Animation: Gertie Gutless

[Cynical_Saint]

I love it man. Its very "Nightmare before Christmas" in the way it feels.

[PixelThis]

:thumbsup:
It's great! Got that Nightmare before Christmas thing going and the narrative flows really well. Good Job! :D

[victor throe]

that was tastey

a few things jumped out as un[polished though

the animation stlye was too smooth for the aesthetic feel of the piece....in my oppinion.....

some of th compositions were a bit cluttered......you had this really nice style...simple geometric shapes...and then filled the screen with them

and the explosion was horrible...totally stood out....

really nice though

[l7d]

beautiful story, anim, sound and poetry!!! it sounds like the lyrics from a metallica song!

[chatta]

Very good work :thumbsup: it's remind me ambiance of "l'étrange noël de Mr JAck" ("strange christmas of Mr jack" in english, i don't know) or "Bittle Juice" of Tim Burton.
:applause: :applause:

[Fitharn]

Very very cute... did you do the voice yourself?

[CGmonkey]

That was an awesome experience dude!

Reminds me of the art of Roman Dirge, which I happend to love.

[I animate]

I loved this style. :applause: :applause: :applause:

[Solesurvivor]

wow, this was soo cool... Only crit i have is that the voice isn't matching too good with the story.. I excepted a darker voice than the one you used now


but apart from that , this was, like Cgmonkey says, a magnificent experience :thumbsup:

[ganglyon]

the voice didnt do anything for me, but the animations wicked, didnt really like the particlas when she disapears, a bit to blobby wen compared to all the others

[krivakhranostaj]

there is very specific atmosfere:thumbsup:

[PaLantir]

It's very "dream story". The speacker talk like a witch or ancient storyteller!!

Great work! ^_^

Bravo! bravissimo!

[An Erased One]

Great!! Really nice Storytelling! :thumbsup:

[Hexodam]

:applause:
its simple, has a story that works and not too long and not too short, just beautiful:D

[Wiz]

The guy who said the voice doesnt fit..
i thought it was perfect
i loved it! ,but yup the particles where she disappears is odd.
and too big .

[KotsVlok]

Originally posted by An Erased One
Great!! Really nice Storytelling! :thumbsup:
Agree, i almost fell asleep with my thumb in my mouth :D

Great animation!..Really great! :thumbsup: :thumbsup:

[Rei Ayanami]

Realy good, I think the story is great. Well done, ohh and the compression is ok too!

[DAbuel]

GREAT WORK! LOVE THE TIM BURTON FEEL TO IT!!!! 5 :thumbsup: :thumbsup: :thumbsup: :thumbsup: :thumbsup: TO YOU!

[The Cross]

I'm with the majority.

[T0BER]

I like your style, very refreshing.

Congrats to you and your friends.

:applause:

[Silver Sliver]

:applause:
Wow, very well done!
The cloud of dust is too coarse

[Meaty]

ummm... yeah.... so that animation is TOTALLY COOL!

great stuff!!:thumbsup: :applause: :thumbsup:

[coldi]

amazing!

really great atmosphere and style!! :applause:

[RormanKnockwell]

I'm chucking my TV/VCR/DVD player in the trash. There's far more fun, imaginative stuff to see on CGTalk.com!

Really awesome work! Great little story, superb editing, beautiful animation. The explosion looked fine and fit with the style of the piece. I could nit-pick the dialogue a bit (it's "ES-scape", not "EX-scape"), but why bother.

I am humbled and awestruck.

[gemcap]

Nicely done,

I just wanted to say (since no-one else has) that I thought the explosion was fine. I think animators will all look and see spherical particles, anyone else will see a puffy toon-style explosion.

(I also thought the voice was good, just for the record)

[RobertoOrtiz]

Great piece!
You should sub,it this short to the SIGGRAPH animation commitee to see if it can become part of next year's selection.

Your team did a very good job!

