CCS Thesis: The Legend of Farmer Jenkins

[Trestkon]

Very funny:D For some reason I laughed quite hard when the lightning struck.

When the purple kid sees the tree branch and starts to breath heavily, I think he returns to normals breathing a little quickly, and perhaps his chest moves a little too much when he's scared.

I liked the end where he killed the spider, but i'm not sure about all the talking he does afterwards, it just seems....un-needed.

The kids had some nice guestures and facial expressions

:applause:

[Otos]

Animation and the Modelling
is great!

Some little mistakes like the boys breathing,
but nothing minor!

I wish i could do something like that!

[Weequay]

Trestkon and Otos:
Thanks for the nice comments! I really appreciate the feedback, and I am happy to hear you both liked it.

Thanks for the critiques as well, I will take them into consideration. I have had several people mention the breathing as being incorrect and I will fix it.

The end was kinda problamatic for us and I have considered just cutting it after the spider but I wasn't so sure. I will see what other people think about it.

Otos:
I'm happy to hear you like the modeling and animation as that was my primary job.

Thanks again for the crits...keep 'em commin'!

-Mark DeRidder
www.markderidder.com (http://www.markderidder.com)

[stecki]

as an old school CCSer (back when it was Center for Creative Studies, not College) just wanted to say great little movie you got there. i agree about not really needing any talking after the killing of the spider, but i did like the line about him saying he is pretty scarey after looking at the cardboard cut out. so either is cool i think. maybe have alternate ending for the DVD release ;)

[Fetus23]

Yes!! A funny, cute, and well made little short here. I really enjoyed it. The characters had some great expressions and movements. Well done!

:beer:

[Weequay]

Stecki: It's cool to hear from a fellow CCS Alumni! When did you graduate? I too was torn with the ending in the same way you were... I felt it was a bit long but there were some aspects of it that I liked as well. Maybe I'll just have to find a way to make it tighter.

Fetus: Thanks for the comments! Happy to hear you enjoyed it:applause:

Thanks,
Mark DeRidder
www.markderidder.com (http://www.markderidder.com)

[Milho]

Two words! Awsome! ;)

The boys models and their facial animation was very cool.
I didn't like the rendering style though. It was so cg. Textures or a decent bit of GI would make it look better IMO.

But anyway big :thumbsup:

[kr3ml]

WOOHOO!! I saw it yesterday , cool short ... whos idea was it?

[seudo]

Great little animation. Enjoyed it very much. Loved the story and its build up to the end. The pitch fork through the spider was a great way to bring in closure for the many different elements through-out the story. I would have to agree with "stecki" about all the talking after the killing of the spider. Sort of takes away from the climax when we think the boys are going to get pitch forked. However, the moment where he mentions the cardboard cutout and mentions how scary it looks is good.

Just a suggestion, maybe after he kills the spider and says "finally, damn spider" instead of all the talking of the girl and Jenkins have the camera pan from the tree, like you have when he says "damn, I am scary", but instead:

Once the spider is killed and Jenkins says "finally, damn spider", have the camera pan from the tree shot while he says "Whoa, holly molly whats that. Hey is that me is that what I look like . . . Damn I am scary." This sort of makes the audience think a bit about what is he talking about and then go, oh, the cardboard cut out that scared the girl. Sort of keeps to how you keep us in suspense throughout the short. I could be wrong but thought I would make a suggestion/comment

Overall thoroughly loved the short. Great job!
Thank you for posting it. Pleasure to watch.

seudo?

[geoffb]

Absolutely loved it! Loved the fat kids scream most of all, and when they were seeing jenkins in everything in the treehouse. Great job!
:beer:

Geoff:buttrock:

[Smokey]

Abolutely brilliant , I enjoyed it a lot.
great short :)

[steverage]

Quality stuff!!! I love the real sublties of the characters...kinda Pixar-ish :D Music goes well too :thumbsup:

[cgwolf]

Nice work, you guys did a good job on everything for a thesis.
A bit more texture work and a tad smoother animation really make it stand out!

Very nice

[CuTnPaste]

High quality,
nice work.

the 3D is not the TOP of the TOP, but the movie is really good made.

GREAT
:applause:

[RuneV]

haha, thats the funniest anim I've seen in a long time. Funny story! Some flaws here and there. But overall, excellent work! loved it! :beer:

[chudofsinister]

Wow thats cool. I went to CCS along time ago for just one year. Back in the day for graphics, if they had had a program like this back then I might be in a different place now,(huh) ha. I saw your dinasour piece a year a two ago just surfering throught there site on a whim, nice work.

Can you Post some Higher res images of the environments, specifically the moon and clouds of the barn yard. Very cool, nice style.

[Grooveholmes]

:shrug:

[killer397]

OMG LOVEEDDD IT !!........SUPER SUPER !!

