old work, still fun

[Andromeda girl]

hi gang.

this is old work, stuff i did back when i was just a learner.

you may have seen this before, but i find people tend to find it pretty cool, so i share it again. i had fun making it.

oh yeah- it's a divx coded avi file, and in order to make it small enough to post here i had to compress the heck out of it, sorry :(

old stuff, from the before time. if ya like it, let me know and i'll post more.

never fear :) ...the whole vid is HERE (http://www.vfxtalk.com/uploads/wotw_documentary.avi )

If you like it, please drop me a line. I have more of the demo reel, ask about it if interested.

~A.

[Juha_Kinnunen]

:thumbsup:





Juha

[Hugh]

Andromeda girl: I'm going to be gathering some information on some free web hosts that people can use for storage soon....

For now, have a look at this post (http://www.cgtalk.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=49775) (over at CGTalk.com (http://www.cgtalk.com/)) which covers just about the same kind of thing....

If you can get some free space, you can upload it there and just link to it...

[Paul Moran]

hi Andromeda girl,

i have just edited your post to include the link to d/l the vid ;)

Hope everyone enjoys it

cheers

paul

PS: once we get the new server...this wont be an issue ;)

[Andromeda girl]

thanks for the assist paul.

although that particular short is not the post i had in mind, your help was certainly appreciated. i also apologize for the wait in downloading, i know it's big.

i suppose i better mention that the errors in there are known to me, so please don't flood me with emails regarding them. it was made well before i had figured out the finer points of tracking. and yes, i know the earth is rotating the wrong way.

hope you enjoyed it anyways. perhaps i'll post something new at another time.

~Andromeda girl

[specialk]

hahaha.....very creative !!!! that was killer

[Andromeda girl]

Originally posted by specialk
hahaha.....very creative !!!! that was killer

glad you liked it. i'm gonna look into having the proper one posted, that aint the one i had in mind. it's shorter, but full colour.

and gosh, i feel so- so... satisfied!
hmmm. must be the special k.

~A

[Juha_Kinnunen]

Good that this is finally downloadable!(downloadable--hmm is that a real word?!?!? :D )

Nice one Andromeda girl!! I like how those alien ships are designed.

How long did you made this?




Juha :)

[Andromeda girl]

thanks!

that design is not mine. (my reel gives proper credit to this fact):

Warwick Goble. famous illustrator. he did the beautiful illustrations for the first edition print of the war of the Worlds by herbert george Wells.

I always loved that design, as have a thing for 19th century sci-fi. it's more real, more honest. true sci-fi, not like the fantasy stuff being marketed as sci-fi today.

i used his design for the Martian war machines, although the illustrations are very small and hard to read detail too clearly, I feel i was very faithful to the original design.

I spent 4 months on it, 3 months of which were spent on building and animating the MWM model, and 1 month doing composites. I'm not a 3D person, so it was slow going and i needed assistance and advice on getting the rigging set up right for the tentacles. i spent a week making sure they didn't crash through one another! it was good i had a simple design to go with, as I can model but just wanted something to comp in, and wasn't too fussy by that point. it worked great, i love that design. i did 5 different models of varying design, including one of my own where the walk wasn't a cheat! i was really keen on using that one, because i figured out a way for a 3 legged tripod to actually walk and not lose it's balance. in the end though, the rigging was a nightmare, so i desided on the simple one, it's the better disign anyways- by a longshot.

there is also more work i did on the reel not in the short film, including the colour segments i had intended to post but they haven't been, and a shot of one of the MWM's being hit by a shell and exploding.
I wanted a thunderchild shot of course, and boarded a sequence, began researching 19th century dreadnaughts, and found a great tutorial on ultra realistic water with waves, mist spray, wakes breaking, it would have been great-- but i had to scrap it because i was really running out of time, i needed to send out my reel! find work!

perhaps later i can do that shot, i still want to do it really bad, if just to prove to myself i could have pulled it off. it just meant a lot of modelling, and lots of particle fx. nothing i couldn't handle.

this was a big project for me, i needed a demo reel, but i had no material to use. doing compositing, i needed plate shots, so i had to search around. i borrowed every WWI and WWII video from the library (about 30 of them) and found suprisingly few shots were useable. they make those documentaries in such a silly, arty manner that it's just a lot of 2 second scenes with cross dissolves to veterans, historians, or dumb set recreations throughout. finding a lengthy shot was difficult, and harder to find one with a decent composition i could use. tracking those shots became nightmarish, as the grain was so loose that it became near impossible to track anything, and being B&W i had no colour channels to select either. i rotoe'd pretty much everything, hence the jitters here and there.
... so i went elsewhere, to movies. in hindsight i would have found great footage to use if i would have thought of a few other films, but it's too late now. i think it went well considering my obstacles.

the reel came out of the sad background of me having been hired on a WOTW remake feature, but it was cancelled when 9/11 occurred- less than a month before production, several months after pre-production (and a ton of $ spent) boy, was it cancelled.

I felt that i could still do my own WOTW material, just for a reel. I look at it now and cringe just a bit, it's so old now, and my abilities have improved greatly since then I'd do a lot different and better if I were to re-do it.

that's the story.

glad you enjoyed it.

~A.

[stevenbray1]

Hey Andromeda Girl! Get your showreel in the post;

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/thr/film/brief_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1000611875

ILM need you! :lightsabe