-Roberto

[Rivendale]

I like it very much too, good work!:thumbsup:
It would be cool to have the girl speaking in the end when she says the swing will take her away, though.

[Kubik]

Great work !!!!I like it very much!

[JHN]

Really liked it!!! Well done!

Keep it up!
JHN

[darkwave]

Really beautiful style. I loved the models, really cool characters. Generally just really nice. :)

[Xform]

WOW!:eek:

Its really good! I like the text and the music the best it give it the mood that it deserves cus the modeling and animations are superb!

Great work!:thumbsup:

[slaughters]

I thought the voice acting was perfect. It gives a sort of whimsy to the dark emotions in the poem. It fits the poem well. It sort of reminded me of the type of poetry that Shel Silverstein would write in collaberation with Tim Burton.

[fmahalem]

very nice! I like that voice, looks like that voice at MJ's Thriller videoclip.

[Maya4fun]

Really great man!!!! :o Ure inspiration is Vincent by T.Burton no??
I have passed a great moment..
Good continuation man!!

[MaDSheeP]

oh wow, that was really a fantastic animation =)

brilliant job man, i loved it

[Slurry]

Hi,

Really great stuff. Very enjoyable and well executed.
Unfortunately, for me, the Tim Burton style was more of a distraction for me because it constantly pointed out the lack of originality. :shrug:
It's too bad you guys didn't come up with your own look. The concept was really good and you obviously have the technical skills.
Good luck!!

Slurry
:beer:

[veryferry]

sorry man, but can you PLEEEEAAAAASSSSSEEEEE make an mpeg for me?
I'm dying to see this animation!
But my comp trips if I try to look at wmv's or mov's!

[superfly18]

If you have a low compression cause you don't have upload space, send it to me and i'll upload it and hold it for you until you get some better hosting or until cgtalk.com realizes how fantastic the animation is and hosts it themselves. ;) I have a 500mb upload space and 30gig transfer if you need it man. Just PM me.

Onto the piece:

Fantastic work. I loved every minute of it. The voice was great, the rhyme was great, the atmosphere was fabulous, and the animations were flawless. Perfect job man.

I disagree when people said the "explosion" didn't fit. I thought it was a very nice ending touch.

All in all, 2 thumbs up!:thumbsup: :thumbsup: And 5 stars from me! :love:

Keep up the great work.

[Frinsklen]

Nice idea, very well executed and lovely style. Fantastic job, man.
I'm curious about how you guys did the music and the voice work...
I agree with those who told you to submit this to a festival

:thumbsup:

[FranSaa]

Cute...
For me it is with no doubt a clear tribute to Tim Burton´s Vincent... even the narrator voice reminds (as someone said) the Vincent Price voice (who was the Vincent´s narrator and MJ´s Thriller narrator, as well)...

Great piece, congrats! :)

f.


my first post:
"Environment: Setting for the game Duality" (http://www.cgtalk.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=64377)

[dark_lotus]

Wow, it was like evil dr seuss,

Awesome Stuff!! :thumbsup:

Just out of curiosity, what were the things that were time consuming?

[tdmack]

Absolutely Superb! This is fer sure one of my favorite now. everything seems to work really wel. The explosion was just fine. Everybody seems to want to see realistic explosions all the time but sometimes it not needed nor is it worth it. I am really impressed with this piece and can't wait to see more soming from you. The coolest thing about producing your first shot is that you can take everything you learn (including mistakes) and apply it to the next one. anyway enough of my ranting.

[Goatfuzz]

I loved it! It's a beautifully executed animation. My only problem, not a big one, was that I had to turn my bass off and treble way up to hear the voice clearly. Very nice. :beer:

[MakoHaze]

Awesome piece. I love it.

[Gremlin]

I liked it a lot.... the story was pretty cool too, but your style and ideas were awesome, I just want to see more refining modeling.
Good work!
Cheers,
:beer:

[BadKarma]

the style is very good fella... if you was going for "Night before christmas" you pulled if off great ! i would like to see a higher res download of it!

would be great

BadKarma

[gigantron2999]

Hey everyone, thanks for all the replies!

