Tremble Mortals! The God of Thunder's Lost His Hammer...

[trattor]

Very nice job!!! Strong style and good pace, keep up the good work cos its becoming harder to find good pieces like this!!

[AmpChuck]

Thanks for the feedback, Trattor. I'm glad you mentioned the pace, as I was definitely trying to push it a bit.

To my mind it seems that a lot of animated films unfurl very slowly so that every nuance of motion is showcased but I don't think that's particularly conducive to good story-telling. So I was really trying to get that sense of "flow" you get with the big Hollywood blockbusters and cram quite a few shots in there.

Stylistically, I was going for a cross between the old Cosgrove Hall children's series and a sort of comic book sensibility - I dunno whether that comes across or not.

[SCREENBURN]

Nice to see the final version, looks great! Love the dancing Thor at the end. I agree its very snappy and fast-paced, which definately helps you get straight into it. Nice clean solid look to the rendering too :)

Knowing how much it takes to get a short film done its a shame that animation doesn't seem to get as much attention as the nice Z-brush stills and illustrations, but I suppose you don't have to spend so long to appreciate a good still image!

Keep up the good work.

[AmpChuck]

Hi Stu! Good to hear from you again, hope both you and Dave are doing well.

Yeah, I was expecting this short to take a long time but didn't realise just how long it would take in the end.

I think they might be putting together another DVD with all the animations on it but if that doesn't happen, I'll burn one off and get it off to you, as the sound guys did a really good job on all the background screaming and squelching and the audio compression on the quicktimes doesn't really do it justice.

...and yeah, my next project will be a z-brushed still of a naked elf chick having a light-sabre fight with an obscenely muscular Wolverine. Watch this thread for details!!! :eek:

[zippady]

This really great, nice to see something different than all the trolls and bare breated women.
How long did it take you ?

[AmpChuck]

Thanks for the feedback, zipdaddy. Glad you liked it.

Timewise, the film was done over a period of about 18 months - 12 of which were spent actually working on the project. The remaining 6 were spent feeelancing to get money together and also doing "producery-stuff" like arranging actors and recording studios.

The producer stuff was very easy. Far, far easier than 3d. I dunno why they get paid so much...:shrug:

[CLT]

Good to see thoughtful preparation in a short film..
What one fails to see most of the time in small film projects (if the work actually constitutes a definition of short film) is time taken to construct imaginative and practical story/action/staging/pacing and realization .Here Chicken has taken the time to do just that.
Anyone who has attemped this sort of short will appreciate the amount of time ,hard work
and commitment it entails , particulary impressed with the use of layout/staging/editing in such a project, drawing on ideas from feature techniques ...well done..

Good Luck with future projects.

[amamic33431]

Nice job! Well done and thought I out. Love the style and story. Looking forward to more of your work.

[nikolas1977]

It was great!

Fun to watch, and a brilliant idea.

I can't sya anything tech wise as I don't know anything about graphics, but I do know about music... :/

Other than that it was really enjoyable to watch and I did enjoy the fast pacing of the movie. Well done!

(I guess everyone needs a just a normal guy like a part of a normal audience saying his opinion...)

[InAction]

It was pure awesome! Love the ending! :wip:

[Jadetiger]

Hehe, very bizarre, but I like it. Interesting timing on the animation.

[-KDX-]

=) brilliant direction imo. The animation is very much pose-to-pose but it works. If you had that animation style in another type of film, I would proclaim it as garbage but in this case the animation and direction work together very nicely.

Very creative stuff though.

-KDX-

[Xevious]

I like the bizarro humor and the originality of the story. The script could use a little trimming- but I like it. Good stuff!

[dunkelzahn]

Great story, snappy animation and a cool ending.:thumbsup:

Well, off to Annecy you go, eh!

Good work

Chris

[mdee]

I love it, great story and great style, neat camera work. Give us more :applause:

[animalunae]

I'm sorry to say, but I didnt like it as much as everyone else. Modeling, setup, animation, camera work, texturing, shading, lighting are all very basic and not at all refined. The concept is not bad, I liked the grim reaper (relatively speaking) and the voices of the reaper and Thor were not bad, but I'm still wondering how this got on the frontpage, I'm sorry, it has potential, but it requires plenty more work to be acceptable in my eyes. In any case, congratulations finishing the short, it's a great deal to finish something as well, I know.

[shoey]

I'm sorry to say, but I didnt like it as much as everyone else. Modeling, setup, animation, camera work, texturing, shading, lighting are all very basic and not at all refined. The concept is not bad, I liked the grim reaper (relatively speaking) and the voices of the reaper and Thor were not bad, but I'm still wondering how this got on the frontpage, I'm sorry, it has potential, but it requires plenty more work to be acceptable in my eyes. In any case, congratulations finishing the short, it's a great deal to finish something as well, I know.

I have to agree really. Sorry.

For a short film i think it was a bit too long to hold my attention. I found my self skipping to the end. I think you could still deliver the same impact and story by cutting down the length of some shots, or by dropping them entirely.

I applaud your commitment though, and well done for finishing it.

Cheers, Shoey!

[withnail]

Great stuff.

Fantastic achievement to complete any short, particularly such an ambitious one on your own!

Really impressed by all of it, but especially the lighting and texturing. Good luck on the short film circuit...

Congrats on the front page!

Andy P

[AsaMovshovitz]

cool short, liked the idea and the snapy animation, well done on finshing it....a year an a half, wow....

hope to see you do some more great stuff,

AsA

[AmpChuck]

Hi all. Thanks for all the feedback - I know it takes time and effort to type a response and believe me, it's all appreciated. And a big "thank-you" to whoever nominated this for the front page.

