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So I Can Post Anything Here I Want To?
Then I’m going to brag about my son. Since I’m not on twitter, this will be my outlet. He just won best in show in the Utah Digital Animation Festival for his 3D animated film, “Trashed.” Take a look if you like animated shorts — it’s only 90 seconds long.
Here is Nathan to tell you about his video:
Published in EntertainmentI made this animation for a digital media contest for high school students in Utah called “UDMAF.” (I ended up winning 1st place, which is pretty cool I guess.) For those interested in the technical side of the video, I created it using Blender, an open-source 3D animation software (because I’m a cheap high school student who can’t afford anything else). One of the hardest parts to create was the robot trash can’s mouth; the display is generated procedurally by a material I created using Blender’s node editor, which allows me to alter the mouth’s distortion, saturation, and static noise.
If anyone would like to contact me for more information or advice, my email is nriceusa@gmail.com.
P.S. Congratulations to James Lileks—you are the first person to say anything about the discrepancy with the hinge in the trash can’s lid. Realistically, garbage men would have to physically remove the trash from the robot, but I thought a hover garbage truck with a robotic arm would be cooler.
Wow! How old is he?
18 last month
I suppose the trash can could have helpfully taken its own lid off and held it to the side while it was being emptied.
Use that in the sequel!
Very cute. Well done, Nathan!
You absolutely nailed it with this observation. It was the kind of choice that a talented filmmaker makes. If it was also to save time in modeling and animating a human, then it is even more of a genius choice. Film-making and, especially, animation, requires many creative limitations dictated by time/money (same thing). Those with talent turn those compromises into wise choices.
Wonderful!!
What a treat. Thanks for sharing!
Fantastic job on the animation! Congrats on the mission call as well, he’s much braver than I was to head down to Mexico; I ended up in SoCal English speaking. Good luck to him on his mission!
Thank you!
Main Feed! Congrats to you … and your son!
No, this is a society with hover garbage trucks. energy is so cheap that they can afford to power a huge truck to hover. A society like that would surely have hinges that work as needed and separate as needed. It is not an error. :)
Congrats on state win. I just love it. I’m curious about his education. Four years of Spanish
Plus this achievement. Must be good. Blessings on the mission too.
Just a public school education, but he’s a motivated student. Davis County schools in Utah are pretty good, mostly because of high parental involvement.
Thanks for sharing! That was a pleasant pick me up! I will be kinder to my trash cans in the future! :-)
Very, very cool & clever – kudos to your son!
Agreed, it’s a key ingredient in the secret sauce that accounts for high scholastic achievement in Utah when compared to the per capita education funding in the state…
This is Nathan:
I used the Cycles render engine in Blender. I don’t know if you’re familiar with Blender at all, but Cycles uses global illumination like a lot of other professional software out there, which is pretty nice for someone who can’t afford professional software.
This is Nathan:
You’re right. The human character models actually don’t have any faces whatsoever. It’s actually a little creepy—they just have a featureless fleshy ball sitting on top of their necks. But you can’t see that in the video, so nobody needs to know that.
What a mensch!
Remember the Tom & Jerry cartoons – same approach here. The faces – or even anything from the waist up – were never shown. In fact, watching your son’s film made me think of those cartoons.
Kudos to your son for a very clever film.
Thank you, everyone, for indulging me and being so enthusiastic about Nathan’s video. Your comments really have given him a lot of confidence. Now that I know I can post here, I’ll keep you updated from time to time. Maybe I’ll even manage to write something vaguely tied to conservative politics! <3
If you keep putting up posts this good, don’t worry about the political content.
The ground level focus made me think of the adult voices in the peanuts cartoons.
I wonder if Nathan has ever been to Disney World. When I was there last year, I was fascinated by the buses. They are wheelchair accessible, and they accomplish that by deflating the tires of the bus on one side to make that side of the bus level with the curb. It was really cool to see. I asked one of the drivers about the bus design, and he told me that all of the buses were custom designed for Disney.
Loved the video. It was wonderfully warm and funny.
I thought of Peanuts too. Only the children are seen.
As noted above @mattwhite #52, Charles Schulz had a bit of success keeping the focus on the central characters by only hinting at the other characters.
Years ago, I helped an animator from another online community to make one of these demos by composing the music. She had a general idea what she wanted, but struggled to communicate it. It was sad and funny and frustrating going back and forth with themes before we were finally on the same page. The process would have been much easier face-to-face.
Yeah, most times we are thrilled to have something other than politics to talk about.
Very impressive! Hopefully good things will happen for him.
It looks like Pixar is in trouble:
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/06/how-pixar-lost-its-way/524484/
I guess he’ll have to save it or start his own mini-Pixar.
The length of the video would probably be good for local or larger advertisers.
It’s the animation. A lot of stuff to control and direct, particularly for faces, and 3D animators generally wet themselves when good things don’t happen in real time . Not that I blame them, but one does admire the greatest generation of 2D animators, content to knock out their 7200 drawings for a 5 minute picture and not complain, just drink heavily. The renderer doesn’t much care these days. Besides if it’s slow, it only means the animator has more time for heavy drinking.
Help for beleaguered push-pullers of points, edges, and polygons is on the way, it appears. And from guys at Pixar. But as noted below, it will probably be wrong for the picture at hand. (This was on another browser tab when I stumbled onto Nathan’s charmer. Hated letting serendipity go to waste.)
Well did, Nathan, well did. Watch the drinking.