Derek Jackson - Final

[Derek Jackson]

Right, uploading as I type.

Pretty pleased with it - although I'd like to have done a lot more camera moves, I think I've done the best I could given Maxwell and a Mac Mini in the time we had! And my mate Bob has done a top job with the music and sound effects so cheers to him.

And I've learnt loads too, which is the main thing I was hoping to get out of this.

Been great fun doing this, if incredibly knackering! Cheers for the great competition guys - you've inspired and encouraged me all the way!! Hopefully see you all same time next year...

Derek

[Jakub Gabriel]

Congratulations Derek Nice that youve made it. Looking forward to see what youve produced

[Flavio Ochoa]

congrat Derek and good luck

[Ma Rina]

hello all

[Jakub Gabriel]

Derek congrats on finishing the animation and being able to make it till the end!

The animation is nicely put together. Ill start from the end saying that I really like the ending, with the night falling and your building dimming the lights. Quite realistic. Nice!

I understand that the fact that you are using Maxwell as your primary renderer somewhat narrowed your ability to create a frame by frame animation. Nevertheless I would like to congratulate you on finishing it on time regardless of all the errors and problems that might have occured in the process.

I like the fact that you presented the interior of the musem and your main buildings lobby/reception if you will.

The music is somewhat not my taste, a little to midi. That doesnt take away from the fact that someone has composed it especially for your animation and thumbs up for that!

At times the water spoiled some shots (mainly due to the frame rate which again was due to the lack of time I suppose) but overall nice work!!

Good luck!

[Derek Jackson]

Thanks guys, I have to say I really wasn't expecting much positive feedback after seeing my effort in comparison to all the others so it's been a real encouragement!

As you say, the software and processing power worked against me a lot of the time - it ended up rendering at around 100 minutes per frame, and that's at the resolution and rough quality you see there. You can now see why I was considering chucking it all in a few times!! (And chucking my Mac out of the window for good measure)

I was quite anxious to show the interior stuff - glad it was appreciated! I'd modelled a lot of detail (including postcards and logos on t-shirts in the shop - perhaps too much detail!) for both the challenge 1 image and the opening camera pan, so wanted to get them in there somewhere. It would've been nice to show them for longer, but I was limited to covering the space within the number of frames of the animated people.

I had also hoped to do some shots of the lecture theatre and library / study area on the left of the building (and the cafe too), but time was against me on that one.

I see what you mean about the midi music - I think a lot of that is due to the piano line that comes in about halfway through. In many ways it may have been better with just the guitar track.

Yeah, the water's not great. For the opening pan it ended being rendered as a textured plastic material to keep render times down, so had no transparency at all. For the time lapse I went with a translucent material but it didn't pick up the bump map very well and ended up looking like a mirror, so I ended up adding foam and distortion frame-by-frame in Pshop - hardly ideal!

Glad you like it. I'm intrigued about my workflow and software in comparison to everyone else's - I'll start a thread to look into it once all this has calmed down!!

Thanks everyone. All the best!

[Christiaan Klaassen]

Hey Bwana, sorry for my late post.

Well done for sticking with it and submitting. I can only imagine the pain you must have gone through to get it out.

I think your animation had some very good ideas that just needed to be executed just a little better. The lighting was massively burnt out in some areas that made it hard to see clearly. It was nice having an interior space and having content on the inside to go with it. Your lighting could have been a bit more dynamic though. On the whole it was a little flat.

But there were nice shots with the time lapse and the colour pallette worked nicely, I don't want to be too harsh because i don't know how hard it must have been on your system. I'm glad that you have enjoyed yourself and yeah its been a great comp for self learning.

Wish you the best of luck!
Cheers
Chris

[chutti ullah]

Hi Darek. its a decent animation, i like it. mainly cause you really had the passion for it. i can tell it by looking at your interior jobs very well done. overall its nice except the sound and water textures in few shots.
good luck!! take care.


Sorry for the Late post...

[Junaid Anwer]

Nice buddy!

[rafael dintrans]

nice job...