Thursday, July 5, 2007

Out of the box



Well, here it is - my newest animated video. Not only is this my first truly original work but it is also the catalyst for me starting this blog.

When I first discovered Blender, all I really wanted to do was some simple matchstick drawing animations. But here was a suite of high quality 3D and animation tools at my disposal. So, after a few weeks coming to grips with the basics (The Blender learning curve is not that steep if you have some graphics experience, an open mind and a bit of spare time to get friendly with the non-standard interface) I started on a quick and dirty animation featuring a simple, almost realistic, matchstick bouncing around on a stage, in time with a soundtrack from the late Tommy Cooper

Trivia: you can see the original matchstick on the title screen of the new video.

I had written some rough one liners for a stand-up matchstick but had no means to record them digitally as my model of G4 Mac did not come with a standard microphone input (I won't mention my angst as a result of discovering that little surprise too late to change my purchase decision). So that's as far as the project went. In the meantime I continued to investigate Blender and learn all I could about animation, 3D modelling and CG.

Two years later, in May this year, I bought a Microsoft LifeChat LX-3000 USB headset, with microphone, and it worked perfectly with the G4 Mac without any software installation. Wow! MS and Apple compatibility!

Using Audacity, an open-source audio editor, I recorded a comedy soundtrack. To complete the performance, I downloaded a bunch of audience sound files from the Freesound Project and edited these into the final audio track.

A few pencil sketches were done to develop a matchstick character and the modelling began. Two months later the video is finished and released for all to see...



Out of the box, 2007. By Andy Dolphin.
Click to play

5 comments:

Unknown said...

Georgie sent me the link.

Looks like a lot of work went into this, very impressive.

~Barb
http://www.xerraireart.com

Unknown said...

g'day
george sent it to me too
the accent needs work lol

how many hours went into it?

john

Andy said...

Hours? Hmmm. About two months, roughly two-three hours average per week-night plus an extra six or so hours elsewhere per week - I guess around 200++ hours...

Accent? Yeah, I lost it about thirty-odd years ago, unlike some members of my immediate family who shall remain nameless, John. :)

Anonymous said...

anything new andy?
Jan

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