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Tuesday, September 23, 2008

THE OTHER EDEN

I made this film at RIT to gain the last six credits I needed to graduate.

Since I had only ten weeks to complete it, I used after effects. THE OTHER EDEN is my first paperless movie; and I thank Professor Chris Jackson for helping me learn this excellent program.

I wanted to do something like Frederic Back's CRAC! which was rendered beautifully in pencil, and I think that the shot with the polar bears comes closest to the look. I can only wish that I could do a film that is as amazing as Back's work, but this is sufficient for what turned out to be eight weeks' work. The "pencil" rendering was actually done with the program's 'hair' filters, put in 3D, rotating at high speed in different directions. And I used Photoshop to create all the original artwork. Though it is flat artwork most of it is actually working in the third dimension.

Chris Jackson said that I was using the program in a manner that hadn't been originally intended, and that this was a good thing.

So here it is.

9 comments:

deniseletter said...

Hi again friend,As you learn Adobe After Effects,Were step did you feel is more easy to use?
Regards

Brett W. McCoy said...

That's beautifully done. I'd love to see it at full resolution sometime. Good music choice, too.

Nancy said...

Hi Denise, I don't understand your question.

AE is a vast improvement over FLASH; it is even better now in the new edition (you can make 3D jointed puppets.)

Nancy said...

Thanks, idragosani. I wanted something funereal, with 'hymn' overtones; luckily for me the Unique Tracks site had a nice recording ofBizet's L'ARLESIENNE for sale. I edited out the slower sections with Audacity and just used three repetitions of the theme.
I grew up 'with an orchestra' since my father was a professional musician, and I was exposed to all types of music at a very early age. This definitely has helped me as an animator.

JPilot said...

Beautiful film Nancy. As for "L'Arlesienne" de Bizet, it threw me back to elementary school, with my teachers from France who turned this music into a Christmas song about the 3 wise men. We had to sing it at Christmas every year. And for some reason, they had these wise men travel by train to see the newborn savior...all it needed was a disco beat.

To the tune of L'Arlesienne:

"De bon matin
J'ai rencontre le train
De trois grand rois
Qui partaient en voyage..."

deniseletter said...

Thanx to read my question,Pardon for my english I struggle to improve it.
Another question about this subject.Now you mention Flash and AE.If I want to do full animation 2D.Which one is more easy to operate?
Which command is for scanning drawings?
Also I stumbled and see other 2 videos."Your feet's too BIG"
and "The way of the Mantis",I was astonish for the effects on this last animation(It was AE or Flash?)

Greetings:-)

Nancy said...

After Effects is much easier to use than Flash.
All artwork is created in Photoshop or imported directly into AE from other programs.

THE WAY OF THE MANTIS was a senior project created by two of my RIT students, Jed Mitchell and Joe Daniels. It is done in MAYA. Joe and Jed made a plug in that allowed Joe's brush work to follow the movements of the computer generated figure. It's something like the effect in the "Lorenzo" short that Disney did a while back, only the two students spent about $500.00 on their version!

Nancy said...

Thanks, Jean. I never knew what to make of this film, since I produced it so quickly. I think that the online exposure is the best place for it, since it only was accepted into two film festivals out of the ten I sent it to (including the late Ottawa festival)
Oddly enough it did not even get into an enviro fest in Toronto. Possibly because it did not have a happy ending?

Simon W-H said...

Funny, as I watched it I thought it was like watching a dream...and then you announced it as a nightmare at the end! Lovely what you can do with AE, can that be combined with traditional 2D?