Glad to hear most people are enjoying it. And I agree with some of the comments regarding the animation. When I set out to do this, my intended audience was the general populace and I felt as long as the animation told the story and conveyed the necessary character beats then it was doing its job. Though I did go back and tidy up some of the earlier stuff as it made South Park look positively Disneyesque...

In my mind, script, direction and editing were of paramount importance, then came the performance of the actors and then the animation. I would be interested to hear if anyone has any strongly held views on this.

I feel a lot of CGI animation is too polished and I really like stuff like Cosgrove Hall and the Rankin-Bass animations - where the jerkiness and roughness gave it a bit of personality. I suppose it's up for debate whether this is applicable in CG however.

[Maytridy]

Great concept and idea, but the animation was really choppy. I found myself destracted by how rigid the animation was.

[Chris Bacon]

Hey, Im sure Ive seen this before, I think it was the begining of the short. it was on a documentry I watched about six or seven months ago,

anyway about your film, I liked everything exept the animation itself, for me it was too sharp and didnt realy register and the lip sync just didnt work, it felt like the mouth movements were all over the place

other then that it was ok,

chris

[gunslingerblack]

the animation suffered from two problems in my opinion,

the poses were too quick and you didn't hold them enough (not allowing them to register)

or the characters poses were too floaty, some of the camerawork was distracting and overall there were times that i couldn't really look at the screen.

the rendering is nice, but i found myself honestly wondering how it got plugged

sorry man, keep going though you have plenty of potential in your work, it just needs several steps of refinement.

[Glenfx]

Bad animation, terrible sound, quite boring and annoying..... front page??? ok :rolleyes:

The only thing i really liked was like the first 5 seconds of the grim ripper, the cloth and feel of the character was totally appart from the rest and until he snap turned both sides it look quite cool.

[comic-craig]

I gotta say- I'm dissappointed that this made the front page. Its a nice work for a begginer- but I expected much better.

[Kanga]

..... When I set out to do this, my intended audience was the general populace and I felt as long as the animation told the story and conveyed the necessary character beats then it was doing its job. .....

I feel a lot of CGI animation is too polished and I really like stuff like Cosgrove Hall and the Rankin-Bass animations - where the jerkiness and roughness gave it a bit of personality........

Hats off for lots of hard work!
As a whole I didn't like the animation. If you were aiming at a general public then much of the humour was too vague and not universal enough to appeal. The whole concept was great. Thor losing his hammer and comming to a supermart to find a new one is wonderfull. The gags in between wernt really strong enough to carry the piece. There was alot of dead wood in there which screws up the rythem. You are aiming to captivate your audience and hold them so every pause should be one that serves a purpose. I reckon a good hard look at the storyboard phase would help the piece flow better. It kind of bumps along.

Also the overall design didn't hang together well. It is like looking at a patch work quilt made of odd bits. You are right in thinking that an animation doesn't have to be slick but there should be an overall look or style. Thor had no body for example. Ok I like nintendo games as much as the next guy but that gag was lost to me in this context.

Because a film is such hard work every element should support the rest. Congrats on all the work and a very nice concept.

Cheerio Chris

[harmonic01]

Hey, great job on a completed short. It was a fun short to watch and it kept me interested. The animation was a bit too jerky for my taste, but still had allot of fun moments. Reminded me of Robot Chicken a bit. :D

[RowTal]

When I first looked at the thumbnail I was apprehensive - I was not too keen on the rendering style. My attitude changed as I watched the film and found myself laughing out loud.

Great script and great voices! I wasn't too keen on the floating body parts of Thor, but I can see what you mean by the Cosgrove Hall influence (a little bit of Chorlton and the Wheelies in there I reckon!) so that's ok.

You have a good narrative in there and to me - that's more important than anything when creating a short film (need a bit more of that in my stuff I think)

Personally, you've raised the bar for me in terms of telling a tale - I shall have to get cracking.

Rowan
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www.rowantallant.com/video.htm (http://www.rowantallant.com/video.htm)

[RyanDHale]

hey Like Vivec I also saw this on a documentary about 3 animators getting to make their short for the americans. I was glad to finally watch all of the film as seeing only parts of it in production was a bit annoying. I like the idea like many others though i feel it was also slightly too long, though it did include so funny visuals. Modelling was great so was some of the lighting in the scenes. As people have mentioned before i just thought if a bit more time was put into the animation it would have polished up nicely.

Well done for completing as i saw how stressed you were getting during the process

[DarkSkills]

Very entertaining! It was a bit long, but overall it's a solid, well done piece. Sure there's room for improvement, but there's always room for improvement no matter what the production may be. IMHO, it's definitely Front Page material. :thumbsup:

[EGGer]

It's interesting!Sound effect is a Highlight...The animation is ok...pose to pose seems not to bad ...It works well in this short!

[paul newing]

Wow, at last some work that dosen't get bogged down in technique, but concentrates on telling the story, reading some of these posts you can't help but wonder if they've attempted such a production themselves, these things take time, and sure improvements could be made but the same could be said on a production such as King Kong. Whats amazing is how this guy has managed to bring together all the disciplines for such a production by himself and finish with a highly accomplished piece of work. Well done and good luck on the festival circuit!

[AmpChuck]

...thanks all those that posted. People seem to either love the film or pretty much hate it and I'm glad it evokes such a strong response either way. :thumbsup:

Just to comment on a few of the earlier posts regarding the documentary - yeah, that was me. The programme's called "The Science of Animation" and goes out intermittently on Discovery Science. It's about the history of CG and I was part of a reality strand/"human interest" segment that followed 3 animators at work on their short films.

...I wouldn't read too much into me looking a bit stressed, though. Most of the shooting was done in one day - hope that doesn't ruin the magic of "reality" TV for you.

Cheers.

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