FXWars! - "Close Encounters" - David Dages - 1st

#3

Alright- now that the weekend is here with thanksgiving aproaching, I can actually start working!

The concept so far is that my little brother (Steve) goes for a walk and thinks for a split second that he sees a pillar of light far off in the direction that he is walking. He later approaches a field and notices several odd yellowish glowing… things moving about on the ground which turn out to be the odd life-forms. He does approach one or two of them, but I havent totally worked out what happens. The craft which transported them also awaits design. The creatures become threatened by a harmless gesture, and flee to the craft which will use it’s special weapon to (possibly) destroy him. The clip will end abruptly as a cliff hanger:p.

And thanks goes to admiraligor for the tip:)

Oops:surprised: I forgot to note that this takes place at night.

#4

While working on the creatures I remembered a character from Unreal 2 which was one of my favorite games. His name was Ne’ ban who was a small bluish glowish alien confined to this exoskeleton suit when in human environments (My aliens probably subconsiously resembled him because I liked him so much). Anyway, I decided to make the aliens look just like him, excepting the suit. If I had a better screenshot, you could make out some primitive eyes and a mouth, but I don’t have the game anymore :sad:

I just read that Ne’ban is actually a parasite inside a slug which is the bluish glowing thing. Cool.

(I didn’t make this)

Also, Here is a sketch of the craft which carries them (They won’t be very large):

#5

Oh sweeeet :slight_smile: Very similer idea as my first. Mine was a sphere that had a larger interior than the area of the sphere itself. Like the inside of 200m x 200m but the exterior was like 5m x 5m. Makes everything look REALLY high tech. Problem was I wasnt about to figure out how to do that in max :-/

#6

Hey, that’s a really cool Idea. Reminds me of that door in the original Willy Wonka movie lol. Too bad you don’t plan to use it.

#7

Well, I’ve finished the craft and everything, And have everything set up for my brother to touch it. I’ve ditched the Ne’ban concept because I found it impossible to think of a non humanoid design that looks original (if not just completely ridiculous) with a head. Shooting has been reeeeeaaaaally slow thanks to the winter season which gives only 10 minutes of useable lighting per evening. Well here’s the craft:

#8

I need a large photorealistic tree SOON! Does anyone know of some descent tree modeling tutorials that I can refer to?

Those who can help out WILL show up in the credits.

Thanks

#9

I’ve been shooting and compositing here and procrastinating there. I’ve kinda placed myself in crap’s way cus now it’s raining… taking all the snow I need with it.:banghead:

Time to pull out the reeeeeally fake stuff, heh heh heh :twisted: …

#10

A quick Putfile test…

link

#11

The test footage is looking sweet man - cant wait to see the final!

#12

Thanks! I’m looking forward to everyone else’s too… which brings me to wonder- have some of them quit?

#13

Looking good :thumbsup: I like the change of lighting.

#14

Looking good…Waiting 4 more!!:thumbsup:

#15

FYI

Fxwars Close Encounters: New Dateline!

-R

#16

Glad you noticed- I borrowed my dad’s Dewalt flashlight which makes for a great spot.

#17

Great idea, it does the job :slight_smile:

#18

I’ve found a neat cartoon by Charles Adams that I think you will all enjoy…
[

](http://img271.imageshack.us/img271/9159/giftufoj7zj.jpg)
No replys are necessary.

Eww! the border doesnt match the background on this pc- well it worked on mine :stuck_out_tongue:

#19 
:sad:

Nope, I couldn’t do it. Sure, I had a few things in the way to hold me back a day or so, but I know I don’t really have an excuse. My screw ups: procrastination and poor planning. It initially took me two weeks to decide wether or not I wanted to enter. it then took me over a month to figure out basically what I wanted (a normal grey alien didn’t satisfy me). Furthermore, I was a complete moron to decide to shoot it at night during the winter. I’m not going into the procrastination thing. I want to apologise to everyone who may have been looking forward to the final product, to Roberto Ortiz for holding back the date, and to everyone else who was responsible enough to keep on task, and finish before the original deadline.

I will post what I did finish/semi-finish on monday, but of course it will not be an entry.

Good luck everyone, and congratulations!

#20

I’m sorry you won’t be able to finish, I do look forward to what you have. And you can always finish later anyway :slight_smile:

#21

I’m sorry that u rn’t gonna do final entry.but that’s good that u r posting whatever u do have as final.i m looking forward to it.

#22

This is what I’ve done with the exception of a few insignificant raw/FX scenes. I had to tweak the final story in a lot of different ways for it to make sense for the setting. For example: it would be retarded for the craft to be sitting on the edge of a field that’s surrounded by houses. So I then realized that it would need to be in the (very small) forest at the edge-causing me to have to scrap a lot of scenes and waste more time.
The martians are sure to knock you off your seats- I know they’re horrible. I’m happy though first because they were my first character ever. Second because they taught me that I can’t rig- yet.
The martian-vision scenes I also would have scrapped because they were outside of the forest.
The Craft Touch scene was the biggest part (that I completed) and I’m pretty happy with it. I got really pissed with myself though when it rained and killed the snow…
I put the biggest amount of time into the tree for the climax scene where the craft follows Steve walking slowly backward. It then would have released a wave of energy which throws Steve off his feet and at the same time uprooting the tree and throwing a crater in the ground.
As far as finishing goes I probably won’t, atleast not untill I’ve figured out how to hold my “pencil” right. Instead I’ll probably just leave it as a lesson for me and other younger artists here

 Thanks again, everyone here for your encouragement and support. Can't wait to see what you have!


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