Rock on ! :buttrock:

[unclebob]

I really liked it too, great animation and atmosphere. I agree about the purple boys breathing. I also think you should end it after he kills the spider, it kinda kills the mood.

[JPPLAY]

I think you should leave it it rocks. Great story line great animations.

[Gamoron]

Hey! I thought that was great, with some investment you guys could probably produce something really great. Oh btw I wasn't crazy abou the fusia in the sky at night, gave conflicting feelings about the time of day. But otherwise good work, and I laughed too!

[Larry_g1s]

:applause: YEAH ! ! !

Outstanding job. :thumbsup: That was a very funny and entertaining story. The animation was great, thanks for sharing it with us.

One question, why is the boy in all purple with a bunny shirt? lol

[urgaffel]

I havent been able to watch the short yet, but judging from the response it will be worth the wait. One nitpicky thing though... Please post jpegs instead of gifs. The gifs are a liiitle on the large side, and you get the ugly dithering too. Sorry to be picky but... Being on a modem and all :(

[ThomasMahler]

I think Trestkon´s right about it.

I really got the creeps after seeing Farmer Jenkins in front of the little boy... In my opinion, the movie would have been MUCH better if it ended after the Farmer tossed his "hay fork" into the camera.

That would have been creepy...!

[CGmonkey]

Outstanding job... Awesome character animation and great sense of anticipation!

Excellent!

[CarmineRedrum]

i have only seen this on my computer at work so far...so i dont know if its just this machine...but im hearing some really bad audio pops everytime someone says a line. if it isnt just me...you should go in and do some quick fade ins and outs on the audio tracks.

[RiotManZ]

This is GREAT!!:buttrock:
You have an excellent feeling for dramatic.

I´d love to have a wallpaper of Mr. Jenkins!!:applause:

[chudofsinister]

I forgot to say how much I like the background textures of the posters and stuff. I really like the 'zombie' poster in the club house.

I like the ending, I don't think it would work as well if you cut on the spider. It definitely has a nice rounded family feeling at the end of it the way it is.

[Tim Deneau]

You guys did a great job :thumbsup:

I'd also suggest trimming the end bit and leave it at the fork striking the camera. Hehe, my favorite part was the intro, good voice acting.

[fiercestudios]

It's just simply amazing that you did this with just the two of you.

Things I liked:

Fat Kid Scream
Fat Kid Reaction
Cool kid expressions, very convincing
quality of the production
facial expressions (great stuff in places)
the atmosphere of the scene
lighting
humor
Character models and sets well constructed, just short of Jimmy neutron level of detail (very good work here)


Things that struck a sour note:

timing in some scenes to long, could be cut down.
not extreemly original, much Tim Burton in you young Jedi. Create your own style and you'll be wicked evil!

For something that is this complete and that much effort put into it, I'd hope for a more original plot, very predicatable.

some scenes to dark.

Some sticky machinical animations, not a lot of fluid continuous movement.

Final vote 4 outof 5 stars.

Conclusion:

You've made me what to see what you'll be doing next. Damn fine work

Joel Payne
Team Leader, Max Steel, Starship Troopers
Fierce Entertainment

:applause: :buttrock: :beer:

[Weequay]

Thank you everyone for your responses, it's been very overwhelming!

It's interesting to see how people feel about the ending as that was the hardest part for us to nail down. It changed on a daily basis. At fist we were going to just kill the kids off and end with the pitchfork in the camera, but I felt that was too dark, especially since my little cousins did the voices for the kids. I think what we settled on works nice but does feel a bit uneeded because it was in question until the very end of the production.

I am very happy to see how in depth some people have gone in describing how to make this film stronger and what works and doesn't work. It's all very helpful and will be taken into consideration.

Some people have asked for more hi-res shots so I have posted a couple more...I may post more of them tonight if I have time. We are getting ready to goto SIGGRAPH tomorrow!

Thanks,
Mark DeRidder
www.markderidder.com (http://www.markderidder.com)

Here are some more images:

http://mywebpages.comcast.net/markderidder/barn.jpg

http://mywebpages.comcast.net/markderidder/zack.jpg

[chudofsinister]

I see you credit Bob Dyke and Larry Larson, I have met those guys. Though some time ago. Is Magic Lantern still around?

[Revilo]

Very creative and clever You've got talent:applause:

[snipa101]

seems like you hit the topic that pixar would hit, those little things that make up your childhood. birlliant work!

[canavan]

hey!...

Just wanted to say that the piece was awesome, and the character animation (facial expression, voice, tone pretty much everything...) was awesome! As soon as the movie finished, i found myself saying, "damn that was funny.":applause: :applause:


chris

[Weequay]

Chudofsinister: It's cool to hear you know Bob and Larry. They are great guys. Larry taught me a ton about character animation.

