Elephants Dream Creator Talks to Wikinews 86
An anonymous reader writes "Three days after the Internet release of the free content 3D short Elephants Dream, Wikinews exchanged e-mails with Ton Roosendaal about the reaction to the film, open source filmmaking, and the changes to Blender that resulted from the production."
my opinion (Score:4, Informative)
Re:my opinion (Score:1)
Re:my opinion (Score:2)
And what thoughts did it produce? "Gosh this doesn't make any sense"?
Re:my opinion (Score:2)
Well, to be fair, it seemed nonsensical at first. However, now that I've watched it a few times, I'm finding all kinds of dimensions and plots from it. Then again, I'm perfectly capable of looking at at a cloud and coming up with a novel-length story of whatever it resembles in my eyes. Or a blade of grass, or a grain of sand.
I guess that means that the sense is in the eye of the beholder.
Re:my opinion (Score:2)
Re:my opinion (Score:1, Flamebait)
If the intent to evoke a particular thought or emotional response is there, but the work does not do so, then the creator has failed to create art.
If there is no such intent, then the creator is just screwing around and wasting everybody's time.
I can't tell whether this movie was a failure or just screwing around, but
Re:my opinion (Score:1, Interesting)
Everything have been already said to the stupid story. We could add things about the camera movment et al, but it is overshadowed by the failure that this story is.
We've seen this stuff in Imagina dozen oftimes. Teenagers trying to be deep and arty.
It is very unfortunate, as I, as many others, can't send show this movie to anybody I know, without feeling ashamed. Compare this to the first Pixar shorts. It is such a waste...
Ok, storytelling is hard. I can admit that. In that c
Re:my opinion (Score:2)
Re:my opinion (Score:1)
Re:my opinion (Score:2)
Re:my opinion (Score:1)
Does that mean it has no value? Surely not. Simply that I (me this carbon unit) didn't derive any
Creating Extra Buzz. (Score:3, Interesting)
rhY
Topic Ideas: Something about ancient architecture. A biography about the works of Leonardo Da Vinci. A Mortal Kombat game featuring Leonardo Da Caprio. I'd love to do that fatality.
Re:Creating Extra Buzz. (Score:2)
www.leperkhanz.com
I'm the one with the violin.
What... (Score:1, Funny)
Re:What... (Score:1, Funny)
Download it here (Score:5, Informative)
http://orange.blender.org/ [blender.org]
LetterRip
What he learnt was... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:What he learnt was... (Score:2, Informative)
Re:What he learnt was... (Score:2)
Re:What he learnt was... (Score:2)
Re:What he learnt was... (Score:3, Funny)
Isn't it funny that people use the word 'litteraly' when they actually mean the opposite?
I'll have to watch the anim now! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Movie (Score:2)
Re:Movie (Score:1)
I think the story is besides the point though. What's really impressed me is that the drove their software development through an actual project.
Re:Fix the spelling mistake (Score:3, Funny)
Yes, but its disabled because they can't afford the supercomputing cluster needed to cope with the work load.
omgponies (Score:1, Troll)
Lies.
A review: (Score:4, Interesting)
The audio wasn't fantastic - a little jingle of music, a few sound effects and Emo has a very strange accent (and, BTW, what is the Colossus of Row-Des, I thought it was Rhodes, as in "roads"... maybe that's just me being on the right side of the pond). There's little emotion or character in his voice, either.
The "plot" is just plain weird but we'll excuse that on the basis that there isn't supposed to be any plot (read into the plot what you like but it's not present so you can say that anything "represents" anything you like... I hereby declare that the plot could be about Emo the technophobe not wanting to use the clunky old tech that his father used, in the same way I use CD's where my dad used vinyl).
By making the plot weird and the animation clunky, they've actually achieved the opposite of what they wanted - they relied on DVD pre-orders and grants to get this off the ground and, now people have seen the result, they won't be getting many of those for their future projects. Plus, when people next say "we want to use Blender to make X", everyone's going to remember this.
I can't see this being something that people will share around to go "wow" at with their friends (unlike that short about the little robot who wakes up in a room on a spaceship (Blue?), anyone remember how much that cost to make?) so very few people are going to realise this even exists. If they do, they are going to be one of the people here just disappointed with what's been produced after they've spent a lot of money on a DVD pre-order.
The arty-farty types will adore this film if for no other reason than nobody else can understand it and it's been called art.
Re:A review: (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:A review: (Score:1)
Re:A review: (Score:1)
Decent graphics.
Weird albeit interesting plot.
Crappy sound effect (Horrible actors).
Crappy animation.
The sound effects have nothing to do with the tools used, that just shows that the crew isn't all that good at making cartoons.
The animation might be an outcome of the bad tools, but it may again just be the animators who don't have the proper skills.
