[Short Film] - Project I.C.E [Celshaded Science Fiction Project]

I’m afraid im not kidding
This is just a small portion of my work and the other team members worked realy hard on all sorts of concepts, models and music aswell.

So, if he has really quit the project and you guys still want to continue with the project, why not just continue with the project? In what way is he vital and why can’t he be replaced?

It’s his story/script and as far as I know he hasn’t shown anyone in our group the whole thing, except maybe madkarma.

Well, since the people who developed the work own the work, all we need is a new story… and there just happens to be a new Screenwriting forum on CGTalk…

Maybe pitch it to someone there? It seems a shame that a lot of the work doesn’t get used… if nothing else, a short should be relatively easy to do.

Maybe make a short film script into a CGTalk Challenge?

AJE

I’m in the process of trying to vitalise this project.
And yes all the help is still welcome.

      First off all let's not get to premature here, "[b]My project[/b]" never died nor is it dead. The attempt at doing an internet collaboration failed due to lack of participation, that's the bottom line. Although our team was big enough it lacked fundamental participation in some key areas that attributed to non growth.

Putting together a project like this required alot of pre ground work and basically 100% dedication on my part, if anyone that was apart of this project feels that I’m not being truthful then feel free to correct me…

      [b][color=White]1. I made sure that any information needed was made available.
      2. I made sure that there was a constant flux of content being generated for people to work on within their "claimed" skill sets. Everyone had more than enough to work on
      3. I was available always either on mIRC or Skype or email.
      4. The dedication and hours I put into the initial foundation cant even begin to be measured. And I did it because I wanted to do it.
      5. Even the people who lied to me saying that they had "X" skill and it proved that it looked like they just opened "X" 3D application for the first time, I still let it slide.
      [/b][/color]
      So lets clear up something, after about a good plus month or so realizing that people were just not going to create "[b]anything[/b]" 3D wise and those who did lied about their skills which forced us to keep on looking for legit "CG" artist AGAIN. Not to mention trying to organize team meetings to keep the project on track failed miserably because no one was really as serious as I or Madkarma so for me it just became pointless. Now you see why I never released my completed script.... 
      
      [i][b]Special Note:[/b] The concept artist that I did have kept me and the "community" part of the project going. Without them It wouldnt have lasted as long as it did, so if you can get "[b]B00bie[/b]" or "[b]KillerNapkin[/b]" or "[b]MisleadtoMisery[/b]" then you just picked up one helluva of a team mate. But this wasnt a 2D project and in the end, those guys time were being wasted as well. Madkarma was also a God-Send, the late nights I spent working things out with him wont be forgotten.[/i]

I will say this much though because I dont want to use a broad brush and paint a picture of the entire team not living up to what they claimed in either their emails or private messages. There were a few that stuck it out for me till the so called end:

      [b]1. B00bie
      2. KillerNapkin
      3. MisleadtoMisery 
      4. Madkarma [/b]
      [b]5. Darkskills
      [/b]

In the end I realized that it was a nice try and trying to do the community thing just didnt work out , I mean as the team grew the projects ambitions and goals grew as well. It grew to a point that we actually needed “A lot” of people. That in itself as I look back was a mistake, the project started off small enough for a small team. But feature creept got the best of myself and Madkarma. It was one thing to be lacking in talent in certain area’s but what really hurt the attempt the most was again lack of “Dedication”.

One could look and say that “I” should have remained dedicated but in the time it would take to find some “real” help for the type of project that we had behind close doors, I was better off alone with the original intent that was managable for “one person”. Maybe if I were a college student, living at home with mom or filthy rich, then I could have waited a year or so but I dont have that kind of time to risk on people that are not motivated nor obligated to stick it out with me. Some will understand this and some wont…thats just how it is.

But dont for a minute go thinking that I just abandonded the project, now to me thats funny considering that I could have found something else better to do all those weeks that I spent prior and during the project setting everything up. I defintely could have spent more time with my wife and kids then getting up at odd hours of the night to talk with people half way across the world just to make sure they stayed updated.

