Day: July 7, 2009

long slog

1 Comment / 3D animation work / July 7, 2009

To make an animation is extremely, extremely long work. Today i came across a thing on YouTube where the guy said to render 10 seconds of animation it took his 2 computers 12 hours. Mind you, this is AFTER all the hard work of setting up the props, lighting, moving them around etc. etc. What i have seen about rendering times, even on fast computers, it looks like it will take one computer almost 3 months of 24/7 processing just to get the final product! So yes, when the time arrives, i definitely will be looking at render farms. Of course i hope to buy 4 or 5 computers, and have a mini-network myself to cut down final render times.

Yesterday i ran across a site of a man who made a full-length CG film by himself. He has a nice diary/blog too, which is fascinating reading for someone like me who wishes to do something very similar. A link to there is Laurie Calvert’s one-man movie-making system Actually, he did have many others help with music and recording voices etc., but all the animation is done by himself. He goes at the amazing speed of 4 seconds of finished movie per day, working just 2 hours! I’m not joking, this is amazing, as professional animators only make about 4 seconds a week. OK, so his quality isn’t Pixar quality either, but his comments really strike home.

He talks about how THE STORY is the big thing, and he is not interested in technical stuff. He uses off-the-shelf characters, purchasing some from Daz3D etc., which is exactly what i’m planning to do. Why should i have to spend literally 2 years learning some software package before i can start producing my STORY? So i’m not leading-edge. I don’t care. I want something middle-of-the-road that looks decent enough to look at, without going over the top and working for days to find out how to use the sub-surface specular scattering particle generator! (ok, made that up, but you get the point)

He says: “So I am one man, one PC working for about 3 years. Stylised CGI. My first film ‘The War of the Starfighters’ will be similar in statistics to ‘Monsters of the Id’. It cost about 3000gbp, and was 1,350 shots long, 2,500 hours work, on average over 2 hours work a day saw 4 seconds of finished movie per day”. By comparison he notes: “‘Shrek’ used 500 computers, used 300 animators, took 4 years to make 1000 shots”.

He wrote the above in 2004 when planning the movie, and then when the movie was finished in 2006 he wrote this: “3rd June 2006 – Final version of film is finished pending any last minute changes. 864 days, 920 hours work so far. New music has been added and sounds mixed. 493 Gig used. The movie is looking and sounding really good. Had a Premiere to myself of the final version today. Might be a few months away from being available as it needs to get BBFC certification for release in the UK plus the DVDs need to be replicated. Next step is to talk to a Distributor. Fingers crossed. This film has cost just 700gbp to make.”

This is what i’ve felt, but is the first time i’ve seen it told anywhere: calvertfilm.fsnet.co.uk “The American CGI is what most of us are used to seeing but it doesn’t have to be this style. Remember character and stories, emotion and morals/ideas should be most important, so you can still make a great movie in a stylised way. Storytelling is the business we are in.” Yes sir! Lord, please help me. If people can spend so much time and energy on making something for this world, surely you will give me skill and wisdom to do it to lead others to your new world 🙂

departing europe

Leave a Comment / travel spreading 1858gc / July 7, 2009

June 30, 2009 The day basically started around 4:30am when i woke up with a suffocating feeling from having no air in my room, and scratching swarms of mosquito bites on my body. My friend and his father and i all go Alexandria (Romania), and wait for the Maxi Taxi (large minivan), that will take me to Giurgiu. While waiting with an umbrella in his hand, someone approaches the father and gives him some yogurt and pretzels. Seems to be a tradition here to give food to strangers when someone dies, so we are the lucky ones today. Actually, this slightly tangy yogurt is exactly the thing i needed to settle my stomach, and i enjoy a breakfast of picked-one-hour-earlier-apricots, yogurt, bread, and walnuts in the maxi taxi The mostly flat wheat fields, interspersed with grasslands with a flock of sheep every 10km or so, and flocks of geese a little more often, are punctuated by a huge, and i mean huge stork nest. They use the same nest every year, making it larger and larger, until it is hard to see how they stay attached to the cement poles (with a flat top) or chimneys that they balance them on.

The maxi taxi was 25 minutes late, and we arrive in Giurgiu around 8:10. I putter around trying to ask people about a bus across the border into Ruse, but they all tell me that there is no bus, only taxi. OK, i go to a taxi driver, and am taken aback when he writes on paper “150lei” (50usd). Wow, 50usd can buy quite a long distance bus ride. I go back to where the maxi taxi let me out, and the driver talks to his police friend about it who calls one of his friends who can speak a little English. He tells me it cost 9euro each way for tax across the bridge, so he needs 30euro, leaving “only” 12euro for himself. This is a scam if i ever saw it, but am concerned now. I can go all the way back up to Bucharest, and catch a bus from there to Sofia for cheaper than what i’m being told here (36usd). The thot tho of wasting a whole day, and spending a sleepless nite in Sofia doesnt appeal to me at all, so i offer 40usd. He agrees, and takes me to an exchange office, where they really just exchange – 1 General Grant for 2 Jacksons and 1 Hamilton. After handing him the money (i like to pay at the beginning), i get in on the LEFT side of the car. He tells me he worked 2 years in London, and bot this car there and drove it down here. He assures me he is a good driver, so i don’t need my seatbelt, but i buckle up anyway, and am happy i did as he drives in between the orange construction area cones – crazy in more ways than i thot, as i told him he was crazy when he poked my knee several times and said he’d take me all the way to Sofia for “only” 110euro. Definitely not amusing. We cross the Danube into Bulgaria, and the inspection people joke about a Romanian with an American, and soon we are in Ruse. All in all – 20 minutes.

While kicking myself for wasting God’s money like this, i go from bus company office to office looking for a place with a bus to Sofia. I find the one i saw on the internet for 10am, and while looking blankly around, a man comes up to me and speaks a bit of English. He is nice, and invites me to store my suitcase and big plastic bag in a room by the toilet while i go to the exchange office across from the train station. After i get 30usd exchanged into leva (it is interesting that the money is called “leu”, “lei”, “leva”, and “lira” in Moldova, Romania, Bulgaria, and Turkey respectively) i head back to pay my 22leva for the 4:30 ride to Sofia. The man is there, and after i get my ticket we have a wonderful conversation. He is a Christian, single, and just 3 weeks younger than myself, and the toilet tax collector. This is a system that i despise, as it is a big waste of someone’s life to sit all day and collect a peepee tax. And it is humiliating to the person needing to go to the bathroom to have to shell out several coins to go. I don’t think it is just coincidence that all the rich countries in know in the world don’t require this tax, because their people have more productive things to do. I think God knew that i needed a lift after the ripoff taxi ride, and this man served very well to do just that. I even gave him a Great Controversy book, as he said he likes English. Just with seeing the title for the first chapter he turned to me and said how Satan was once so beautiful, but got proud, and he fell to this world. Sounds like he’s read the book already! May we meet in heaven.
…

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paypal itches for a lawsuit

Leave a Comment / daily rambliniscings / July 7, 2009

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