Trailer for fmx/08

[Oliver]

Hi there,
the trailer for fmx/08 is online.
Just to even pre-lower your expectations - it's nothing techically challenging, great design or amazing humour... just a small LW student project, the last in Germany it seems... sorry - feeling a little melancholy.
"Herbstlaub" was part of my diploma projects. When they selected it for this years trailer I essentially made another clip completely from scratch - the one on this web site:

http://fmx.de/E.15.html compression artifacts... ahem... :o
Bigger version: http://193.196.129.35/fmxtrailer/08/big.mov

Please check out the other Trailers (05-07) as well! It's all co-student work of teams of 2-4 people... and I guess most of you know the last year's trailer... :)

Some info:
The original film was 3 minutes and was done in 2 or 3 weeks (without concept - pure panic production - wanted my own diploma film), this clip is a minute - and took me almost 4 weeks. Partly because remixing the soundtrack and finding a new 'storyline', but mostly because of redesigning elements that will look somewhat cool in 3D. Also having a sort of client helps in adding re-render time...
There will be a 3D focused special day, where the 3D version will run.
I loved this project, since I learned a lot. For example - rendering just strokes can take an impressive amount of time; adding the nice PRBlur does not help in reducing the rendertimes; the results look gorgeous in HD in a cinema; people still like acapella; I can sing... sort of :D - fortunately for you the current audio track features a temp bass singer; you get awards for stuff like that!
When I'm finished with my remaining diploma project (hopefully middle of may, will post some final images in a few weeks) I'll setup my demoreel. It's not full of strokes...

Greets.
Oliver.

[Limbus]

Very nice.

Cheers, Florian

BTW: will NewTek be a the FMX this year?

[lxo]

Great movie,
looks like snippy but powerful.
Very nice soundtrack

[esinfografia]

Interesting and enjoyable Oliver


I think it is an interesting mix between image and music. Certainly very good music.


my online portafolio: www.esinfografia.net (http://www.esinfografia.net/)

[Ztreem]

Simple but effective, I love it. The music and graphics goes hand in hand, very well done!

[Oliver]

Thanks! I'm happy that some of you like it. :)
Florian, I don't think Newtek will be there - Ben and William were here (3 years ago, if I remember correctly), but that was the last sign of anything Newtekkian...
Seems they are the only company missing: http://fmx.de/E.131.html#main

Greets.
Oliver.

[Lightwolf]

Thanks! I'm happy that some of you like it. :)
As I told you when I first saw it... it sucks :D Nah, I still like it a lot... Congratulations on getting it to be the trailer.
Seems they are the only company missing: http://fmx.de/E.131.html#main

Hehe, even we're there ;)

Cheers,
Mike

[Boris Goreta]

Looks technically challenging to me. How did you do it ?

Fantastic ! Great ! :dance:


Please share a few guide points on how to grow stuff like that or render them fat lines ? :stumped:

[eDuso]

Very nice ;)

[Oliver]

Looks technically challenging to me. How did you do it ?
Please share a few guide points on how to grow stuff like that or render them fat lines ? :stumped:

Well, for the original film I used bands of polygons and cylinders, but for this clip I wanted a homogeneous way. So I just made strings of 2 point polys (1 point polys for the dots - amazing that it is easier to animate points in LW than in After Effects). Some are animated with bones (the first, single one has 128 to stay smooth in HD - a 3D-bezier curve or a spline would have been better :o). Morphs were used for the tunnel, simple geometry for the circles, SG_Fertilizer for the stars/curtain-thing. Morphs again for the jazzy passage and cloth (fixed endpoints animated with bones) for the last... flower thing. I liked the idea that you could only understand depth by movement and shading (depth fog) but not by the thickness of the strokes. I even wanted to ignore the shading, but for the 3D version it would have resulted in too 'complex' images - you just need the additional information of what is before/behind what, I think because of the simplicity of the visual information. Of course the elements are not animated in one scene - each is rendered separately. And that's it... :)
I'm really more proud of the music. We met for some months once a week in our presentation room to sing for fun (and annoy other co-students), and I thought "I just want a way to remember the fun we had". So I gathered the guys one last time. The basic tune was developed in a more or less drunk fashion on two guitars and then shown to Philipp, the composer (thank god there are mobiles that can record stuff). I asked him to adapt it to a acappella piece (and he did more than that - it were just some chords) and he was ok with not treating the voices in any way - what was wrong, stayed wrong. But the best thing was the look on the faces of the diploma auditors. Normally you have to get projects accepted, a lot of official stuff. Of out 4.5 years of studies, 1.5 - 2 years are for our diploma projects. And there I stood with a project 3 weeks ago nobody ever had heard of sung by a choir nobody knew about - and they loved it! :thumbsup:

Greets.
Oliver.