[XyllyX]

Okay...I have this sort of loony idea. I figured, "lets run the thing up the flagpole and see who salutes it".

What if we were to have a group collaborative effort on a movie? We certainly have the resources: Blender and GAP to handle the animation. Gimp and maybe Inkscape for textures, Audacity for sound, if we want it. (or we could just do speech bubbles if we don't).

What I am thinking of is something simple, most probably with cutout animation, but perhaps handled with armatures/shape keys in Blender, rather than something with full blown 3D animation. This would keep things simpler for people of varying skill levels to collaborate on, and be faster to produce, but be easier and probably faster than trying to do the whole thing in GAP.

Some of us could handle the creation of characters, (which could either be drawn or perhaps rendered from photographs...the CC area of flickr would be a good resource for this) others could take care of the animation aspects of things. If we did sound, then we might have those who could maybe do voices or other sound effects. People who perhaps didn't want to contribute in those areas could maybe contribute "computer time" by handling the rendering of different scenes. They could download .blend files (along with suitable instructions) and run the anmation rendering on their computers (test animations could be done by the animators at low res/quality) and upload the completed frames into a central repository, perhaps onto a "group account" created on ImageOx for that purpose. Same thing for textures, etc. A box.net account could be created for sharing .blend files, sound files, test animations, etc. Griatch's chat room might also be a useful resource.

Timewise, I think 'twould be best to keep it under 10 minutes at say 15 frames per second (be nice to go with a higher rate, but maybe best to start out with the minimum). 10 minutes a 15 fps would be 9000 frames of animation. We could upload the finished product to someplace like YouTube. We could also maybe make all the files, etc. available under the Creative Commons license.

As for a script...I dunno. We could maybe throw around some ideas and come up with something. I do have an idea, just as an example: Use some sort of existing folk tale of some kind, something that wouldn't be encumbered by any sort of copyright, etc, but would be "ready made". I was thinking (don't laugh....) maybe something along the lines of "The Three Billy Goats Gruff", but updated for the new millenium. These would be like "urban billy goats", livin' in "da hood". Maybe they are on their way to school, maybe their mother has sent them to the store for some "billy goat chow" ...whatever. Anyway, they have cross an overpass and there is this mean homeless billy goat or troll --if you want to be traditional (or bully...or gang of militant chickens...I dunno...whatever) who wants to steal their Nike-Air tennis shoes (hey, it could happen...). ("but gee, Mr. Mean Homeless Goat...my tennis shoes are too small for you...my brother will be along in a few minutes...and his tennis shoes are MUCH bigger than mine..." Homeless Billy Goat: :"Oh yeah? Do they have any of those LED's that flash when ya stomp in 'em. I tink doze are kewel...")

(...later...on his cell phone... "Yeah, look, Vinnie, its me, Frankie...you know that crazy guy who lives under the overpass on 53rd? Yeah, he was hassling me, wanted to steal my shoes, fer Pete's sakes. Can you believe this garbage? Ennyway, I fed him a line about my bigger brother coming along...could ya maybe get ahold of Big Louie? Yeah... we'll give the guy a bit of a scare...") ....if the goats were like "new yawk goats"...they could be the three billy goats Gruffitti or somesuch. Or how about some other ethnic goats? Give 'em long, dreadlocky type hair. "I be the leetlest beely gote, mon, whatchu want?" O, perhaps even more interesting, mix them up, maybe they are all adopted, foster children type goats from different backgrounds, living with this old, kindly Nanny Goat.

...anyway, nothing violent or offensive (hopefully), just sort of tongue in cheek humor. Something along those lines, and we wouldn't necessarily need to use the above scenario, it's just an example. The above idea could be fleshed out a bit more. You could have a bully that takes lunch money instead of shoes... All sorts of possibilites. The characters wouldn't even necessarily need to be goats (tho that might make things more interesting.

Perhaps the whole thing is a nutty idea. I realize that something like this would be no small effort and would perhaps take some considerable amount of time to accomplish (if the final result were to be of any quality...) On the other hand...think of how much we might learn doing something like this (even if we don't really succeed at it...)

[Griatch]

It's a fun idea, and I actually like the idea of a 10-minute fun short, including the faerie-tale theme!
In fact, I would recommend even shorter. 3 minutes is long enough for a first try.

I can't say if I will have time to participate much, but at least I know this much: the script comes first, then the storyboard. And concept sketches to establish the style and theme of the thing. Not until after that is it time to start hitting Blender/GAP/whatever to create the production quality imagery. Very important to remember.

With a collaborative project it's very easy for everyone to run off starting to make the things they think is fun. Without a common theme, style and clear feel for the scenes and shots needed (what background graphics will be needed? All done in 3D, or movement against a hand-drawn background canvas?),it will not be possible to maintain a consistent feel through-out the short, tongue-in-cheek or not. Also, full democracy won't work. Also in a collaborative project you need to have a director or small group of directors, someone who has the last say on things to go into the movie in the end -- sounds like you have that job spelled out for you. ;-)

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Griatch

[Afrochicken14]

Hmm...sounds interesting. This would definetely advertise GIMPtalk well. But as far as working collaboratively, we'd need alot of people who're good at this kind of stuff, dealing with 3D movement, background creation/rendering, etc.

