High Hopes - animation short

[Mister Black]

Hello,

I think this could be my first "legitimate" presence here.
This short is quite personal in its own way, considering that its mainly about me and my girlfriend (http://www.photographymob.org/forums/member.php?u=89180), our common aims, hopes, loved places etc.
The building in the short, is a replica of the real life building in our home town, a place we're attached to a lot.
As personal as it may be, please feel free to comment about it.
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[stephen]

i like it! pacing and music go perfect. nice work

[Mike Frank]

Nice man, I like the concept of this a lot.

[yoitisi]

Awesome short movie :) When I heard the opening notes of Pink Floyd I was sold already, but the pacing and visuals fit really well with that song.

The stylized approach works good, especially in the beginning with the slow shots between the buildings etc, but at the moment the house falls apart I think the 3d model becomes a bit too visible (for example, the paintings breaking loose really seem like a cheap 2d trick of transforming the shape :P) For some things it works really well, the bridges braking loose etc, but there's a couple of shots in there that might need a little touchups to remove the feeling of a bare 3d model.

Also, the end where the viewer is pulled through the door and over a dark sea stands in contrast to the calm morning glow of the earlier part. While it works to convey a different part of the story, I felt the transition was a bit sharp. Since pull the viewer in and over the waves, it might be worth trying to have the sky go gradually darker.

Anyway, those are just the things that came to mind when watching this. I love it already :)

[Mister Black]

@yoitisi

Thanks for the feedback. Initially, I was planning to work the whole animation in more detail, e.g. having a few wall loose chunks, bits and bricks, more debris and dust.
However, there were two key things that stopped me from adding the said eyecandy.
First, I worked alone on the whole pic, and work + rendering and compositing took me about 5 months, working mainly in my spare time. On top on that, there was a lot of emotional load behind the job and on top of me if you know what I mean and at some point I started to lose it a bit, meaning that I was dreaming the cuts during the night, and trying to figure out effects and render times during the day.
Second, the computing power I needed for added realism was simply out of my reach. Even by using a small render farm I had at work, I ended up with huge render times.
These two reasons, coupled with a "I have to get it done soon or I'll lose my mind" feeling, determined me to cut some corners in some points that I considered will not affect the overall mood and message of the flic.
I decided it will stay this way as it reflects exactly the state and situations.
I don't want to find excuses, I find your observations very to the point (and took note of them) (especially the one about the transition from one zone to the other at the end), I just wanted to explain the reasons of my cutting some corners.

Thanks again

[yoitisi]

Pretty solid excuses I'd say :) Working for so long on a single project is hard. I think you made the right decisions there, time is often a big restraint (which is good :P).

Again, I love it.

[egerie]

Love it too.

[mehran]

Awesome inspirational stuff.. and yet so simple.
!!Love it!!
It is always beautiful to see someone invest a part of there lives into a piece and have it come out in such a nice way.
As far as going back into the shot goes I think you can do that without too much of a head ache in terms of scene redos and re-rendering of old shots.
you can use render passes and add some dust particle around the building
as it breaks up. you don;t need to render out the buildings again you just need matte them out in your dust renders, that way you will have your particles in a separate layer which you can tweak in the compositor package of your choice. similarly you can also add debris and fractured parts on a separate layer too.
that being said it's entirely your call..
It looks good as it is .
the pacing is good in almost all the parts ..
the transition in the end to the shot of the sea IS too sharp like yoitisi pointed out.
but it 's a job well done..

[Mister Black]

Hi mehran, thanks for your feedback and sorry for my delayed answer.
"It is always beautiful to see someone invest a part of there lives into a piece and have it come out in such a nice way."

As far as I am concerned, without any trace of "poetic license" investing part of our lives in whatever we do / create is essential should we wish for that piece to have both an elegant form and a meaningful content.

I did make use of some compositing. The shots were rendered with an alpha channel and a depth channel for later use in After Effects simulated DOF. The sky was added in After Effects as well. I've also performed some minor color grading on top of each composited shot.
The end shot water is added in After Effects, and the background plate is part of a photograph of mine, that my girlfriend likes a lot. I'll attach it here for reference.

As for the 3D, it was all done in 3dsmax and rendered with V-ray.
Textures are a combination of location photography and Photoshop brushes.

While I may revisit this short at a later time (I have all the project files archived), for now I feel that it's too early for that. I may however adjut the transition you and yoitsi pointed out.

Thanks again

[DonAikido]

great work, kinda like a pink flyod thing, what programs did you use

[xisco cabrer]

i loved it, really poetic and great rhythm

[Mister Black]

what programs did you use

Thanks for the feedback guys. Like I said earlier i used 3DS MAX for all the 3D work, modeling and animation. Part of the animation was done manually, and part using Reactor and particle systems, especially during the first disassembling sequence, when the walls start to come apart. Technically, I had a Reactor system with an inverted gravity, which helped me do the flying parts. The animation of the forming of the spiral ladder was don almost entirely by hand.
I used Vray and Vray materials and Sun for shading and rendering.
Compositing was later done in after effects.

[Lotet]

yey, pink floyd, how can anything with it not be good?
i liked the animation too, esp when everyhing broke apart.

[grenogs]

wow. realy nice and so inspiring,

[mindlessroman]

very spooky. but awesome. i've only done 2d animation (and very little at that). the music fit really well. did you animate the water as well?

[JonathanS]

INCREDIBLE!

..and an A++++ for your choice of music :).

[Keng]

I nearly freaked when I couldn't find this thread again. I really love this animation. I hope you don't mind but I'm going to pass this on to my 3D teacher... who is then likely going to show it to other classes.