View Full Version : The Asylum - My graduation film
Well here's my graduation film C&C's are welcome of course. Finally graduated in August and I did some corrections to the film in september, but now it's done at last.:D The film is "silent", meaning it has no spoken dialog (or any other kind) but it does have a musical score, so there is sound.
I posted some WIP's of the models way back in the WIP forum. I'm curious to hear some fresh feedback, most people who have seen the film have been there during it's production. I'm going to submit this to the Blender Convention this year.
Al of the 3D work was done in Blender 2.41 the compositing work was done in After Effects.
Screenshot
http://student-kmt.hku.nl/%7Eniels16/projects/asylum/stills/Professor_04_pijn.jpg
Project website: (http://student-kmt.hku.nl/%7Eniels16/projects.htm)
The film: (http://www.xs4all.nl/%7Eniels990/download/Asylum_project/Asylum_web.mpg) 25 MB MPG-1 *updated*
Greetings
MadMesh
This truly looks like a good movie, way too big for my crappy dial up connection though :-p. Plus, I've been having a lot of trouble with most video files on my computer lately...
Overall, great old horror film feeling. I loved the old B&W horror films. Just great stuff.
Some of the animation was a bit jerky in spots. But it was minor. The initial camera fly in, imo, didn't need the stops. Should have been fluid through the whole thing.
Great little story though. Really good.
BgDM
LarryPhillips
12-Sep-06, 20:10
Bravo!
I think there's something strange going on with that file. Gets REAL jerky towards the end in MediaPlayer, but didn't see any stops in that initial camera fly-in (unless BgDM was on about the cuts synced with the lightning). Completely locks up in VLC towards the end. Finally got a pretty smooth playback (but not perfect) when I watched it with VirtualDub. (AMD64 1gb ram)
Anyway, fantastic work that is. Inspiration for this Blenderhead for sure. I'm curious about the total production time.
I also had playback problems with everything except VirtualDub.
Nevertheless, great animation & horror mood, and congrats on graduating!
Sounds like it wasn't compressed very much. Windows media player can only handle so much...
I'll have too take a look at the compression then, I didn't have any problems during playback on my system. I think I will post a quicktime version as wel, it might give better playback on-line.
Thanx for the feedback. :)
very nice, well done!
also on my pc it frezzes towards the end, maybe produce a divx or a mov file
[Same as bgDM said]
+
The only thing I felt that I realy missed was some of those black screens with what they are saying. That would give the movie one star more (5 instead of 4) ;)
Haha, very good work MadMesh! And congratulations with the graduation! I find it really cool that it hasn't got any spoken lines in it for the music was very very well done! I like the way the characters look and a lot of shots were done, like the shadow-shots and the almost film-noir (Sin City or so)-like effects, really cool! Nice little story too. Like kothe I voted 4 stars but I didn't missed the text-screens, but I find the animation was sometimes not top of the pop.
AquaticPenguin
13-Sep-06, 12:05
One thing I did notice... When igor sheilds his eyes away from the ray of light, the shadow hit no where near his eyes making the sheilding motion absolutely useless to him.
excellent! great style. i love the lighting.
(i also had problems with the mpg getting choppy near the end in both VLC and the quicktime player.)
Great animation. Modelling is very good. Did you render it al in black and white? And is it quicker as a full color rendering?
Awesome animation.
5 stars from me :)
RobertT
Such a shame about the jerkyness at the end, the only way to figure out the ending was by clicking everywhere on the timeline to hopefully get some frames.
To be honest I thought the faces of the characters didn't really look so good. The 'patient' looked a bit robotic, dunno, a bit emotionless. The scientist has a lot of Proog going on (but then again, that's just the thing that fits these stereotypes). Anyway, for me the faces weren't quite there yet.
What I do like is the mood, thanks to the great black and white and the convincing looking objects and scenes. It almost had a Tim Burtonesk feel to it... hey, I said almost.
4****
Gefeliciteerd met je afstuderen,
Sago
I'm really frustrated by the mpg quality, i'll try to fix it asap. Thanx for your feedback all :)
;707112'][Same as bgDM said]
+
The only thing I felt that I realy missed was some of those black screens with what they are saying. That would give the movie one star more (5 instead of 4) ;)
I left those text screens out, I'm not a very big fan of those. It would mean I had to let the characters "be seen speaking" without the sound, and then ad the screens with the text. And i'm not very good at writing dialog :D
Great animation. Modelling is very good. Did you render it al in black and white? And is it quicker as a full color rendering?
I did render it in black and white but I dont think it's any quicker, the images just get saved as black and white but it still renders in color. I could be mistaken, but I didn't notice any speed-up it does save a lot of disk space though.
One thing I did notice... When igor sheilds his eyes away from the ray of light, the shadow hit no where near his eyes making the sheilding motion absolutely useless to him.
I know about that, the eyes have their own (layer) lamps. I did this to show the reaction of Igor to the entrance of the professor. It's difficult to show fear in his expression without showing the eyes. I know it's cheating, but I still think the shot is better because of it.
Naive Amoeba
14-Sep-06, 11:56
That was fantastic! My only "beef" is the shinyness of the gloves. Just a little too much..
Awesome stuff.
