Finally! The Scythe of Time!

[WebWolf]

Hello everyone,
finally my webspace is unlocked, so I uploaded my website today.
There you will find my newest work (actually I finished it in April, but hadn't webspace at this time):

... Taddaaaaa ...

The Scythe of Time
(Adaption of the short story by Edgar Allen Poe)

I worked on this short over half a year, from Fall 2005 to April 2005.
This is an one-man project, everything is done by my self (except the music and the idea of the story):
Story adaption, modeling, animation, lighting, cutting...

The Story:
A bad, unfriendly and evil fat man walks through a city with his poor slave. The fat man wants to take a view of the city from above and climbs up all the way up to the highest point of the belltower of the cathedral.
Wait. He doesn't do that himself, he LET do that: The poor slave has to carry him up the endles stairs...
Finally reaching the room upstairs, he jumps off the falling slave, runs to the window and is about to relish the beautiful view of the wide landscape
...
...
But he doesn't now that he will meet his fate REALLY soon!

I won't tell you more :D

All the 3D work is done in Softimage XSI.


Here is the link to my website (note, there is also a Making-Of available!):

www.Animation3.De (http://www.animation3.de/index.html)

Just click on the sign and you will be brought to the download-section. The other sections are partly under construction, but don't miss having a look on the 2D section :dance: :)

Please don't link directly to the movies to spare my traffic.

Here are some still images showing a bit of the animation.

WebWolf

[WebWolf]

And here the last image:

[Freespace-3DT]

Sweet character animation, very nice mood created in the entire film, even your texturing ( which is quite simply rather ) is very well blended with the whole ideea and motive of the short. I haven't much to comment on character animation except that the way certain joints bend looks unhealhy ( the slave's arms for example ) ... I especially enjoyed the "Making Of" ... Dude, your black cat is sooo funny the way it looks at you when you simulate motion for the fat guy stuck in the window. :D

[WebWolf]

Freespace, thank you for your comment! Yes, my black cat thought I was crazy or something. You can see him here and there in the making-of :-)

By the way - the biggest problems on my characters you mostly didn't see: the shoulder-parts! It's almost impossible to solve that bend-problem on shoulders without scripting and only with weighting. So I tried to set the cameras that way you didn't see the ugly bent shoulders on some scenes...

[subcrocodile]

is there any phylospohy in this movie?is it trying to tell the punishment of slaver bad rich guy?

[WebWolf]

Good question!
The fundamental idea is that:
The powerful, rich and cruel man is actually a nobody without the help of his poor slave.
He is too fat to walk up many stairs, he is too small to reach a window and so on.
And finally he brings himself into a situation where even the slave can't help. It's a predicament.
So the slave will finally get retaliation and his problem will be solved which he could never have solved for him self (at this times).
It's kind of vis major if you like.

[Freespace-3DT]

Why couldn't the slave just kick the fat man's butt? I mean why get pushed around? ... When they're alone somewhere, the slave can just charge on the fat guy and run away!

[WebWolf]

At these times (the 1700s and 1800s) you didn't simply kick your master's butt! The threatment was purly disposal! A Master could easily dip you in pitch and use you als living torch! (or something).
The master is for the slave the almighty power.
The poor slave is totally frightened and doesn't move a finger without the master's admission! So he doesn't even gets the idea of rebelling against the master. He is frozen with fear and actually doesn't know what's going on abouve him when he knees under the window. He just hears the master scream and realizes - when he tries to help him - that the master gets strangled and moves down again.

At these times you wouldn't come far if you killed your master. A slave's life wasnt worth a penny.
So this solution I showed in my short is about the only way of free the slave (and even this isn't so sure, the slave can't prove he couldn't have helped his master).

Excuse my bad English, it isn't my native speaking. :-)

[Freespace-3DT]

Nice philosophy, WebWolf... And your English is fine. :) I just thought he could kill his master and then run off into the woods and become Nature-Man, feeding on tree bark and helping bears get thorns out of their feet. Ta-daaa... *que the nature man hero themsong* :) Ok, just a joke. I realise those were hard times for slave, good thing we're in a democratic age now.

[WebWolf]

Hey, how did you know that? It's exactly what the now not-anymore-slave did! With the difference that he didn't kill his ex-master! THATS what real heroes do! Never kill anybody and win all the same :-)

Just wait for the sequel of this short!