On the explosion: We thought this had a cool look to it, a lot different from what you would see in most cg films. Since the rest of the piece is so stylized, we didn't want to make an explosion that looked too realistic. But as with all experiments, there are things about it which worked and things that didn't. This was our first real experience with particles, so the next one should be better.

On the animation: I agree that it often looks too smooth. You can probably notice that the style of it becomes snappier later in the short, as we decided more what kind of direction we wanted to take. We should have done animation tests earlier on to decide on those issues, but it was sort of overlooked this time.

On the Tim Burton style: We were obviously very inspired by the style of Nightmare Before Christmas, but we did not set out intending to make a film with that look. We came up with a story that had a dark storybook feel to it, and then chose a style that was most fitting to it. Hopefully the style compliments the story and does not distract from it. As students trying to design an animation, I suppose it can be easy to rely on what you have seen work before. But like everything else, this was a big learning experience for us, and we will be trying a totally different style on our next project. Probably one of the things we will focus on most with our next project is composition. I think that's the weakest part of this project, but also the thing I learned the most about since starting it.

On the sound: Our school hires a company in Vancouver called Greenwire to add sound to our animation projects. We tell them the style of music and sound effects we want and then let them go at it. The voice on the soundtrack is a friend of the sound guys. We've actually told them that the voice sounds a little too booming, and they will probably tone down the reverb and send it back to us before long.

On the compression: We have plenty of hosting space, the reason for the small file is that we did a real rushed compression of the video on Saturday as we were trying to get the full-res version ready for video tape. Sometime this week I'm sure we can get back to school and make a better compressed version of it.

What took the most time? We spent the first 3 months of our production just drawing concepts, storyboards, and refining the poem, without ever touching the computer. That was a tough process, we never realized just how hard it is to design every part of an animation, even when it's just 2 minutes long. In the end, I think we did an OK job unifying the look of everything.

- Kevin

[KolbyJukes]

I really enjoyed it! Good Job!

-Kol.

[kr3ml]

Nice ! :bounce:

[LPlasma]

After seeing this version compared to the 'original' at the end of the semester, I prefer the older voice over. It was a lot more fitting, I think that greenwire kind of dropped the ball on the voice over. Especially the pointless reverb.

[cgwolf]

Great work. I liked mostly everything as the animations are expressive and simple and the scene compositions are perfectly Burton. Good job.

[icky]

Very interesting short. I like the character designs, but they aren't too original :D

I thought the smoke looked odd at the end. It'd be nice if it swirled into a design like the hills.

Overal very good and I like 'moral'!

[Jo B.]

man, this speaker is just perfect! you're pretty lucky to have such a good sound support at your school. and you're quite good poets too. btw. i like the reverb, as far as i can tell from what i've heard.
you can see that you took lots of time for the concept. and that's how it should be!
all in all, great job.

[gigatron]

I like it, reminds me of aladdin and desert dunes I dunno it just does. Nightmare before christmas i dislike very much so anyways :p But ya lol honestly its kinda nightmare before christmas and i like this heh.

[MosaFacku]

this is definately one of the better shorts i've seen posted on cgtalk. i agree, snappier animation would have made it a little better. good job with the ropes on the swing. ;) Also, I actually liked the explosion, it fit the style.

i agree with what's been said earlier, you should submit this to Siggraph if there's still time. I like it a lot better than most of the student shorts I saw last year.

good job guys.

:xtreme:

[killer397]

LOVE IT......very well done !

[Darkman1A]

Hey nice work.
I'm blown away by the fact that you guys came up with the poem aswell.

[Yorgo12345]

Awesome! it's Dripping with personality!

[sgt1138]

Dude, the camera cuts were just awesome! I love the feel of it... great job!