In order for it to go off without a hitch, job assigning would definetely be needed, and probably one...big leader will be in charge of it all. This, being your idea, would probably fit.

Also, we'll need ourself a script that's both fun to work on but not too complicated to do. That, probably, wouldn't be too much of a problem, but stuff like this takes a bit of time to get a script completely right. Sometimes, people don't even come up with a good enough script until they've actually started animating. So first, probably would need to come up with one central idea, then work off of that.

And as for the characters, what did you have in mind? Like how much detail, whether 8-Bit or Photoshop worthy, it'd be good to start off from there and work our way from there.

Kthxbai.

[Phyro_gp]

It sounds cool but....I dont have GIMP anymore..

Even If I did I wouldnt have the patience

[XyllyX]

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I can't say if I will have time to participate much, but at least I know this much: the script comes first, then the storyboard. And concept sketches to establish the style and theme of the thing. Not until after that is it time to start hitting Blender/GAP/whatever to create the production quality imagery. Very important to remember.

Yup....and if we wanted to have sound in the thing.. you actually record a sort of "scratch" sound track before you start animating, just to get an idea of the timings. As for me directing...not necessarily. I hate being in charge of things. I just like coming up with the ideas. However, if nobody else would be willing to do it, I could.

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All done in 3D, or movement against a hand-drawn background canvas?

Not 3D. Cutout animation of a sort. In other words, largely flat, tho one could do old disney style multi-level shots. Even tho Blender is a 3D application, it could be used for a 2D animation setup and you would have a considerable degree of control with this. At least two people on blenderartists.org are doing this. Think of an animation style like SouthPark (which I have never seen..but they did it with cutout animation) or the Blue's Clues kids show, or Angela Anaconda.

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Also, we'll need ourself a script that's both fun to work on but not too complicated to do. That, probably, wouldn't be too much of a problem, but stuff like this takes a bit of time to get a script completely right.

I think that is doable. And it would be better to have something beforehand, otherwise people are gonna get frustrated and we would end up with a mess. Story boarding is a good idea...I personally can't draw very well.. but you can get by with stick figures. You just need something to lay out the shots and see how everything fits together. Often what is done is to get the scratch soundtrack done, then create a sort of dummy movie using the storyboard to fill in scenes as you go, then as you complete different stages of animation, you replace the storyboard shots with actual animation footage.


Example of cutout style animation.

Using Blender to do 2D stuff would also speed up the workflow, since everything would probalby be fairly flat, with the possible exception of multi-level shots.

Backgrounds could be hand drawn or simply photomaniped stuff obtained from the web or even Gimptalk users with access to digicams.

And yes, you would want to be consistent in how things look.

Timewise, ten minutes would be the outside limit.

@ Afrochicken14

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And as for the characters, what did you have in mind? Like how much detail, whether 8-Bit or Photoshop worthy

That would depend on how many people are interested and what sort of story we end up with. We would probably wanna keep things pretty simple. However, if we used "cut up photographs" for most of it or at least for the characters, then some of that would take care of itself.

[Lowfire]

coowl! only think is i suck in animation =P

[XyllyX]

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only think is i suck in animation

Did you do your avatar? That one is pretty cool... but, if you do suck (and exactly why do you think you do?), not everybody would have to do the actual animation. And who knows, maybe you might learn a trick or two. That is part of the fun of something like this, being able to perhaps learn some skills one might not otherwise have learned.

[Griatch]

Character animation is an art all in itself. But I guess one could get around that if using, as you say, a southpark-inspired style (that is, extremely iconic). It's not a bad idea, and much easier to plan and administer style-wise. There is still a need for a story board, but not as extensive as a more advanced movie (only one camera angle, and camera slides only sideways and possibly with parallax scrolling (is that what you mean about "multi-level" shots) most of the time).

Maybe using cut-out photographs would help involve more people, since more can do it I suppose. But it's also a very distinct style which clashes with almost all other more artistic stykes. For a consistent feel, backgrounds would have to be done in cutouts too and so on. Not sure it appeals to enough people to fit a community project, but I don't know.

I'm not sure how one would operate Blender in 2D-mode ... just using flat planes to build objects, forcing the camera to move only in one plane? Guess it could be doable, and less work than one might think.

I get a vision of having the camera rotate around the flat imagery matrix-style at some point ... ;-)
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Griatch

[Flying Penguin]

Hey, this is a good idea! I know nothing about animation in blender - but I do know a few things in Flash MX. And I could also try to come up with characters.

[XyllyX]

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But I guess one could get around that if using, as you say, a southpark-inspired style (that is, extremely iconic). It's not a bad idea, and much easier to plan and administer style-wise.

