Prelude to WW-Z (CGI animation)

Okay, it's a bit crap, and it's less than 2 minutes, and the video compression made some parts a bit wierd and jerky, and frankly I have no idea if this is even a valid entry. Have I sold you on it yet?

If you will allow it, I would like to submit my CGI animation as an entry. It was originally going to be a short story for this contest, and then it just sorta spiraled upward from there. The stream is available here

Prelude To World War Z

I have it set up on Acid Planet, and it allows for downloads, if you'd rather download it. If someone wants to set up mirror sites, by all means feel free to, and I might see if I can't make a better compression of it sometime if people really want it, but don't want the 500+ meg original .wmv file.

Credit where credit is due, this entire project was inspired by, but not plagerized from, Max Brook's "The Zombie Survival Guide" and "World War Z". The soundtrack is directly from Eric Serra's "The Fifth Element" soundtrack "Timecrash", which is, I felt, one of his most powerful pieces which went largely unappreciated. Everything else is mine, but mad props to Activision/Lionhead for "The Movies - Stunts & Effects" (cheap nifty CGI machinema tools!!!)


(edited to clarify title and site direction)



[edit on 10/23/2006 by thelibra]

edited title - sorry thelibra, worldwatcher and I both agree that the contest is for the written word only





[edit on 23-10-2006 by masqua]

Aw dang. I wonder if I should move this thread then.

Well, the narrative alone isn't enough to merit as a short story.
Guess I'll have to make an actual story story.
Did you at least enjoy the video?

I just realized the link in the OP requires registration. Sorry.
Here's one you don't have to register in order to view the file.
It's only 1.5 megs.

home.comcast.net...

That was wild
Really cool man, I wish I had talent enough to do things like that.

Thanks CS, but to be honest, you probably do have the talent. The animation itself was composed in Activisions "The Movies" with the "Stunts & Effects" expansion. If I'd had to figure out how to make the character models and textures, and stuff like that, I'd have been screwed. Luckily, with it, all I really had to do was write out the script, figure out where everyone would go, what they would be doing, the camera angles, voice-over and post-production. Don't get me wrong, it's a lot of work, but it's not like I opened up Bryce 3D, or 3D Studio Max to make the animations themselves. THAT takes talent and more work than I could muster.

Wow a fellow The Movies player. No one plays it anymore. I have made so many short films with the game, its not even funny. But the sad thing is when I wiped my HD they were all lost.
I was thinking about getting the expansion pack for it for a while now, and you just sold me on it.
Good editing to your movie.

Here is one of my first uploaded movies.
Ion Control

Check it out, its about 8 mins long.

Interesting, I had never tried changing the lighting inside the Sci-Fi, not sure why.

"The Movies - Stunts and Effects" is completely worth it, IMHO. The additional scenes alone make it about 100x more versatile. There's no additional fight scenes, though, which is a bit crap, but still, the fact that one can now have fire effects, an improved editor, etc, is all very nutricious.

Now, if you have the extra cheddar, just shoot all your raw footage with TMS&E, save it to a "highest" quality WMV file, and then do your real Post Production in a video editing suite. Even though they did a pretty good job of tweaking the editor in TMS&E, frankly it's still too poorly designed for my tastes (but the overlay effects you can do now are pretty cool).

For post production I used Sony Vegas Movie Factory.

Here's my only other "real" TM flick I did, nothing fancy, and way before even the first patch for TM was there.... Case Noir: The Sunset Smoker.

As fair warning though, the sound is WAY soft, you'll probably have to turn your volume all the way up to hear it properly.



[edit on 11/20/2006 by thelibra]