[caulfield]

excellent...beautiful story work there.

[PaxtonGerrish]

"QUOTE" Slurry: Unfortunately, for me, the Tim Burton style was more of a distraction for me because it constantly pointed out the lack of originality.


well I agree that this short is very similar to Tim Burtons style, but not in any way is it unorigonal.. everythings more or less been done before, and just because something has strange angles, stripes spirals or X's for eyes, doesnt mean its a rip off of tim burton :p


5 stars!!:buttrock:
love it!

[Dearmad]

:thumbsup:

Now make a higher resolution one available... I'd like to see more of the details in the dark.

Only a few camera angles were distracting, other than that good cohesive work.

[Aciduss]

oh yeah! More resolution plz!!! i loved it... very burton i must say ;) It is great, i loved the girl and her hair is so cool, how did you model/animated it?
Other thing, i must suggest adding your e mail/web page/contact link to the credits that could help a lot...

greets...

[lildragon]

I personally liked the explosion, it was very fitting for the theme. Also I'm a sucker for this type of genre, I love narrative voices, that's one of the reasons I voted for "Show & Tell" for the 3DAwards ;)

You have received the CGtalk choice award .Please feel free to display this image anywhere you like! Excellent work!

upon receiving this award, it guarantees you a spot in the cgtalk gallery hall of fame (http://gallery.cgtalk.com) - which you are now placed

http://www.cgtalk.com/plug_award/cgtalk_award_june03_2.jpg

P.S. Please email me @ tito@cgnetworks.com so I can send you the award .psd file

salud

[Vash T Stampede]

excellent style..

[Synergy3D]

I thought the voice was perfect for the part! Low enough to carry the dark feel, yet had enough expression to carry the part on : )

I loved every bit of it except the explosion where she disappears, which made me feel like it was a "quick fix" to hurry the project along. At any rate, it's still WAY better than I could do, so I applaud you! Bravo!

[eblondin]

D I G I P E N

WHAT!!!

[dooom]

congrats gents!:beer:
turned out wonderfull. nice sites to boot.
i hope i have something as nice to show when i finish dp.


:airguitar
drew shy

[dazrenius]

This is very impressive guys!!!!:applause: maybe someday i can create something like what you guys did.....very inspiring

[Krisc]

I would like to put this on my website, who do I give credit to...? (Names, websites?)

[Corn Dog]

I liked it.

Only suggestions I have:

The smoke (as already said)

and the "grass grew like untied shoe laces" line. It sounds kinda off to me when he reads it, as though it doesnt fit the timing of the poem.

Maybe change ->

"On sanctuary hill where the wind stood still
and the grass grew like untied show laces"

too...

"On sanctuary hill where the wind stood still
and the ....

The grass grew spotted in places...."

OR

"The grass grows too bare in some spaces/places...."

OR

ummm....

OR ahhh I dont know what im talking about :)

[Krisc]

I would like to put this on my site...who should I give credit to?

give name, website, email or whatever etc...

[m-greenwood]

Awesome, man.
I absolutely loved it - wouldn't change a thing.
:beer:

[animatabull]

Another well impressed viewer here. Love the style, especially the way the set frames the shots. Have a gold star.:thumbsup:

[animatabull]

Think should be voiced by an older man though, only crit.

[M.Rogne]

Hehe... I like it, yesh I do. :thumbsup:

[kebabflott]

very well done, I enjoyed this alot :)

[-JB-]

I rarely post, but I had to this time to congratulate you guys on an awesome piece. You should really consider submitting this to some festivals. I attended the opening of the World Wide Short Film Festival in Toronto a week or so ago, and honestly there's lots of room for better pieces like this. Give it a shot for next year, can't hurt. And there's prize money to get your next short going...

[technogirl28]

Awesome. I love the mood.

Very spooky!

[pezz]

Simply amazing, I absolutely loved it.

[BeCOOL_MiN]

SWEET !!

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