*just kidding*, next time I will try something totally different and make it way better than this one. You grow with every project. And the next one will be better.
... you should have seen my first short :-(

[Freespace-3DT]

Well where is it? Did you lose it? I naturally lost my first year of animations when my former harddrive got fried.

[WebWolf]

no, it isn't lost, and I frequently copy all my data to an extern hard drive. Just loading an older animation up to my webspace. Wait 10 minutes and I will post a link here.
Actually I found two shorts on my hard drive a moment ago :-) Didn't know I made the second :-))) It's been a year ago...

[Freespace-3DT]

Yay! :)

[WebWolf]

OK, here it goes: http://www.animation3.de/3d_2.html

Currently the second short is uploading and will be available in about 11 minutes, but the just-found animation test with the same character is downloadable :-)

Tell me what you think of it

[Freespace-3DT]

I'm taking this one and am going to bed, cause I've got a math final tomorrow. But I will check it out when I come back from the test... ;P Cheers

[Freespace-3DT]

Okay, I saw them both. Very very nice animation, and the final one really was funny... Though I didn't get why the beautiful one stood there to imitate the ugly girl. Can you please explain your ideea?

[WebWolf]

well that's exactly why this animation isn't that good. Technically well, maybe no bad animation but that's not all that counts for an animated short.
The story must be good and understandable too.
When I animated this short "Puttenaschel" I changed my mind several times about the story and every time tried to recycle as much as possible of the previous animation. So what came out last is one big compromise and a piece of work where too many people made suggestions :-)

Basically the story is a mix of "Cinderella" and "Snow-White".
The ugly girl is invited to a ball where the prince is looking for the most beatiful girl in his kingdom (that's what is written on the invitation card on the beginning of the film; I didn't subtitled it, sorry).
She prepares for the ball and really likes her reflection in the mirror (I think, you call it in English "bigheaded").
The mirror is a magic mirror and reflects what you want to see, so it shows the ugly girl a beautiful reflection.
When the girl leaves the magic reflection of her is very relieved that it hasn't to act anymore and tears the invitation card in a thousand pieces.

You see, it's too much and too complicated story to be shown in such a short animation. Nobody understood that and I had to explain it to everyone :-)
It's because the story was totally clear in my head and I didn't recognize that I had to show more of it to be understandable...

So I like the first test animation with the flirting girl on the bar much more than the final "Puttenaschel".

[Freespace-3DT]

Oh, I see... :) Well, still... It's very well animated! I've got a little trouble transmitting my ideeas aswell, look at Nemesis and tell me if you get it. :) No really, please!

[WebWolf]

Ok, Nemesis is downloading right now...
Can't tell you if I can watch it because I'm not sure if DivX is installed here (at the office...). But otherwise I will watch it this evening at home.

[Freespace-3DT]

Dude, where's the pug dog? It's not in the movie, though it would have been cool!

[WebWolf]

yeah, the pug dog was planned to be a second evil part of the movie... But deadline came closer and I decided not to animate him. A quadruped is a bit more complicated to animate than just a biped.
But maybe I will use the pug in another animation. No idea yet.

[Freespace-3DT]

Awkay, I get your point. Four legs is harder than two. :) Well, put him on a hovertank and he won't have to walk. :haha:
Did you see Nemesis yet?

[WebWolf]

No, sorry, didn't turn on my computer yesterday because I came back from work late. Will do it today :-)

[WebWolf]

Ok, Freespace, I've watched your Nemesis.
Very nice models, perfect mood and lighting in all scenes, great textures!

But - sorry about that - I didn't quite understand the story.
Where did the robot(s) come from?
There was this red planet, where the robot started. But was he on the side of them who wanted to destroy the round monstrous cannon that looked a bit like the thing of Star Wars?
And what happened at the end?
Did the robots fight ON the round cannon or in one of the attack ships?

There was no real climax I think and, for me, in the end wasn't a solution or something.

Maybe I will understand better if you tell me a bit more about the story.

I don't want to offend you, please don't think that.
It's just that the most important thing in a movie (what any kind it is) is the story (I had to learn (and still learning) that too in a very hard way...)

WebWolf

[Freespace-3DT]

Hey there. Well, explaining myself, as you know aswell, is hard to do in the movie. So here's the deal.