In the end, this "feature" could be a lot more impressive, and failed in showing that OSS tools can be as good as the professi
Re:A review: (Score:3, Interesting)
This sums up my impressions as well. In the previous thread someone said that this should scare the crap out of Pixar and the like, but I still think that is wrong. They may have the tools to make a good film, but the pure level of talent and experience is lacking.
This would provide an excellent opportunity for those with talent to show it off and strive for a job in the field though. As nice as Free software/media is, you still need to pay the bills. And there is nothing stopping you from working on
Re:A review: (Score:2)
I seem to have missed this one. Any chance you could hunt down a link, if it is that cool? I don't know enough about it to find it on Google.
Re:A review: (Score:1)
I have nothing to say about the story, since there is none.
Once you get the glitter of open source eye candy (a
Re:A review: (Score:1)
Just because it was over your head doesn't mean it lacked plot. :) It was definately aimed at a more arts
Re:A review: (Score:2)
And you know what, it's rubbish. The first 7 minutes of the film DO NOT tie in with the theory you have linked too, not at all, most especially the dialogue just does n
Re:A review: (Score:1)
The movie might not have the best plot, the animation might have it's issues, but this whole project has brought the communities strength to new levels. We love Blender, but we especially love those behind its growth.
If this project h
Re:A review: (Score:2)
Agreed. With human characters, you have to work extra hard to make their motion human. The walking lacked weight, and the feet had a tendency to glide along the surfaces. The animators need to spend a lot more time working with
I interpret Roosendaal's comments differently (Score:3, Informative)
Out of curiosity, have you ever created anything wit
Re:I interpret Roosendaal's comments differently (Score:1)
To satisfy your curiosity: yes I've done some tutorials and tooled around with it to see how it was to work with. It has lots of really interesting features and is a really cool piece of open source software. But it's still a pain to use compared to Maya and Max. I can jump between those two pretty easily while Blender just annoys me how it does things. I definitely think Blen
Re:What a blowhard (Score:2)
Bad storytelling? What story. The premise is not a story, per se, more of a concept. There is a '
Re:What a blowhard (Score:1)
Exactly.
>>The premise is not a story, per se, more of a concept.
Let me guess. The concept is: "unwatchable mess that makes no sense". Brilliant.
>>As he says, if their prime intent was a story, then it's quite easy to make a funny film with cute animals in it.
Making something funny is not easy. It's really easy to make something incoherent and seemingly pretentious.
Look, the movie could have had the worst animation and been rendered in wireframe; goo
Re:What a blowhard (Score:2)
Translation: I didn't understand it, therefore it must be crap. Many people have understood it, including myself. It's not that difficult.
"Look, the movie could have had the worst animation and been rendered in wireframe; good writing, direction and editing would make up for that many times over." How wrong. You should view ED as, first and foremost, a tech demo. The main point was to improve blender. Second to that comes
Re:What a blowhard (Score:1)
This should be on the DVD cover.
>>It's there to do something else - be pretty and tell a concept.
Yeah, whatever. It still fails at being remotely interesting; which I think is a shame.
Re:What a blowhard (Score:2)
Re:What a unintuitive blowhard (Score:2)
Re:What a blowhard (Score:1)
I interpreted his statement in your first quote as him saying Maya and Houdini have unnecessarily complicated interfaces. I haven't used Houdini, but comparing Maya to Blender, I agree. I didn't find Blender "intuitive", but once I read the Wikibook, it did become simple. Like learning one instrument after another, there's a learning curve, it is different, but it isn't complicated.
Great questions (Score:5, Interesting)
"Yeah, the challenge the artists set themselves - to use quite realistic personages - is also something that easily works against you"
yeah yeah, we all know about the "uncanny valley [wikipedia.org]" (and if you don't, there's a link
Re:Great questions (Score:2)
Re:Great questions (Score:2)
That said, the lipsyncing was really poor, and I don't think there was any excuse for that. In some places it was painfully obvious.
Re:Great questions (Score:4, Interesting)
1. Squash and stretch
2. Anticipation
3. Staging
4. Straight Ahead Action and Pose to Pose
5. Follow Through and Overlapping Action
6. Slow In and Slow Out
7. Arcs
8. Secondary Action
9. Timing
10. Exaggeration
11. Solid Drawing
12. Appeal
These principles were defined by the original Disney animators in the 40s and 50s, and are widely used today as the base of animation learning. You can check out a great resource about the animation process, written by 2 of Disney's Nine Old Men, here [amazon.com].
Ton in the interview said:
This kinda just goes to show that he's just spouting off a "factoid" he's read or heard about. The "weird" walk cycles in The Incredibles - while maybe not "photorealistic" - are done that way for a purpose, following the principles listed above to make the character and animation more appealing. Animation is often about getting an appealing looking movement than a "realistic" looking movement. It's just that oftentimes, if you make a movement too unrealistic, people who are used to seeing such a movement will notice that there's something wrong with the animation.
