New guy saying HI with his early works

Hi there,
I have been inspired by all of the great film makers that have contributed Fan Films that I have seen here on the TFN site.

So I now find myself on a journey to see how well I can do.

I have a page that shows off everything I've done so far: Click here.

Please feel free to make comments on my (admittedly early) works, either here or on the forum provided.

BFN,
David

 

Another Dave G. on the boards

Worlds are colliding.

 

First video: Respectable, but the movements are rather choppy at times- understandable if it's 15 fps. Also, the light seemed to have a real hard time staying where it should be next to the hilt.

Second video: I can easily see artifacts from the masking, but that's to be expected with your video resolution. Nice sounds in there for added effect, and the matching seemed much better. However, it was choppier still, and looked like a bad attempt as slow motion.

Third video: the types of lfares used for the hilts didn't work, as I still saw artifacts. I don't mind thm for contact flashes, but they bug me at emitters. Sometimes it looked like a blade that should be behind was suddenly in front of you, and the masking when it was behind you ranged from good to bad. Also, I don't know if it's just the prop, but the saber seemed very convex, almost as if you were waving a bow around (not "bo", "bow"). When you were flourishing, the sound got very repetitive. It also lasted to long. LOL at the ending, though.

Fourth video: I love Terragen, but when using it and moving, never let the camera see the edge of your map, where it just ends. Also, it looked like you had to bump up the rendering quality from medium, at least in the second and fourth segments- sometimes it dissapeared, and it was all very "pixel-y", especially the land. The fourth was especially terrible in this regard. Nice music choice. Gaa! Your camera went through the land! Your terrain, however, was great, something I'm still working on. Oh, and you're welcome.

Fifth video: I don't do 3D animation, so I can't comment.

Sixth video: I'm sure it was easier, but again it looked to have a tough time sticking to the hilt, and sometimes the transition from regular blade to fanning blade wasn't that smooth. Might be the choppiness of 15 fps again, though.

I didn't watch any more. Not bad for a beginner. Keep learning!

 

I saw the handle DaveG and thought at first I was on the wrong forum.


<----posts under the name "David G." on another message board.

 

Thanks for the feedback.

Unfortunately it's the way I learn, that once I get to a point with these little films and I see a mistake I don't go back to fix it. Theses are my exercises, so I leave the mistakes to remind me what I did wrong and not to get bogged down in one project. I just remember all my mistakes and try to do better next time.

If I can be forgiven for blaming my tools, I think a lot of my rotoscoping problems stem from using the webcam (plus I'm not exactly the world's greatest free-hand artist either). Having done a lot of frame by frame rotoscoping, I have seen some really weird shapes created as the prop-blade fans out, so when I've rotoscoped I've tried to be faithful to what the webcam picked up, rather than draw what it should have looked like. So I'm really looking forwards to getting my DV camera to see if I'm right about this.

If anybody tried to download the clone video, you'll have got a 404, but that's repaired now so you all can go and have a look at that one now.

Thanks for all the interest, and I would be really happy if a few people keep going back to visit my page and see what new stuff I come up with, and then you can tell me where I'm going wrong and what I'm doing right