So abandoned, naw but the community thing oh that will never happen for me again.Truthfully, its alot easier working on a project by yourself then trying to get internet strangers on the same page as you especially when they dont have the same drive and vision as you do. Everyone talks a good game but it doesnt last and really, its ok.

The truth about the whole project is in the private ICE forums, within those HTML walls are the written truths about what I have spoke of here. See, I could make that public so that everyone can see how many freakin times I had to plead with people to just do something and pleading with folks to at least show up to a scheduled meeting. Then it dawned on me that this sh!t was crazy and defintely not worthy my valuable time. Because the fact of the matter is, people on collaborative projects dont owe you jack sh!t, thats real and for the most part…that’s what I got.

In the end Im not bitter nor am I mad, it was an experience that I expected and I dont regret it…why? Because I know that for me I put all that I had into it and it ended up what it was…and experience.

      Cheers and good luck to the rest of you.
      
      
      Kid Mesh

So it is dead…
I would have appreciated getting an email or call upfront instead of reading that here.

It’s always a sad thing when these colabs go belly up. Coming from the Gamedev/Mod world I’ve seen too many ‘deaths’ in my time and I’m starting to get a bit jaded, but honestly, everything KidMesh stated is essentially what happened. Personally I think alot of interest wained when the decision was made in the Project I.C.E. forums to go realistic cg verses celshade. I know that sort of put me ‘on-the-bench’ so to speak and I sat and observed the project from the sideline. Here’s what I noted,

1. It seemed to me that the vision/ambitiousness of the project was getting a bit out of hand considering the skillset of the team and what was actually being produced. Honestly, what was being produced outside of various concept artwork and nice head WIPs, was next to nothing.

2. It almost seemed as if KidMesh had to beg, plead, and coerce various team members to post anything at all, let alone something that could actually be used in the project. If I were running this project, that factor alone would have frustrated me to no-end. I understand people have other commitments and no one was getting paid, but come on, make something.

From where I sit, there is really no reason for bitterness or ill will. KidMesh, MadKarma or the others KidMesh pointed out made a valiant effort. Unfortunately, as any vet in the game will tell you, that is the nature of the beast. Oh well, back to my own projects;)

Darkskills

In all fairness.
Im sure you are a nice guy and your heart is in the right place.
But you speak blagha blahh and every thing you said ticked me off.

The Skillset of the team… where do come off discussing the skills of the team?
Boobie… rocked insane
Killernapkins… art to stun
misledtomisery… art to stun
Rogue… beginner with aditude
J-Rod… beginner with aditude
JVI… tight modeling dude
FoopCGI… tight modeling dude
LampChair… tight modeling dude
Gremlin… tight modeling dude
Boywonder… animator fabulosso

You are one of the “produced next to nothing” as you putt it mister on the bench.
Your skill set is the only that could be up for discussion.
An appology to these killer artists would be in place here.

The cellshading was never dropped for realistic.
We just thought we should experiment with shading techniques but always keep it manga.
At no time a choice was made to drop cellshading and certainly not for realistic.

Plenty was produced that you didnt see like robots and space ships.
Perhaps you didnt see becouse you dropped by 3x.

Yes, there where people that modeled like a beginner but they did model.
It’s a fun project with people who join for fun.

i wasn’t bitter or angry … i was disappointed kidmesh quit becouse i was having fun…
and then you wrote all this nonsense and then i did get angry yes… at you

Guys this doesn’t have to become a pissing contest of who did what.

Essentially, people should be treating this like a job (it’s good practice), and as with any job, some people just aren’t good enough to do the work to the required level.

I know that I checked the ICE website a few times, and I didn’t see much concept art to get me stoked enough to put my other stuff on hold.

Collab projects work, but it must be done quickly (like over the space of 3 months or less) with a core group of specialized people and have lots of kickass concept art to keep the momentum up.

I don’t think this project is a write off by any means, and I definitely understand Kid Mesh’s frustration… I still think it’s a viable story. I’m still interested in working on it, but when I didn’t get a response to my earlier post (about doing some artwork), I didn’t push it because I figured you had it all covered.

Kid Mesh, if you’re still interested in doing something about all this, PM me.

