ROBERTO'S BULLHORN: The future of FXWARS: What would you guys like to see?

#21

I think the FXWars should be much more narrowly defined. Not just “do the ocean”.

More like “Here is the storyboard. Car comes in frame right, rams the mailbox, crashes through the hedge, hits the house. Closeup of roof tile falling down and hitting the hood”.

Define what is holy:
CAMERA ANGLE A and B a must
Define what is free:
COLOR OF CAR DONT MATTER, rooftile-fall can use “creative” camera.

And most important. ASSETS. As in “here is the car model, here is the house model, here is the hedge, feel free to fill out the neigbourhood any way you want”.

And before you panic about assets you could just simply point to page XYZ on TurboSquid or something for models.

That way:

  • EVERYBODY knows WHAT to do
  • There is stuff to do it WITH

Todays open-ended challenges are too unstructured and forces people to model from scrach every nut and bolt… If you are a rendering maestro but can’t model beyond the max teapot (that would be me :wink: ) how can you make a car crash? You can’t.

/Z

#22

I’m pretty satisfied with how they are run, now, too. Just didn’t have time to finish this one. The timeframe was good though.

NOT a big fan of recreating exact scenes or shots from movies.

I like the idea of creating movie-ish shots though, such as “big freeze” or “ocean”, it leaves plenty of room for variation.

Wouldn’t like an entirely open challenge either, where one participant can do sandstorm, and another can do spaceships. It has to be the same ballgame. :slight_smile:

Cheerio,

  • Jonas
#23

I like your idea, about given the storyboards, and some assets, sounds like a good idea.

#24

Hey Boricua,

One idea that I had is to have the good folks at the Daily sketch forum provide some finished storyboards.

One idea that I wanter to try is to do some retro sci fi challenges (by that I mean Flash Gordon). The people in the art forums would do the desings and storyboards, and you guys would do the 3d assets and animations.

What do you guys think?

-R

#25

That’s the best idea I’ve heard so far Roberto. The main thing I don’t want changed is the timeframe, I think it should be 1 month, 6 weeks at the most.

#26

I agree with the idea that everybody has only a few free time so I think that providing the plates is a great idea. Anyway I know that it is very difficult to get good plates. they are very expensive.

#27

Personally I like to see creativity pushed to the limit and I don’t think that recreating scenes does that. I would like to see something similar to the PhotoChop contest at 3DBUZZ. We could be supplied with a one or two selections of stock footage and then anyone can create any kind of effect out of it that they can imagine. I am always amazed with the PhotoChop contest how diverse the final products are.

I would be happy to shoot some footage and I know there are a few others around the forum with cameras too so I’m sure we could get some interesting footage. It would be really fun to see what people envision taking place in the scene and watching it come to life!

#28

One thing,

I never ever look at contest on other sites.

That way we can keep things original in the site.

:slight_smile:

Having said that,
we need all the free footage we can get.

-R

#29

I really like the idea of provided footage (especially the 4:4:4 footage idea :smiley: ) As was mentioned, a lot of people have access to cameras. Perhaps a call for theme footage (maybe even with provided story boards) can be made a week or whatever proir to a challange and a quick vote could pick the best footage for the challange. The more time that can be spent on the creativity of the effects and not on all the rest of a production, the better the results should be on everyones part. Another idea going along the lines of models and such, perhaps someone willing could be chosen early to create/find a few models that would be provided to the entants as desired. So if I want to model my own UFO, or just focus on something else and use the provided one, it would be up to me.

As for time frames, I don’t mind long time frames, but I prefer the shorter ones. I really like the idea of running either 2-3 sub challanges in the process of 1 overall war. Or, shorter, non-related challanges running concurrent with longer challanges. One of my problems is that sometimes I am not interested in a current challange, but by the time one comes along I want to participate in, I am too busy to do so. So more smaller ones could allow for more opportunities to participate as well as greater variation overall.

#30

hey I just found this thread, and I’m in, sounds fun! I saw the oceans one… The forums a little cluttered, with so many ideas. What and when the next?

I’m up for anything, I kind of don’t want to even sugest something because there are already a ton of good ideas.

#31

i`m not shure. I mean i like a lot the liberty to do what you like on a challenge. I love the retro sci-fi idea… should be the next challenge. i try to participate in the colaborative challenge but is hard to do work in an idea that is not yours… you can do that when you work . but the cool things about challenges is that you can learn a lot from sketching to rendering. just my 2 cents

#32

Another idea that i want to try is to push the idea of trying different methods to do fxs.

for example people could use toy models or creative use of photos.

-r

#33

I like to just look at this kind of stuff since I am learning it as I go and I like to see what people are doing. Having said that, I’m sure this idea will be shot down, but maybe have the winners give a little presentation on their winning pieces and how they were done. Nothing spectacular, unless that person wanted it to be, but just some simple instructions on how to recreate the scene.

shrug just my 2 cents. Someday I will enter these.

#34

Retro Sci-Fi is like my most favourite topic ever.

I used to have a band 100% dedicated to it.

Steampunk. Hoverblimps. Computers made of cast iron and brass gears. Mmmmm.

/Z

#35

I like the current timeframe (6 to 8 weeks) for challenges. I also love the idea of a movie/tv fx remake. Makes it easier for those of us with less imagination as well as gives us a good reference. Why not emulate those that are already in the biz!

Martin

#36

IMO, putting an obviously plagiarizing shot on a reel is not a good idea.

Cheers,

  • Jonas
#37

roberto that will be very cool !!! to use stop motion and that kind of stuff… i like it , looking forward to this one .

#38

jussing, i agree you on the reel part but it’s a great way to keep learning…plus, this might give me the opportunity to pull out an old movie.

Maybe we could even have the challenge around a subtle FX that people don’t really think about.

Martin

#39

Absolutely! Winners should give a walkthrough of how they achieved results. Obviously they don’t have to give away their secrets or exactly what they did, but it would be interesting to see the process.

#40

Ok one thing,

shhould we create "a pool " of life action foottage for each of the challenges?
If so, where do we get it?

-R