Archive for Cool Stuff

Haunted- the aftermath

sept 20

No, this isn’t announcing a sequel, nor is it a prequel, this article is to tell you what’s happened since we finished Haunted.

First off, we’ve both finished school, got our diploma’s, and are actively looking for work. If you know anyone who may be interested, spread the word!

We’re also heading off mid-October to Amsterdam to give a presentation about Haunted. We will be explaining our production process, but will also talk about the place Blender has in education, how its place could be stronger and how developments could be more interesting, things like that. More information can be found on the blender conference website, with the schedule here: http://www.blender.org/community/blender-conference/schedule/

Later on in late November we’ve got another presentation planned at the school we went to (ESIAJ Belgium) to talk about the same sort of thing, but also give a super accelerated crash course in how to get started in Blender. The point won’t be to « convert » students to the software but to make them realize it’s a serious package that can do just as much as most others. This is a relatively closed session but will allow for us to get a bit of teaching experience!

I hope to meet in person some of our followers at the Blender Conference!

See ya,

Chris.

Filed Under: Cool Stuff, News, Production

Released !

août 29

YAY! We finally released the movie! Please do not hesitate to share or comment, feedback is always welcome !

Due to Vimeo’s upload limitations, the Making-of is coming next week (we can only upload one HD video per week with our free account).

Please watch it in HD on Vimeo, it’s way better !

Filed Under: Cool Stuff, News

Out in the afternoon !

août 28

(click on the image to enlarge)

Filed Under: Cool Stuff, News

Haunted- Coming soon!

juin 21

Haunted is more or less done. Films like this one don’t really get finished, they escape from us. It’s never really as we wanted or imagined it, it’s more a question of « it’s good enough to present to our target audience », and that’s what we’ve done.

When we set out to make the potato movie project, we had lots of amazing, huge ideas and a very strict, christmas-and-birthday-presents-from-our-family for both equipment and software as well as a very, very short deadline. The script and storyboard was as complete as it was complex, but some scenes and details still got docked from the finished cut to help the narration of the story, to get things in on time and keep to the budget. Going in with all these amazing ideas makes the release of such a student film very difficult. We gave too much and wanted things to be too perfect for it to be a painless experience. However, scenes which we thought would be absolutely necessary ended up not really being so, and the response from the jury (which happened last Friday) and the first screening seemed incredibly positive. We now understand some of the great directors who never want to see their movies again. It’s very uncomfortable, and you see all the problems with the movie that the audience completely ignores.

The potato movie project will be released very, very soon and will be made available on Vimeo first, once we’ve got the results (as potato is actually an exam!) and a nice, 720p encode for Vimeo.

While you wait, here are a couple of images from the finished movie:

Filed Under: Cool Stuff, News, Production

Title mania and rig advances

mar 20

There appears to be a bit of confusion about the title of our short film. We’re partly the reason for this confusion, because we sort of have four titles at the moment…

« Potato Movie Project » was the code word for our short film. We were waiting until we had a story and were in production before we decided on a final title. The choice of Potato as a codeword is explained in the « About » section up top.
« Warning Haunted » is going to be the first title that’s seen in the film. We like the setup because it’s two strong words, and the domain was available.
The « Warning » part of the title will then disappear, leaving « Haunted » all alone. This is the final, sort of official original title. It’s there because we also wanted ONE word to describe the film… but « Warning »‘ just felt strange to us.
… then there’s a fourth title that you’ll see when you watch the finished film.

Basically, the film has three sort of official titles. But feel free to call it « Warning Haunted » as that’s pretty much the one we’re using.

I don’t like leaving a blog post without a picture or something new. If you’re over here, it’s to see images of how we’re getting on, not to see endless blabber. I will therefore leave you with a few BRAND NEW screenshots of our WIP Bunny rig! It’s EXTREMELY simple, this sort of character not really needing 300 controllers (you could, but seeing as we’re modelling, rigging and animating, we don’t have an animator who’s going to complain that he needs to go into the bone structure to make new controllers when necessary). We also don’t want to limit our creativity too much so we’re opting for a barebones spartan formula which can be tweaked at any time if we feel there’s something new that needs to be added.