my comment concerned a consistency of visual style. Maybe i wasnt clear about what i was reffering to. Im not sure what you mean by ' I think perhaps you have spent too long creating game content `.

Maybe youre right about the story part.. i hadnt thought of it in that way .. but still if that is the `point` is it convincingly told ? I'm not sure. With regards to the story, it seems that a few people commented on a slightly abrupt or `dissapointing` ending... surely that is not what was intended by the filmmakers ? After watching the film, unfortunatley I felt the same way . So i gave my critique, personal opinion for sure, that the ending could have been more thoughfully produced. Isn't that what these forums are for ?

Anyway I dont want to hijack this thread. Apart from a few things that i would have tried to do differently myself - i thought the short was great. Maybe you should have taken the time to formulate an intelligent crit to complement your disagreement with my own - i would be interested to see it.

[Gingerhammer]

Sorry about hijacking - it's just the way it goes sometimes!

I hope none of what I said came across as a personal attack - I'm just mixing it up a bit, trying to offer interesting discussion. I think the problem with forum crits is people don't have lots of time so only end up writing 'hey that's great man!' and if nobody replies in that manner then the original poster ends up saying something like 'damn this place is dry!'

I hope the 'too long making games' comment wasn't too offensive - just a bit of fun.

Bugger! I'm going soft! I guess I don't want people to hate me... ;o)

[Winner]

sure i agree with what you saying about time, and proper critiques. I try to take a moment to crit work where I see a lot of effort has gone in, and this thread is one of them. After reading your reply i went back to look at some of my other posts and noticed that I do maybe crit more than I praise, but i think that kind of opinion is more useful in the long run. I would hate to think that CGTalk is a place where people post just to `show off` their work, and get those stupid buttrock things.

dont worry mate about the games thing .... to be honest I think I have spent too long doing this ! ;)

[Ozoka]

man what did use to render this....looks great!!! explain the look

[SCREENBURN]

Thanks to everyone for taking the time to respond, and thanks to Ragdoll for giving us a little bump.

To answer a few of the questions :

Little Angel was rendered using Maya's standard software renderer. The "look" came from using ramp shaders with a colour gradient based on light angle and a luminance gradient based on the camera angle (to create the "rim-light" effect). 90% of the shots were lit with just one light, which was important with only two animators working on the entire film.

The more restrained character animation was an attempt to get across the personality a bit more - the demon is like a small child with good intentions, constantly crushed by his constant failures. Our influences are perhaps more Buster Keaton than Tex Avery.

The stark, un-detailed backdrops were a style choice, and also an economic choice! They do perhaps contrast a bit too much with the opening act which has a very very rich and busy backdrop most of the time thanks to the lovely Fluid Effects clouds.

For us the story was the most difficult part of the process - we had probably an hours worth of ideas to get across in four minutes. We deliberated over the ending for a long time (should he perform a good deed, should he earn his wings?) but settled on the abrupt, open ending.
Believe me, we're still talking about whether that was a good idea or not! But I'm sure anyone who's self-finaced a short film will realise that it has to get in front of the public sometime, or theres no point in doing it. And I'm glad people want to see more!

Any more questions or crits then please feel free to post.

[blz]

that was nicely done :)
congratz

[ivanisavich]

Congrats on the plug....but ...uuuh....wasn't this posted like 3 months ago???

[JeroenDStout]

I liked the beginning (save for the light-idea bit) and it was very fun right up until the bit on earth - then the video lost it's momentum and it just.. didn't work anymore, it all felt a bit cheesy and expected; it missed 'the ending' in that aspect as well.

Voice of god was superb, btw, truely the right choice. Animation was well done overall (save for earth, again). Good work :)

[AndyH]

Congrats on the (delayed) frontpage dave & stu!

[Ranimate]

Thumbs up man!!! Front page, finaly.

Keep it up!

Ranimate

[Tritoon]

Very nice man, i love it...

What did you use for render?

[switchblade327]

Overall, I dig it, especially the shader/rendering work. The simplistic look of the character and environments totally works here as a result. I recognize some of the shortcuts you took (not showing the other devils, the voice of God(?), etc) but you executed them in a way that doesn't feel like a shortcut but a creative decision, so kudos on that.

Everything about the audio (VO and music) is entirely top notch.

I'm going to agree with some of the above crits that...

-It ends too abruptly. Whether a leopard can change his spots or not, I felt this kind of a short needed a punchline either way and didn't deliver one.

-The truck going out of control sequence was the weakest bit (though I laughed out loud at the 'old lady walker' bit right before). More body roll on the truck would've helped to convey that out-of-control feel. Maybe even getting up on two wheels a little bit and some cartoony but subtle twist on the chassis?

-As mentioned before, the subtle character animation would've been complemented by more exagerated facial animation. His blendshape for blowing out the fire (i know this is a hard one) stood out in particular but they all could've been pushed more to better portray his personality. Changing the shape and size of the eyes and the size of the mouth on the devil and stork would help a lot and gone well with this cartoony style.

-I'd like to have seen some secondary motion on the stork's feathers. They're entirely too stiff right now.

As usual, these are just my personal opinions and nitpicks. Maybe I've been working in games too long :P

Great job guys!

[CarlCampbell]

I really liked the look of this short aswell as the soundtrack and voice-over work, but the animation bugged me a few times, especially when the main character is skipping down the pavement, he felt WAY to light to me, plus I didn't really find the short really entertaining, the talent gags were fun though.
The thing is, by the time the short started to grow on me I felt it was all building up to a more exciting ending but to my dissapointment it ended all of a sudden and pretty abruptly.
Nice job despite the personal nitpicking, I'll be pluggin this at my school.

By the way... why'd they take this off the front page? :shrug:

[djhush]

I absolutely love it!

I think it's amazing and really funny to watch. I like the facial expressions, the enviroments as well as your ideas. How long did you guys work at this?

I'm exited to see your next work.

Big ups

:applause: :eek:

[PinkBunny]

This is wonderfully cute! Great execution on a neat idea!

Quite sad about the ending though... little guy's never gonna do anything right. =(

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