Amen to madkarma and also AJE. Everyone needs to just go outside and kick something, (perhaps your neighbor’s cat, or even your neighbor), and then come back in, take a chill pill and sort this crap out. Lay some defined ground rules for participation, sort out the communication problems, and let’s get back to work.

Whoa, hey, I simply stated my observation of what was going on with the project. Don’t shoot the messenger because I speak the truth (Nothing I stated contradicted what Kid Mesh, the Project Lead said in his post.) but just so there’s no confusion and no question about where I’m coming from, my main involvement with the project was to develop the celshaded look and as a celshader, I’ll address the following statement by MadKarma and then forever hold my peace:

The cellshading was never dropped for realistic. We just thought we should experiment with shading techniques but always keep it manga. At no time a choice was made to drop cellshading and certainly not for realistic.

I’ll simply refer to the Project ICE meeting minutes posted on the Official Project I.C.E. website by Kid Mesh in the ‘Project-I.C.E.’ forum under ‘Production and Development’ in the thread entitled ‘Important Team Meeting Updated’ on Sunday, January 9th at 4:47pm. A meeting whose attendees included

In Attendance
KidMesh
CyberHanz
J-Rod
Madkarma
Shari
b00bie

and I quote:

…Things have changed and we are now looking a something close to a film feature…With the talent level that wa have thus far in certain areas, we have decided that a celshaded project would not due the 3D models justice at all. We are going forward with a fullyl textured photoreal look…For now, the project is listed as a celshaded project publically and thats fine. When we actually start to post renders…the world will know something else has happend.

Even after that post, I still continued to submit samples of the progress made on the nodes and animations I was working on, examples of which even made it to the front page of the Project I.C.E. website. However, I think it is plain to see why I considered myself to be ‘on-the-bench’ at that point.
To Kid Mesh and the rest of the I.C.E. Team members, Please excuse me for putting portions of private team minutes out in the public arena, but I felt it appropriate and neccessary in this instance to help alleviate any doubt cast on my observations or my character. Thanks.

From what I’ve seen (which is limited to this thread and the limited website thus far), I don’t think there has been irreperable damage done here. I don’t think anyone is pointing fingers, and people are allowed (as they should be) to vent a bit. Personal attacks aren’t worth mentioning since nobody really has the right to whine about submitting work that they did for free, with no guarantees on anything.

This is an experiment. And having a relatively good idea, it could be an experiment that is well recieved. Whether the team members feel it or not, what’s missing in all of this seems to be the communication factor, which can be attributed to many things. It is an easy thing to overcome.

The next problem, as I stated before, is the level of some of the work not being where it needs to be to keep people committed to the project. I would suggest running this as a real production, with a head production designer, producer, and director having the final word on what makes it, and what doesn’t. If you are a contributor, and your work doesn’t make it into the final line-up, don’t feel bad because there may be elements of you design worked into something else that IS used. Think about the team working on Star Wars… there are warehouses of stuff that didn’t get used.

The third thing is the percieved change to a more realistic style. I would tender that it’s a bit ambitious for this project, and you run the risk of being the next in a growing chain of painful attempts (FF:TSW, Polar Ex). People will be distracted by that, and the story will be lost. I think a better approach would be more like Wonderful Days… it looked beautiful.
(Also, celshading the characters means texturing them is MUCH easier, and for a project with volunteers and high hopes, I would stick to your original plan.)

If some of you don’t think this is worth working on, by all means step aside. KidMesh, I don’t know where you’re at with all of this, check your PM’s and fire one back to me.

Ahhh, well. I guess i understand KidMeshes story. On Aegis we also have people coming and leaving and deadlines that go nowhere. But we just do it for the fun and try to learn something from the experience. Also, everyone on our time i think really likes to work with eachother, its for recreation, not work…

About setting your goals to high, this probably happens on about every CG project out there. The key is to just downscale it when you notice this is not going to happen within the current team. Thats what we have had a couple of times, but what we did was just keep creating content to work with and in the end sort out what we can do with the content we have.