I updated the link to point to a new MPG version of the film, its slightly larger though 25 MB. I couldn't get it further compressed without corrupting more and more of the end. It's still a bit jerky at the end, but it plays back well if you run it from your HD. I hope you still view it in it's full glory :D
Absolutely amazing and inspiring. And congratulations on your graduation.
Haha, i really liked it.
Felt sorry for Igor when he was cowering next to the drawbridge.
Vassilios
16-Sep-06, 08:29
Great Short Animation!
Igor looks like Quasimodo a little!
I like the Textures on the Voltage Panels!
Great Shadows and dark horror Ambient and Music!
also the Story is Great and very good Animatic!
In the end you see the hand comes out....so this means he is a life...so the story continious or not!????
you can make a Trilogy....3 Shorts of 5 minutes "Asylum"!
Welcome to the gallery. You deserve it.
BgDM
Welcome to the gallery. You deserve it.
BgDM
Oh cool, I didn't see the post was moved :D
Thanx
Wow! Love the look of it. The charactors don't need to talk - it's clear enough what they're saying. Give that musision some prase as well - the score really brings it together. One small crit - where igor brings down the bed on the anti-francanstien's foot it's not to clear that that's what he does.
btw - what does imo mean?
NodeRanger
19-Sep-06, 12:14
has a lot of german expressionism to it, i.e. nosferatu, der golem, etc.... you did this all by yourself? what an insane amount of work. how long have you been working on it?
some of your textures really pop in black and white, I loved the electric brushed-metal box at the beginning, the way you deformed it. great work.
Hey MadMesh, it's a really cool anim! You can easily win with this one at the bconf ;). You made it at the university of eindhoven?(Dutch too here). I agree at the eyes thing where he tries to cast shadow on his eyes. But I understand your reason ;). I like the body movements, you can see them breathing etc. But I think the 'patient' face looked too static. The rest was super, top job! Hope to see you at the bconf.
BackiZ
has a lot of german expressionism to it, i.e. nosferatu, der golem, etc.... you did this all by yourself? what an insane amount of work. how long have you been working on it?
some of your textures really pop in black and white, I loved the electric brushed-metal box at the beginning, the way you deformed it. great work.
My paper on the project covered German expressionism, I'm glad it shows :) I started on the project in February 2006 and finished it on August 15. The first two months were concepts and storyboards, the rest production. Only the music score was done by another student, the rest is my blood swaet and tears :D.
Hey MadMesh, it's a really cool anim! You can easily win with this one at the bconf ;). You made it at the university of eindhoven?(Dutch too here). I agree at the eyes thing where he tries to cast shadow on his eyes. But I understand your reason ;). I like the body movements, you can see them breathing etc. But I think the 'patient' face looked too static. The rest was super, top job! Hope to see you at the bconf.
BackiZ
I graduated at the HKU (Hogeschool voor de Kunsten Utrecht). (http://fac-kmt.hku.nl/hku/show/id=50386) The role of the patient in the film was minor to the Professor and Igor so he had less shape keys and a simpler rig, I had to cut corners :rolleyes: i know.
Wow! Love the look of it. The charactors don't need to talk - it's clear enough what they're saying. Give that musision some prase as well - the score really brings it together. One small crit - where igor brings down the bed on the anti-francanstien's foot it's not to clear that that's what he does.
btw - what does imo mean?
A lot of people have a problem with that part, its a scene that got changed a lot in the film. The idea is that Igor sabotages the chair by overloading it, he turns up the voltage. Then when the lightning strikes, the lab explodes. On the second strike the tower colapses when the Professer runs up. I agree it's confusing, the concept of sabotage in the scene isn't clear enough.
omg that was amazing. 2 thumbs up, although I saw some minor problems this was a great vid. I am liking it.
Good esthetism with the ambiant and B&W, great short!
Very cool 4**** from me -
Inspiring work.
Well done.
Amazing stuff, plays smoothly on MPlayer Ubuntu.
The sabotage stuff was lost on me, I assumed Igor had squashed the Doctor's foot - it makes sense in retrospect.
Wanted Bob
15-Oct-06, 19:13
Truly Awesome Stuff!!!
Loved it, and congrats on the graduation!
great! i love the black/white-style
DevinKell
12-Nov-06, 11:21
Hm, I never experienced any jerkyness.. I loved this film! Bravo... something I hope to accomplish one day.
How long did it take you to render this film? And how long have you been working with blender?
Great Job!
How long did it take you to render this film?
The whole project took me 7 to 8 months to complete, about 2 months concept work; storyboards, script and concept art. The rest was production work. I'm not sure how long the rendering took al together but most frames 1024 X 576 rendered in 2 minutes. Almost al the renderings were done on one PC, my own.
And how long have you been working with blender?
I started with Blender 1.65 in 1999 I think. I have been using Blender professionally up untill version 2.25 just about when it went Open Source. From that point on I used Maya a lot. When Elephants Dream came out and al the new features from project Orange were implemented I started using Blender again.
MadMesh
DevinKell
13-Nov-06, 07:20
One thing I did notice... When igor sheilds his eyes away from the ray of light, the shadow hit no where near his eyes making the sheilding motion absolutely useless to him.
Yeah I noticed that too, the shadow is on his mouth...
Felt sorry for Igor when he was cowering next to the drawbridge.
So did I. Congratulations on a job well done
JCTiger
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