My First Animated Music Video

[tiggergreen]

I recently completed production of my very first animated music video featuring my brother (CKG). Check it out and let me know what you think.

Gonna Make It by CKG

You'll probably want to right-click on the "(360 x 240) Windows Media" link and choose Save Target As... from the drop down. My site does not really support streaming... This video is 9.31 MB, so if you do not have a high-bandwidth connection, you may want to run this overnight. You also need to have the Windows Media 9 codecs installed. I will be adding a Quicktime version in the next couple of days and will update this post when it becomes available.

Looking forward to hearing from all of you...

Brent

[WormGod]

Well Tigg, a little hard for me to give a professional opinion on the quality since 3d modeling/animation is what I do for a living, but as a friend and fellow VXer, I can give you the "unprofessional" opinion.... The size and compression make it difficult to judge by, but I will give my best constructive criticism on what I could see....

Editing: it is done about as well as can be expected for greenscreen style overlays of CG/live action recording. I worked on a Sci-Fi Channel film years ago and worked with greenscreen for CG inlays and it's not fun, nor is it easy. Only so much you can do without million dollar visual studios.

CG/Animation: Well, this being what I get paid the big duckets for, I will be generous, but not too generous (for your future development sake ). Modeling looks to be pretty good. The female character, horse, and dragons have professional quality it seems like. Textures on them are quite weak as they look to just be color shaded, so it adds that more generic coloring book/Tron feel. The animation of the characters is pretty weak (sorry, I am a creature animator at work and stare at animation ALL DAY LONG). Tough to do well without motion capture and thats understandable for low budgets. More fluid, lifelike motion in those characters and you'll be set. Also, adding some inlay shadows to the characters to actually allow them to appear as though they are in the scene. They always look like they are pasted in without correct lighting and shadows.

Music: Well, not my choice to pump in my VX, but it's got promise. I am sure there is a niche for CGK out there.

What packages and eqipment are you using for your work? I would love to lend a hand for future projects, but work is killing me with this new project and Fallout 3 coming up next.

Cheers!

[tiggergreen]

Wormgod,

Thanks for the feedback - I really appreciate your candidness and would love some help from you when you get some free time.

I used Poser and Vue d'Esprit to render the animations. I just recently acquired Maya 5.0 Complete and will be switching over to that as soon as I can get everything figured out.

I used my own program to do some of the compositing as I couldn't find anything out there (in the low budget arena) that could do what I wanted. The animations were rendered using Ray Tracing, but perhaps I don't have the lighting set correctly if you think they don't look they are really in the scene... Maybe it also due to the low quality 360 x 240 video size. I have a 720 x 480 version that I could make available to you if you would like to see it.

I would love any help you could offer me on how to make my animations look more real. My plan is to someday make my own animation software that is not file based...

Thanks again for your comments,

Brent

[tiggergreen]

No one else took a look at the animated music video?

I spent the weekend trying to get a quicktime version that equaled the Windows Media 9 version in terms of quality and size. I couldn't do it. The smallest I could get it was 36 MB and the quality was horrible. The WM9 version is 10 MB. I tried both the Mpeg-4 and Sorenson 3 Codecs. Is there something I am missing? I searched the web, and it seems as if all of the quicktime movies have the same sort of compression ranges.

In any case, I would greatly appreciate hearing other opinions on the music video. One thing to keep in mind is that I am aiming for the young adult crowd (8 - 17) for both the music and the movie.

See if your kids like the song and video and let me know...

Thanks!

Brent

[Dallas4u]

Hey Brent... I took a look at it as well and, as much I as feel totally unqualified to remark on something that may have taken MANY hours to make, and I don't really even dabble in computer graphics and design, I would echo Wormgod's sentiments as well.

The textures and animation look to be, what can I say, a little outdated? Maybe it's just the program you are using that doesn't allow the texturing and animation of the charaters that we all are use to seeing nowdays (on and off the big screen and in computer games). The whole package looks like it could have been a nice computer animated feature... but back a few years ago.

Sorry... I know you are looking for feedback. I don't want mine to sound too harsh as I don't even work in this part of the computer field. I just have to comment on what I see. Take it for what it is worth!