A Computer Animated Short Film I completed on 23 June 2007.
This is my first short film in that, unlike everything I've done up until now with computer animation, it has a plot and a conflict which is resolved through the character's actions. I understand that it's incredibly simple, but it's my first one and I'm very proud of it and of completing it.
Watch the short first, then check these tidbits out:
On Time Required
Production started on 4 April 2007 and I finished on 23 June 2007. To spare you the math, that was 80 days. That includes creating the story, storyboarding, animation, rendering, and post production. Unlike others who create computer animation, I did not have too much time to spare between work and other obligations so most of it was done during the weekend. So, if you want to think about how quickly you could make this if you were a busy person with a job, 80 days is about right. If you have nothing to do but work on a project of this level of complication, it would probably take a week or two at most.
To follow my progress, you can click here for the first announcement I made about the project. Then click here and follow the posts (although they're presented as the most recent one first).
On Titles
It's actually really tough to come up with a proper title. You don't want it to be to vague and don't want it to give away the premise. It's also hard to come up with one that isn't too cheesy
On the Plot
The first difficulty lies in coming up with a problem for your protagonist. On a whole order of magnitude of difficulty higher is coming up with a proper antagonist. But hardest of all is coming up with a solution to the protagonist's problem. Whether or not to resolve it in his favor and the precise details.
On Character Development
Fortunately, in a short this short, it's not something I have to worry about. Before you can start wondering too much about these ball people, the short is over. So it was ok to have such abstract character designs.
Original Working Title
Ball People
Software Used in the Making of "Jose's Dinner"
Blender 2.42/2.43
3D modeling software used to create the computer animation. It was entirely created with Blender 2.42, but one of the render machines was running 2.43.
Inkscape
SVG drawing software used to create the storyboards
Cinelerra
Video editing software used to create the 2D/3D animatics and assemble the final video film
DrQueue
Render farm management software used to distribute the rendering of the film's frames to my computers, thus improving render times.
mencoder
video file creation software used to string together the rendered frames for testing purposes.
Sony Screenblast Movie Studio
Used to make the drop the bomb productions logo and used to combine the audio and video
Adobe Photoshop CS 2
Used to create the end credits
Fedora Core 6
Operating system upon which most (90%) of the animation was created. Also used as a render machine.
Ubuntu
Operating system upon which a small part (10%) of the animation was created. Also used as a render machine.
freeBSD
Operating system upon which one of the render machines ran. Also, the original master ran on freeBSD before its network card died, making it useless for this film.
Debian GNU/Linux
Operating system which ran the master for the render farms.
Microsoft Windows
Operating system upon which one of the render machines ran.
"Jose's Dinner" is copyrighted (C)2007 to drop the bomb productions, Eric Mesa's studio. However, within his power of copyright, Eric Mesa licenses "Jose's Dinner" under the Creative Commons ShareAlike-Attribute-NoCommercial License. This means you are free to copy and share this movie with as many people as you want. In fact, I encourage it - it will make me more famous. q:o)
However, this license does not put the work into the Public Domain, you must follow the terms of the license. ShareAlike means that if you make a derivative work based upon my movie (colloquially known as a mashup) you must also share that work under the same license. No taking advantage of my sharing and then not sharing yourself. Attribution means that you must always credit me as the creator of "Jose's Dinner". If you change it, you are entitled to credit yourself, but you must credit me as the provider of the original footage. Finally, NoCommercial - it's pretty simple. You are not allowed to make money off of this short film. You may give it away for free, but you may not make money. If you wish to make money off the film, you may contact me and we can arrange proper terms.