Also, whether the character is "realistic" is irrelevent. The 12 principles still apply, but are just toned down. These things weren't pulled out of a hat. They were observed in human movement and exaggerated to make those movements more clear. Nobody could deny that the original Disney animators really observed what they were trying to animate. In fact, during the making of Bambi, Disney brought in a deer carcass so that animators could study the skeleton and muscle systems in a real deer. One of my professors in school who used to work for Disney showed the class the resulting book they made out of that research.
Some more movie backgrounds (Score:2, Informative)
http://www.blendernation.com/2006/05/18/the-world
Cheers,
Bart
Interesting attitude... (Score:2)
Movie by itself is truly piece of art. Yes, technically there ARE many problems. Character's movement where out of place in lot of moments, lip-syncing was heavy problem. But in overall, I have checked out movie about three times - first time got me confused - and I say it made me think. It is quet interesting in short movie genre and I would disagree that is just "
Re:Interesting attitude... (Score:2)
And by the way, yeah, I consider it also a art. Bad, good - it is another, *subjective* matter.
They started anim and voice to late (Score:4, Informative)
1) The timeschedule for a project like this was extremly tight. Remember they didn't have *anything* when they started. Not even a basic plot!
2) They had less experience in film project management than a guy that doesn't do blender all day but watches 'making of's'. Bassam (the director) said that he learned a storyboard and animatics are really important but it's important to move on fast from there on. I could've told him that right away. Then again I don't know a tenth of what Bassam knows about Blender.
3) They got stuck in the middle and took the time for experimenting and redoing animatics, which they, sadly, didn't have. Final anim started to late. Even the extra month they added in the end wasn't enough to give them room to breathe.
4) They didn't prerecord. Very big mistake. One guy said "There was so much emotion in the voices we had to redo some anims". Would've you thunk? Actors can act. It's what they do for a living. *ALLWAYS* prerecord unless you've got an acting director who has the skill to railroad the actors into the anim stance. And even then it's still better to prerecord.
5) Blender was extended with features they needed while they where requesting them *without* having a reference to other packages. All these guys are the elite when it comes to blender. IIRC none of them has any notable experience with any other package. Matt likes to toy around with ZBrush but Andy, for instance, is a 100% Blender guy. Watching him Blendering gives you a good reason why. When he's doing a little doodling in a break at the blender conference there's allways a bunch of people crowded around his workstation looking over his shoulder with amazement. It's absolutely fascinating just to watch this guy work. Then again, whith a feature list beforehand the parallel development of Blender would've gone quicker and features would've even been there before they where requested.
6) The jerky anims are paid of with awesome details that you usually don't notice at first viewing. In fact, one could say that the '2nd unit shots' are the actuall piece of art in this. That fits the lack of experience the Orange team had with larger productions. Bassams mechanical characters just plain rock. That's a fact.
7) AFAIK they where rendering in production which took away some time. Usually you outsource that or another dept. does it. I don't think they used renderplanet, which, if not, they should have.
8) All OSS Tools. Thats the single largest obstacle. The OSS tools are impressive, but OSS NLE and Compositing is just plain no match at all for, let's say, Apple Shake or Digital Fusion.
9) The benefits of compositing only became aware at the beginning of the project and key personell didn't have enough playing time to try things out, imho.
All in all I have to say that I am extremely impressed with the results. As for the semi-finished anims: As it is entirely open, there is no one at all stopping us from reanimating the entire move. The strange background of the story offers countless oportunities to extend the original and the fact that the riggs will be published gives pure animators a chance to show off their skills. Everyone can say: If you don't like it, redo it. A true OSS project indeed. Once again the Blender Community has shown true spirit. Ton and Team Orange rul3Z0Rz!.
Re:They started anim and voice to late (Score:2)
good post some things though I think you might be mistaken,
"Then again, whith a feature list beforehand the parallel development of Blender would've gone quicker and features would've even been there before they where requested."
They had a partial feature list beforehand, and for instance, much of the animation coding work happened before the Orange team gathered. They ended up having a bigger list of desires than was anticipated I think though
What a shame (Score:1)
So.. the simple solution, seeing that the film is open-source, is to get all the source material and re-dub the dialogue to something which doesn't resemble the ravings of lunatics at a mental hospital.
a boon for teachers... (Score:1)
I'll show Elephan
The title (Score:2)
Re:The title (Score:1)
Something about... pachyderms... dreaming that Wikinews is... hosting an interview with... God?
Beats me. I think the real question is : an African or an Asian elephant ?
Re:The title (Score:3, Informative)
Re:The title (Score:2)
It would suck - and be a simple testament to the fact that basic grammar and the internet do not work well together - if the title was misspelled. It's simple 5th grade English grammar here in the US. A product with such a high production value and that is a showpiece for their technology should NOT have a miss
Elephant Dream? (Score:1)
http://70.86.201.113/imageserv2/temporary/PBF014B
Open Source movie? Where's my refund? (Score:1)
Seriously! I know they made it primarily to showcase the open source software, but they could have at least made an attempt to make it mildly entertaining!