Magic Lantern is no longer around. However Bob is still busy making films here in Michigan. I am actually doing some visual effects for a short film he is making right now.

Revilo, Snipa, and Canavan: thanks for you comments. Obviously Pixar is a huge influence and goal for me and comments about a likeness to their films is the biggest complement I could get!

Thanks!!!
Mark DeRidder
www.markderidder.com (http://www.markderidder.com)

[Carbon]

That short was great. If I were you i would apply for a job at pixar, they probably need creative minds like that. Very nice job!

[Emberghost]

Great job!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

This is one of my personal favorites that I have seen here. I love how it was actually a story, and one that hasn't been written before. Or maybe it has and I dunno, but either way it was an excellent job. Love the ending :thumbsup: :thumbsup:

[John Lee]

Very well done is all i can say! but I have to say the animation Was very impressive!! It's a job and a hlf to actually get a film finished well done!!

[mattmos]

Amazing job! Bggest compliment I can give is you made me laugh and emphasise with the kids - I'm sure we all told ghost stories as children...

[manosteele12]

That was amazing. Me and my coworker watched it and laughed our butts off when he showed the cardboard cutout. That was great. 11 out of 10

[Rhino169]

Awesome job!!:buttrock:

I like the characters, the mood and the expressions....very nice!

[PT-Osborne]

I must say that it was way too long and probably suffered for that.

there were a few things I liked:
some of the kid acting (when the bad weighting wasn't too distracting)

I figure since animation was your focus the weighting was tossed aside a bit which is totally ok,

I liked the cutout idea.. but the rest of the gags have been done

I think you need to devote more time to polishing the animation. probably a year or so to get it looking really good, 8 minutes of animation is a lot.

your timing was ok, but I felt that the animation didn't have enough arc and dynamic to it, they all felt lifeless most of the time,

watch the quality of your audio, It sounds amateur

the lighting even at night should be rich and not so saturated... the dark tends to desaturate things but colors need to play the same way they do during the the day just in more subtle ways... you can't just light some scenes blue and some red and call it a day.

when you go to siggraph, check out thelvin cabezas' piece in electronic theatre for great lighting.. he's a student that just graduated and has a great night scene in his piece.

also chris cordingley's piece "after you" the animation in it is excellent...

hope crits are what you want, sorry to be too harsh, but such is the business
later
Pat

[Frank Dodd]

Excellent piece of work, obviously some areas could be improved, the materials on the models some of the clicking around the voice samples, but that’s not what's really important, the animation was excellent, the mood, the atmosphere and the story telling were all brilliant and the result?

A fantastic piece of work! :applause:

[Weequay]

Thanks again for all the comments. It's great to hear this film is getting such good reactions.

PT Osborne: Thank you very much for your critique, your comments are very helpful. I always felt that this movie was too long, and would like to cut it back a bit with more editing. Its funny because, at first I thought this would only be a 3-4 min movie and our animatics paced it that way. It's amazing what happens when you cut in full animation with holds and and anticipation and timing. However, I do think I went too far with some of them. It gets harder and harder to figure out what needs to be sharper after more than a year of seeing the same darn thing. Thats why comments like yours are very helpful comming from fresh eyes.

I'm also aware that this is looking a little rough and not as polished as I would like, especially in regards to the audio. Some people have mentioned the pops in the audio and that is all being cleaned up as we speak by our sound guy Spencer Hall. When I first put the audio together I used Premiere and it just messed it up big time (also I know nothing of audio editing:)). thankfully i have the original digital recordings so it's just a matter of going through all that again. Not a fun task.

Unfortunately my weight-painting is a little sub-par, and I think it's because I was so eager to start animating and it got left as is. We learned a lot on this project and our growing pains show, but I think it's kinda neat in it's somewhat raw stage. I can see how far we've come since we started this project.

So thanks again for letting me know what needs some more attention. I will try and change what I can, but for sure the audio is no where near final, and I am in talks with people about creating an original score as well.

Thanks again for everyones comments!
-Mark
www.markderidder.com (http://www.markderidder.com)

[sqitso]

That's it!! Again someone else has perfected the look and feel I am trying to accomplish in my short. Why oh why can't I get the look right? Maybe I just need to hire someone else for texturing and lighting. WONDERFUL SHORT!! I loved it!

[mehdianim]

That's excellent! great direction.
The farmer's voice and acting of the farmer makes him really likeable. And the animation is great.
Go to pixar!!

:applause: :buttrock:

[lildragon]

Wee bit behind on everything these days, but I'm catching back up :) You did great here, I loved the animation, especially that of the bully type kid, the story was funny and the attention to small details in the animation was well thought out. Loved it

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