Re: Sami animation project

Hi Robin, thanks for your insights, I see that I've been less than
helpful in my first e-mail in describing exactly what I hoped to learn
from this list.

> An animated feature would be about 90 minutes long. Are you planning on that
> in addition to the 5 to 13 minute animations you're producing for TV? Are
> you producing TV first and a feature later? When?

We have manuscripts ready for 3 x 10 episodes x 5 minutes animations
and a couple of 13 minutes animations.  The manuscript for the feature
film is under development. The first series of animations is
storyboarded.

We're planning on using the shorts and series as playgrounds to
develop the characters and to refine our style and knowledge.
Therefore all of the stories are somewhat connected as well in a
timeframe.

I understand that 5 years might seem a bit optimistic, but we're in a
pretty unique situation when it comes to getting both financial, but
not least professional support in our projects, due to the political
and cultural reality in this region.

Yes, we're doing the shortest stuff for TV first, then moving on to
the longer until we go for the big screen.

I'm actually the pesimist of us and I'm not that confident in
anything, I'm trying to convince myself to board this train ;)

> To know what gear you need the story development has to come first. The
> process is to create a script and the complete storyboard, then decide what
> you'll need to produce that story into a movie. If you get gear first, your
> story will have to live within your equipment limitations.

That's our idea as well, good scripts. We have scripts from
professional scriptwriters, we're getting help from some great people
with experience when it comes to the storyboarding. We have access to
good actors, artists, scenographers and costume designers. Again, this
is a result of the cultural and political situation here and not least
due to our good relations to different artistic mileus.

We're not finished with the big script, but as I mentioned we've
already storyboarded more than 50 minutes of animation.

> A traditional 3D artist -- a sculptor, not 3D animation -- can choose
> between wood, clay, bronze, marble, or other media. Until you purchase tools
> you have total freedom in the approach you choose for making your art. 3D
> animation isn't only CGI. There's also stop-motion (CHICKEN RUN),
> puppeteering (TEAM AMERICA), and game engine (emerging real-time animation
> based on something like DOOM).

We are going to use 3d cgi graphics. Personally I prefer a style which
would kind of look like puppeteering, but cgi all the way. That would
require realistic ray tracing. I'm not the art director, though I can
supply input on it.

Puppeteering is something I have a big spot in my heart for, one of
the greatest artists in this field (perhaps even the world) here in
Norway was the late Ivo Caprino (imdb him) who made the Pinchcliffe
Grand Prix movie. That movie, but also his shorts for childrens TV are
very dear to those of us of a certain age here :) He's like our
Disney. And one of the reasons why I'm doing what I'm doing.

What I originally meant by my question was a more broader "what are
you guys doing and how are you acheiving it", though I see my question
is nowhere like that in its phrasing.

I just want to get an idea of what people like, what they hate, how
they have to work around limitations, but also how certain things have
made things easier for them. Regardless of style and preferences of
the artists I'm interested in knowing more about how other artists
work, especially those who are on a linux mailing list.

> Maya PLE is useless for commercial production. If you want free you're
> better off with Blender. The least expensive commercial tool is
> SoftImage|XSI Foundation for $500 which also includes Mental Ray.

PLEs licence doesn't open for any commercial production. I was just
sighing my regrets for never taking the time to explore Maya and its
possibilities when it is available for free for exactly that purpose.

Instead I've been using what I know, and that's not free at all.

> Find movies that have a look similar to how you want your picture to appear
> and find out what renderer they used. Asking a tool question generically is
> a bit like asking who makes the best computer -- to do what? Performance and
> image quality depend upon what you're rendering.

The question about a tool isn't that far fetched. For example some
might say that they love the speed of the Turtle renderer, but they
use Mental Ray because Turtle lacks some elemental featueres they use.
Or that Render Man is their favourite because they know how to program
shaders for it, etc.

I'm asking broadly because I want to know more about different tools
in order to find out which fits our needs better. At the same time
I've been looking through galleries and videos to find examples of
styles which are close to what I'm looking for.

> Large studios use Linux on desktops and renderfarm. Smaller studios may use
> Linux, Mac or Windows on the desktop and Linux on the renderfarm. Something
> other than Linux as the renderfarm is rare, but Windows and Mac renderfarms
> exist.

Thank you for this quick answer. We're not a large studio by any
measures and most of our people already knows certain tools very well,
so we can't afford to not take advantage of that existing knowledge.
Retraining might come at a very high cost.

> People here have experience in everything from a few nodes to the largest
> renderfarms in the world. All different.

That's what I hoped. I'll come back with more specific questions when
I've had time to look into more options. Though I've had an eye on the
business for many years I haven't had the time nor resources to do the
qualitative and quantitative comparisions I'm doing now.

People have turned to me for info and I'm doing my best to use all the
diverse methods I know of gathering them.

> Putting technology before story development. Acquiring gear at random in a
> mistaken belief that's progress.

Hehe, I've told the most rabid gearhead of ours, that we shouldn't buy
anything until we have the finished storyboards. No wasting time on
"tests" and "experiments". Further more I'm also saying we should buy
what we need when we need it. No renderfarm until strictly neccessary;
during modelling we don't need the farm. No musical composition and
sample libraries until we actually have a story to begin developing
the score. Etc.

And the good thing of investing as late as possible is what you
mention at the bottom of your reply; come august the world has moved
on quite a bit.

I'm totally with you.

At the same time we have to compile a thorough financial plan, which
needs to have price estimates for the different parts of hardware
which will be needed for finishing our projects. This needs to be
based on facts and on quality information, not by just putting my
finger into the air and choosing the most expensive stuff.

Of course, when it comes to investing the money we can buy whatever we
need at that time, the plan I'm forming now need not be the exact
investments we do later, but still it all have to be within the
budgets and the timeframes we decide on.

So, I hope you can see where I'm coming from.

> Poking around London doesn't seem enough. You need to consider coming to
> SIGGRAPH and even our own Linux Movies conference in Los Angeles.
> 
> http://www.siggraph.org/s2005/
> http://linuxmovies.movieeditor.com/conf2005/index.html
> 
> Everyone in animation will be here in August with much the same questions
> you have -- even folks who've been doing it forever. The technology changes
> every year.

I'd love to be there, though I don't think I can. I'm expecting my
first child in september and I want my wife to feel safe and have me
close during those last months.

But I certainly hope some of my colleagues will be able to go there,
and hopefully I will be able to visit next year instead - with a few
animations.

Paul


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