Anyway, Kidmesh. If, as you say, you have a core of about 6 people that really works, then build your production around it. As we have it on Aegis:

Production Team Contributors Interested People

Some people just have a different amount of time they can spend on projects, but still do some work on the project and want to be a part of it. You can have it both ways. Just have a core production team who can spend over 20 hours a month on the project, and contributors who spend some time on the project. Concentrate the production around the production team and use the contributors to get some extra punch in there…

As for the quality of work…This one is pretty easy actually. Any new starting guy can be at a kick ass level in a couple of months with some guidance. Its one of those things a collab project gives back to the group. For you it might be more important to finish the project, but for some people it is not so much important to see a finished CG movie, but seeing their skillset go up in production. Knowing they come out of the project better at what they were doing before. For this you need to team up people, share work. Put multiple people on the same scene, and let them learn from eachother, when the group is working and communicating things should be ok. And don’t spend hours talking on IRC or something with the entire group, this will probably lead to a chatclub instead of a workgroup. OR only invite production members, who actually produce.

Anyway, i do think you guys have a good core group, and like Aegis, you have hit a hard bump. If this bump is enough to cancel the entire collab is up to you. But a good core team is something you should not waste to fast. If you really have a group of people who don’t produce anything, then don’t make them part of the production team, just put them on the visitor list…And if there is just no skillset with your production team, and you think the vision you guys had is really not going to happen, well, then that would be a reason to quit, or start working really hard to learn the right skills.

Anyway, good luck with the project, no matter in what incarnation it continues.

well i dont know whats going on here
btw

i am new to this fourm and would like to join in the project if you still have place availbale

personally i love to model so modeling any thing would be good for me but here is the format you asked for and could you please pm or give me your email add to get some more details

here is the details you asked for

Position interested in: Mechanical Modeler, Character/Creature Modeler

Applications you use: Maya 6.5 on Mac OSX

Why do you want to join this project? well i saw few concepts and i like the idea of the story plus never tired cell shading so hope fully i will learn a bit on the go and improve my skill set more

How much time can you devvote per week: i could give about 16-20 hours at the moment

What’s your time zone/location? Currently I am student in UK and living near london but duing summer i am going back to India i.e from June

OK KidMesh and Madkarma…I have high props to you for being ambitous and taking a project that is of an amazing calliber. I was modelling for the team, and received some good pointers from Madkarma…BUT, this project was a little too ambitous in my opinion? I mean, what do you expect - something from Pixar? AND, CGI takes a LONG time as everyone knows, and this project only lasted a few months I suppose if that long from what it seemed to me… This project could have happened, but without any deadlines (I never had any at all or saw or heard any) nothing was going to go anywhere, and well it really didnt seeing as how the project collapsed. Now KidMesh, with all respect - insulting other artists “skill level” is the same has you having no skill level at all. Yes, CGI is an ART, insulting someone’s modelling technique or of the like is completely unprofessional. To quote you KidMesh, "Even the people who lied to me saying that they had “X” skill and it proved that it looked like they just opened “X” 3D application for the first time, I still let it slide."
-You know, more power to the people who did that! I commend them for trying to learn a program and perhaps get some help from some talented artists; accusing them of lying is just immature in my honest opinion. This was also a, let me emphasize this - NON PAYING project. YOU asked for help from everyone else, sorry it didnt go your way that quickly. And YES, it is YOUR project, if you want it to succeed, you will do more work probably 10 fold everyone else on the team, thats what a “leader” does. To quote KidMesh one last time,
-“Then it dawned on me that this sh!t was crazy and defintely not worthy my valuable time.” Well, if its not worth your time, then its defintalely not going to be worth my time or anyone elses… There is no hard feelings meant in this, just stating my comments on KidMeshes letter that sounds very unproffesional in my opinion…Thanks

At any rate, all is not lost. If this project is truely finished (as it seems to be since KidMesh has not responded to me at all), then those of you get to count it as a growth experience.

Everytime you push a mouse, you learn something new or get faster.

Darkskills, I gotta say, i really like the celshaded stuff (if that was you). It turned out great looking.

sad…

yea…

bye

And b00bie, I still got L.E. on my MP3… it keeps me amped at work. Have you got a version without the I.C.E. sound FX that I can crank?

crank? whats that? sry my poor english x) but… thx glad u like it … yea i´ll remix it and soon it will be on my personal homepage … then i send u the info on pm