Hi again,
,
Wow, momentarilary overwhelmed by all the positive feedback.
Thanks heaps to each and every one of you who have commented. I really appreciate it.
As far as the quality thing goes, i'll give you my theory on all of that.
I originally got in to Anim8or as a medium for telling stories.
I've been doing this for about 6 - 7 years now, the first 3 and a half of those years were solid. 12, 16, 20 hours a day, seven days a week.
The basics i needed to learn were to model, rig, texture, animate, (morph targets, keyframing etc), adding sound, lipsyncing, chromakeying and post production editing. Theres also periphials to these things. In fact, theres no shortage of things to learn and In short, a variety of skills are required to make a CG movie from scratch. So, if you're doing all these things yourself, and if you're serious about using your skills to make a movie, you have to draw lines here and there on the initial degrees of competence REQUIRED to actually make a movie.
I relate the story of Mickey Mouse to this scenario. Mickey mouse was 'acting' way back, when he was only a stick figure with big ears. Yep, even then, Mickey was out there 'representing'.
Thank the gods that walt disney didn't hold back in those early days, or Mickey would still be on the drawing board being 'perfected', and disneyland may not, even now, have such an icon as 'Mickey Mouse'.
If you're serious about making movies, you do what you can. You start with a stick figure if thats all you have. You learn to make him move, and talk and act. Over time, you improve. In fact, you always improve, but only by 'doing'.
Your first short movie is a milestone, and you're pretty proud of it. A year later, you look back at your first movie with a nostalgic grin, and probably some embarresment. This is just the way it is. You can take 5 years making your movie, but the fact is that if you're in the process of learning, no matter how long you spend on your 'early movies', you will one day look back at them with that same 'nostalgia and embarresment.
The most important thing is to get it done. (imho) There are so many talented people out there, who are stuck on the drawing board, trying forever to get thier story perfect.The models perfect. The lighting perfect, and so on, and so on. BUT, The spark does die down, eventually. Eventually, the great idea that you are working on, loses its initial 'brilliance'. Then you tire from it. Then its on the back burner, because a new interest/story has taken over your thoughts. 90 percent of those projects which are put on the back burner, never will be the perfected masterpieces that you initially set out to create. And, unfortuneately, most will never even see the light of day, (screening).
re eart:
I totally agree there is 'room for improvement in the modelling and story pace', and actually, there's room for improvement in all aspects of this vid.
I can't say that i completely agree with 'the quality is not of a very high standard'. What 'standard' is that? and, the quality of what?
I do appreciate constructive criticism. Hopefully my wee spiel above will help to explain why the end product is far from 'pixar' quality, which i would assume is considered as the highest standard.
I hope that the standard is at least high enough that it suffices for the purpose of telling the story, because that is the minimum standard which i have aimed for.
If i've done that, then yes, success.
Thanks again you all. I really do appreciate it. We make movies to please ourselves and others.(imho) I seem to have pleased you all with Eart, and that is huge payback for me.
I'm stoked.
Thank you.
johnar
Simon: yeah, i did try it initially, with subtitles, but it all got a bit crowded, so i decided against it. I wanted it to be 'easilly followed', which is why the text is alredy in English. But thanks for the suggestion.