The Nemesis is a Destroyer of Worlds, flying through space and ... well... destroying worlds. Its next target is Jenovya, but the Jenovyans ( robotic race ) detect it and try to attack it. The first attempts ( see before the Nemesis logo ) fail horribly, so the lord Modeus calls for his general to lead the starfleet into the battle against the Nemesis before it reaches the planet. The general teleports into a command ship already in space and leads the fleet into battle. The end is that the general dies, because his ship is struck by the Nemesis' primary weapon. What happens after that is speculation, cause the cameraman and movie director were also on that ship and they died too. :) :D Ok, joking. The thing is I had to end it because I was on a tight deadline and naturally ran out of time. So that's it. And don't worry, I don't get offended by rationally placed crits... :)

[WebWolf]

Ok, I'm relieved to hear that :-)

The idea that the director and camera man die and the film footage is some how transmitted to the planet and shown in the internet is not that bad! But that would have to be shown clearly.

Now that you told me the story, the animation is pretty clear. As you noticed very right, I had that problem too, particularly in my first short, "Puttenaschel". I think, in "The Scythe of Time" I did a better job :-)

What kind of deadline was that you had to keep for "Nemesis"?

I'm looking forward to your next animation! Maybe with a bit mor character animation? :-)

[Freespace-3DT]

Well, you did a good job in "The Scythe of Time"... Progress is SOOO visible. I hope to achieve that same thing with my next animation. Because an artist's progress is all in his animations I think.

The deadline was because I made Nemesis specifically to join a local multimedia contest with it. I started Nemesis after the first of February ( my birthday ;P ), and the contest was on the 18th of March. So I found myself on the 10th of March, with school tests and crap like that ( and the Cambridge exam which I was taking in that exact period ) and the movie was going nowhere the way I wanted it to. So I had to cut on a lot of stuff to finish it up. And sadly, it shows. But with Destiny:Void I've got until November ( the next contest ) so time is not an obstacle. I've just finished with my highschool final exams ( actually there's one last tomorrow in English, but that's not an issue for me so I'm surfing the web instead of learning, or sleeping :) ) and now I can divide my free time into SOCIAL LIFE/PLAYING GAMES/WORKING IN 3DSMAX. That's it.
Oh, and yes, there's going to be some more character animation. Not as good as yours because I can't really make them walk without using the footstep option from Biped, and I'm zero with face-rigging. That's why I'm sticking with flying robots and masked soldiers. But it's gonna be cool, I'll tell you that.

[WebWolf]

hey, don't you say you've got no obstacle when the deadline is in November! You wil see, it's just no time till then! Do plan ahead, time will fly! [/I]I[I] thought I would have plenty of time for my animation when I started Fall 2004, but you don't believe how fast the deadline in April 2005 came! The deadline was for the application for the Filmakademie Baden-Wuerttemberg, propably the best film school in Germany. First you have to send in a movie, then they pick out of about 1000 candidats the 25 best to invite them to the actual test. Luckily I was invited and next Thursday will start the biiig exam which goes for 3-4 days. you will get a topic and have to do an animation about it, or write a script or draw a story board.
I propably will try to animate.
Wish me luck :-)

One more thing: Don't say you can't do face-rigging or character animation (I don't know what this footstep option is in 3D Max)!
It's not that hard! The best way is (which you can see in my making-of) to film yourself doing the action you need and then load that movie or pic sequence into your working window in 3D max (I'm sure that is possible) and just animate what you see in the background movie! It's the very fastest way to animate because you don't have to find out the timing of your animation.

Only because of that trick I managed to animate two characters in that amount of time!

[Freespace-3DT]

First of all let me tell you I've seen quite some work done at the Film Akademie in Germany and it's wonderful. Best of luck WebWolf! You can't miss! Just think you can do it and you WILL. Remember you already won because you're in the top25 of 1000 candidates, which is already saying a lot.

I know how to aniamted characters, just not that advanced as you. I'll catch up. ;P That's a good trick you've done there, I do it only more primitive. Actually I step in front of the mirror and do the moves, then I run to my room and do the animation in Character Studio. :)

Well, these days I'm focusing on modelling some scenes and then I'll do some more character animation. No facial animations in this project, I'm sorry.

[WebWolf]

I also wrote you in your Destiny:Void thread about animating thousands of characters without animating thousands of characters :-)
Did your ead that?

[Freespace-3DT]

:) sure... I've got eyes everywhere.