Exactly. Keep it simple, that way perhaps more people might want to get inovlved. Full blown 3D would be very intimidating, not to mention the amount of render time that would be involved. I think flat plane 2D stuff would render much faster. No shadows (or very minimal) to worry about (and possibly those just hand painted in and maybe animated in GAP where needed). Not only that but there wouldn't be the huge amount of effort that would be required for 3D animation of characters. You just point the camera at a plane, put a hemi light at the same spot as the camera and point it at the plane. You could either have the background directly in Blender, or perhaps render the characters against an alpha background and then drop a background in behind them with GAP (which gives a bit more control, since the texture is viewed directly and not illuminated by a light in Blender). Camera moves kept to a mininum, if there are any camera moves at all. However, you can still use Blender's armature system, even in two dimensions, which would be very advantageous for posing and animating things. Not to mention that you could use Shape Keys, again in two dimensions for things like mouths, eyes and whatnot. You could still have a fair amount of detail in things. You might not need to be as simplistic as SouthPark. Also remember, you would have the advantage of being able to "project" things onto planes in Blender and use alpha in textures, so you could have a fairly complex texture on a really simple object. You could also even perhaps create a sort of faux 3D look to things using bump mapping in Blender. You could also use animated textures in Blender, which might have some interesting possibilites as well.

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I get a vision of having the camera rotate around the flat imagery matrix-style at some point ... ;-)

Interesting...that is something I had considered as well.

[XyllyX]

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but I do know a few things in Flash MX.

That might or might not be useful. That is a proprietary software, right? I think it would be best to do this with open source stuff.

[Gus]

To be honest, we should use your Mr Potato story, that rocked and it could ahve a kinda creature comfortstheme to it(if you have seen Creature Comforts, it's a Uk thing where they interview different animals)

[linkmasta23]

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maybe something along the lines of "The Three Billy Goats Gruff", but updated for the new millenium. These would be like "urban billy goats", livin' in "da hood". Maybe they are on their way to school, maybe their mother has sent them to the store for some "billy goat chow" ...whatever. Anyway, they have cross an overpass and there is this mean homeless billy goat or troll --if you want to be traditional (or bully...or gang of militant chickens...I dunno...whatever) who wants to steal their Nike-Air tennis shoes (hey, it could happen...). ("but gee, Mr. Mean Homeless Goat...my tennis shoes are too small for you...my brother will be along in a few minutes...and his tennis shoes are MUCH bigger than mine..." Homeless Billy Goat: :"Oh yeah? Do they have any of those LED's that flash when ya stomp in 'em. I tink doze are kewel...")

lol, anyways i've been wanting to try inkscape and gap. if you need any sort of layer animations i'm your guy :w:

also i can do a lot to sprites just give me one and i go wild XD the secret is sectioning the body parts which is something i have perfected over the months i've had gimp and used it for animations

[Afrochicken14]

Well, as far as animating so far, I guess I've done an okay job with that. So far, I've figured out moving backgrounds, and a bit of using text, so this doesn't seem like an impossible job. But we're definetely gonna need a lot of people to work on this to get this right. I suggest we start distributing jobs now if you're serious about this.

[XyllyX]

Okay...as far as "the Potato" goes...I kinda have other plans for him, plus I would like to see at least some general consensus on a story line, not necessarily something I have cooked up.

As for distributing jobs, yes, that is something that needs to be done, however, I think, as has been mentioned previously, we need to have some things nailed down first, like a story, and a script, etc. I suppose I could come up with a story line and write a script, but even if I did, I would like to have other's input on the thing. Then we would again, want to do some sort of story board and kinda block out the shots. Would we want to have sound? If so, then we'd probably want to make some sort of scratch sound track first so we have some idea of the timing of the animation. It is supposedly easier to animate to a soundtrack than to try to fit a soundtrack to an animation. I think it would be cool to have sound, but it does add another layer of complexity to things, not to mention the time involved. We would have to find people to do the different parts, then assemble them together into a continuous track. I have no experience with doing that, but I believe Audacity is capable of such a thing. Once we have a track, we basically know how long the animation is and how long each scene is gonna be, then we know how many frames we have to produce to match the soundtrack.

I have done some preliminary tests with some simple shapes and Blender armatures. I will try to post a simple example of what I have in mind and we can see what people think. The armatures would make things pretty easy and you can have Blender render the character movement against an alpha background, then we could use GAP to just "drop in" a background (animated or not) behind the characters.

This thing could end up being a magnificent flop, but on the other hand, I think, flop or not, we would learn a lot from it.

So it sounds like Afrochicken and linkmasta want in...Lowfire? ....Gus? ...Flying Penguin? Are you on board, too?

[curly haired boy]

i'll do what i can. this sounds like a lot of fun. :l: :l:

[linkmasta23]

yeah i'm in

[XyllyX]

Okay...does anybody have any story ideas they want to put forward?

[XyllyX]

I just had a thought. How about we schedule a "chat event" to discuss this whole thing? What would be a good date/time for everybody? I am free most evenings (I live in Indiana, same time zone as Indianapolis), tho this coming week I might not be available very much.

[Griatch]

Weekends are usually a good idea for chat events, you will have to find a CET time that suits as many as possible. I'll make sure the bot is ready for you. :-)
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Griatch