Looks great guys! 
You are cutting it awful close to the deadline :eek: 
FXWARS! "Close Encounters": Team 'Stitch', Hybrid
Dutchman
#18
@ Max_Power: Thanks for your encourangement, and yeah… we did all things quite close to the deadline… Just hope that we’ll count in as ‘a normal entry’… :surprised :bowdown:
@ the_jigu: Thanks for the nice replies and the interest in our project! 
I see it as one big compliment that you ‘feel like in paradise’ when looking that mattepainting! About our movie: the last 22 houres I’ve been working non-stop on it (‘goodbye sleep’ 
), as all things took some more time then expected… I hope to put the final online within 2 houres! Expect… big things!
Updates veeeeery soon! & Thanks for your interest!
-Gijs
droidoz
#19
The last two days i’ve been checking this thread everytime I had a chance:D Its great to hear you are almost done, I just cant wait to see the results 
You can do it guys!
Mrskickass
#20
Come on Gijs!
You can do it!
Finish it! It will be perfect, I know, because you’ve put so much effort and interest in it. I can barely wait to see the final result. As I promissed Jochem, and now you, I will wait with checking it. Thanks for you link btw!
De laatste loodjes wegen het zwaarst!
The GGJF supports you!
X
Dutchman
#21
@ droidoz: Really very cool to hear that you’re looking forward (so much!) to our final film! I can surprise you: it won’t take more than an hour anymore! The only little thing that lasts is encoding the final, to be able to upload it… Really soon you’re gonna see this thread popup with a movie in it!
@ Mrskickass: Thanks for the encouragement, my lady! :love: Its not that the last stuff is ‘really tough’, but more that it’s not motivating anymore… At least I get motivated by the idea of a crowd of fans! I hope you’ll enjoy the final movie when we watch it together!
I’m uploading the stuff right now… Really soon you’ll be able to download the final here.
A little WIP-image for now: I’ve been compositing allot the last days in After Effects. HERE I show you the layers for one of the shots, and a ‘Node View’ to give you an idea of the complicated stuff.
I found out that working with adjustment layers and putting a lightingrender on it as an alfa, works really cool! You can have very nice control over the lighting properties in that way!
I hope you can’t wait!
-Gijs
Dutchman
#22
For a little sneek peak… or for people who don’t have enough speed for downloading the full movie: my voluntary clip (the best looking 3 shots of my movie - in my eyes).
My voluntary clip (without sound: it was meant to not have it, is it?):
(FileLodge)
QUICKTIME: 640x480 [1,6 MB]
AVI: 640x480 [1,7 MB]
And the mirrors of them both:
(TheFileHut)
[b]QUICKTIME: 640x480 [1,6 MB]
AVI: 640x480 [1,7 MB]
[/b]Have fun with that untill I post the réal final.
-Gijs
Dutchman
#23
Ok, time for the final! :arteest:
Tuesdaymorning I made myself a promise: I’m not going to sleep before our FXWars-entry is finished and uploaded. And it seems I kept myself to it! Last night was historical: the first time of my life that I completely didn’t sleep (And I might not have been the last time… ), but just worked 100% on this project. While the one PC was rendering the last passes, I was working on the other to composit it all together…
So you can understand how glad I am that after 36 houres of almost constantly working on this movie, I can finally post the final movie! :wavey:
=================================
[b][size=2]TEAM STITCH
Jochem Harmsen
Gijs Leijdekkers (me)
STARRING
Noëmie Boden
Romy Boden[/b][/size]
We are glad to present you our final FXWars entry!
After the fun of making ‘Cold Case’ (for the ‘Big Freeze’ FXWar) we decided on the december 20th to make an entry for this ‘Close Encounters’ challenge. The first ideas were almost horror, till Jochem came up with the idea to do something with a cute alien. After an inspiring evening of brainstorming we got the idea of the current storyline. Also we dicided to make it about 1 minute long, so that it could be used as a commercial (just for the idea ). Our idea was that it could be a ‘Even Apeldoorn Bellen’ commercial (a Dutch insurance compagny), but as we make this movie for this international community we dicided to pretent if it was an ‘Allstate’ commercial.
