The short film below by Savannah College of Art and Design student Jason Rayner is one of the Cartoon Brew Student Film Fest finalist, and it’s great. The short film has a solid story, and a great look. Even though the film has a distinct CG look to it, that look never takes away from the underlying story, message and overall charm of the film. Modeling was done in the open source software Blender with animations being done in Maya and post in Nuke. The result is a very, very strong student film. Every time I see what students are turning out these days, it makes me want to go back to college.
Blender
Monday Inspiration. Not So Fast.
So you wanna make a movie., but you don’t have a bunch of money. For a lot of people this would be the end of it. No money, no movie. The thing is though, you don’t need a ton of cash to make a film that looks great, tells a good story, and captivates your audience. The two Vimeo shorts below are a prime example of this. The first is “Not So Fast” by David Sandberg, a staff pick on Vimeo. The second is the behind the scenes film that show how the movie was made with a bunch of IKEA hardware and a Black Magic camera. Now, before you start saying “Oh yeah he had that killer camera, so his film looks amazing”, this could be done with any number of cameras, or probably even your phone. Sure, high dollar gear, and big budgets are nice to have, but not having them shouldn’t stop you from pursuing your goal.
Bert Simons. Art Meets Technology and Grows a Head.
Art and technology have always been intertwined. Tools like the cameraobsura, photography, camera lucida, and the computer have helped and enabled artists to push their creativity and reach new bounds. Netherlands based Artist and Designer Bert Simons is blending 3D modeling, with the art and craft of sculpture by producing 3D paper portraits of his subjects. Before you dismiss this lets take a look at his process, and if you want to try it for yourself, this is a link to one of model files.
Simons scans his subject, capturing the 3D data in Blender. He then manipulates the file into flat printable sheets, which are printed, then cut out, then hand assembled. It sounds easy, but it’s not, and the results are actually very cool. The process involves quite a bit of manipulation of the source file in Blender, including modeling, paining in textures, and developing the flattened geometry. Cutting them out and piecing them together requires patience, skill, and dexterity.
Modular 4 