‘Cold Case’ starred our mate Joost Ossenblok, and we have tried to bring him again into this project, but this time we really needed a cute, young girl. We were glad to have Noëmie willing to play in our movie. Her younger sister Romy is playing the ‘practical Stitch double’ (she was on the set to do some actions that the digital stitch would do later).
As I forgot to put that in the end-credits: the song in the movie it ‘All Shook Up’ from the brilliant movie ‘Big Fish’.
After all this seems to be the biggest project for us yet! It contains far more effectshots then the Cold Case, and we tried to reach a next level of quality.
We hope you like our movie as much as we did making it!
-Jochem & Gijs
[b]=================================
[/b] [center][b]A ‘CGTalk.com FXWars’ entry by:
TEAM STITCH
Jochem Harmsen
Gijs Leijdekkers
Starring:
Noëmie Boden (as girl)
Romy Boden (as practical Stitch-double)
Used music:
'City of Angels: The Unfeeling Kiss' (Gabriel Yared)
'King Kong' (James Newton Howard)
‘All Shook Up’ (from ‘Big Fish’)
Soundeffects
Sounddogs.com
Used software:
Discreet: 3dsmax 5
Pixelogic: zBrush2
Adobe: Photoshop 7
Adobe: After Effects 5
Canopus: Procoder
Canopus: Edius
Special thanks to:
Hans Lips
Niels de Vries
Roberto Ortiz
Family Boden
Butcher 'Slagerij van der Wegen'
Kim Heijnen
The members of the fanclub
All CGTalk members who encouraged us
This movie was shot on the 3th of Januar in Nispen (Holland)
This movie is in no way connected to 'Allstate Insurance'
No alien creatures were harmed on the production of this movie
24 januari 2006
(c) Team Stitch [Jochem Harmsen & Gijs Leijdekkers]
[/b] [b]=================================
[/b] [center][u]The final movie
[/u] [left]Sadly I couldn’t yet properly encode the final movie into Quicktime format, so for now I only have it available online as an AVI file with an XviD-codec. Also my original resolution PAL (720x576) is downsized to 640x480 now.
Another ‘sad thing’ is that ‘TheFileHut’ doesn’t support files larger then 2 MB. That means I don’t have a mirror yet… Just lets hope the FileLodge will keep it working (or if you have some place on your server and be willing to put a mirror of my stuff there: it would be appriciated!)
[center][b]DUTCHMAN 640x480 [13,8 MB]
[/b] [left][size=2]I hope you understand the ‘message’ of the entry, and that you like the look of it!
I’m going to get back the houres of sleept that this challenge took from me! I think I’m gonna dream about a thread full of feedback! [i]*hint *
[/i]Greetz!
-Gijs
[/size][/left]
[/left]
[/center]
[/center]
[/center]
Dutchman
#26
@ Max_Power: Good to hear you like it! Especially that ‘you like the end’, as that means you ‘understand the storyline’, isn’t it? If that is, is our goal reached! (to tell a ‘funny’ story within 1 minte ). Good luck to you on the voting!
@ droidoz: Cool to hear you like it, Matthijs! And: yeah, last night was really ‘relaxt’! Nice to hear that I deserved it!
=======================
As a last ‘present’ for everyone who likes to see it, I created a short VFX-before&after compilation.
[BEFORE&AFTER (13,2 MB) 640x480 [/b][b][AVI XviD]](http://www.filelodge.com/files/hdd7/175623/BEFORE%26AFTER_STITCH_(640x480).avi)
[left]It might be insightfull to see how many FX shots there are, and that the location exists only on mattepaintings!
Have fun watching it; tell me if you had! :bounce:
-Jochem & Gijs
[/left]
jigu
#28
Hey gijs,
I like it what u guys did…i really enjoyed ur “after before” breakdown.
U guys did nice job on rotoscoping,mattpainting ,compositing etc…
although Lighting/shading on the alien/creature can be improved…
very well executed final shot…
All the best…
-Jigu.
Dutchman
#29
Jignesh, thanks for the nice reply! I’m happy to hear that you like our entry! :drool: The only thing that I’d like to hear more about, is about your comment about the shading/lighting, as I myself felt that thát was one of the better points of the clip… In fact I putted quite much time in the compositing process, and to give it good lighting. Does it look too fake to you, or too ‘newby’? If you could motivate what is bad at the lighting, I’d be very happy!
More people who want to say something about the final result?
-Gijs
jigu
#30
As for lighting,
when that alien/creature turns ,there is no shadow on ground/dirts…whereas there is strong shadow on its body.when alien firsttime appears .there r some leaves fly in air and suddenly get disappeared…
as for shading/material u guys could use some bump mapping( using mix maps) and can show more organic material…
but i know u guys did this in very tight deadline…and i believe u guys didn’t have much time…
this is just my point of view…don’t take it as personally…
-Jigu.
Mrskickass
#31
Yes Gijs,
I want to say something about the final movie. It’s ‘kort maar krachtig’ (means short but powerful). I like the creature, the beautiful sky, the birds and the whole story. The end is surprising, originally and funny. Also I very much like to see the before and after. The music is good with the story and Noëmie is a perfect actress
Like I said it is totally diffrent from the last project, but it’s not better or worse. I like them both very much. I’m looking forward to your next project!
X
Kim
MasterZap
#32
Onone hand, nice and funny, but has some clear issues.
Mostly the compositing work needs a lot of help… blacklevels aren’t even nearly matched.
Also (although minor and understandable) she doesn’t actually look at the Stich… eyeline…
But hey, at THAT SPEED? Very cool job, guys!
/Z
Dutchman
#33
Thanks for the new reactions!
@ [b]Jigu[/b]: About the shadow: yes indeed, there's no shadow on the ground... In fact we didn't render a shadow pass for the objects next to 'stitch' (bad me), so all shadow you see on the walls and so, are just masks with a high feather! :twisted:
The fact that those ‘leaves’ (in fact those are meant as feathers; from the same elements shoot as the feathers on the roaster - first shot) disappear: you’re absolutely right at that point! I should have put more time in that, but there wasn’t… Not many viewers over here did notice that, so it does show of that you watched the movie very carefully (and ofcource with a more CG-eye than most ‘normal people’).
About the bumpmapping: yep, I agree that I should had put more time in that, but it all was a bit rushed… In fact there is some bump, especially on the face and the belly, but I should have bumped a bit more…
I won’t take it personally 
, I’m more happy to see that you gave very nice and good critique to our movie! Thanks for the time you took to do that, Jigu!
@ [b]Mrskickass[/b]: I'm really happy to hear (again! :) ) that you like the final result! I agree you woulnd't better compare it to the ColdCase, but see it as a independent project! :) I'm really happy that we could have the 'big premiere' with you, and that you was so happy about it! It was a really cool and cosy evening, asside from the Mac-wink! :argh:
I hope that our next movie will be at least as impressive and that you’ll always be a fan of us! I’m you fan (too), ‘my lady’! 
@ Master Zap : First of all I feel very honored to get a reply from ‘the big famous Zap with the cool and insightfull website’! You really got a really cool website! About your comments:
Cool to read that you ‘like it at one hand’! I can agree about the compositing, unless I’ve put quite much time in that part of the project. It might be that it was a bit late when compositing the shots, and that I couldn’t look objective on it anymore (as I knew every frame of it ). You comment about the blacklevels is a good one; on my next compositing job I’ll take more care about that! About that she doesn’t really look at Stitch is a good one. After finishing the renders, I sometimes saw that I should had placed Stitch somewhere else. Also I had no experience with character intergration before, so if I had more experience, I had prepared it better on set.
Well… The whole process was quite ‘speedy’ indeed, so I’m glad that you like it unless the (really nice & good!) comments!
Edit for Zap: I just (re-) discovered that you’re a shader writer at Mental Images! The best reason that my shading is ‘bad’ will be that your (fast-SSS) shader was not yet implantated into Max5. Congratulations about your job! Its cool to have a chat with somebody who did such remarkably big things to the industry!
More people who’d like to say something about it?
-Gijs