Just finished my first short film, The Piano. Its a film for my second year of Digital Animation at the University of Hertfordhire. Its not 100% as off yet, need to re-animate one part of it, but the rest is all there. Thanks for the help youve given, this is my first project using Vray and certainly not my last
I set this to download and had shut down everything, ready to leave for the day, but thought I would come back to say that the animation was wonderful. Very good work. Made me think of my grandfather.
Hehe thanks guys Im really glad that you like it. Yup animation is all keyframed, and also dodgey in some areas…i wish i could have spent more time on animation but i only just reached my deadline as it was.
It was pretty straight forward actually… becuase there was always some character animation i couldnt use Incrementall Add and all that so i just used an irr map for primary bounces and quasi for second. Irradience map is on that Medium-Animation preset. I have no dome, just a spotlight and between 2 and 5 vraylight mtls on planes. Hope that clears it up
very nice job. I can tell it was a labour of love. Love the music. Sure some of the animation wasn’t up to snuff so to speak, but thats only because the idea, sense of direction was so awesome…
would love to see you redo it 5 years from now when youll be an even better artist.
I fell into the emotion you captured in this short, Very well animated. The emothion you caught when the deceased wife kissed him and the army scene… & the little Boy and the Horse. Man the music, the animation… God E-mail me so I can praise you for this work of art! mat17_01@hotmail.com
The animation dosen’t have to be top notch real life…I dont think that was the focus of this short.
Hehe im really glad you like it, feel free to email me at cybling@gmail.com with any questions.
I know the animation could be better (only really spent around 5weeks on animation), and i think that if i had more time, or someone to help, i could have made it better. But im overall happy with what ive made in the 6 months and cant wait to start my next one
Wow! I love it! This is overflowing with emotion really!
A Lot comes directly from the great music - makes me wanny play piano again! (and i will learn this piece now!) In overall your cinematography is very good. Camera, cut, pacing - it all fit’s together very nicely. I just dig in and say what i like now.
I love that you can really see him playing. He’s using the pedal (right word in english?) in the first shot and i was able to play the melody from the shot where you can see his hands playing - GREAT!
I love that when the old lady appears. He never looks at her directly but he has this dreamy look on his face. Also when she kisses him it would look totally ok if you’d just see him alone. Well done!
The Transition from the soldier scene to him playing again is very nice.
I love the shot where you can see the boys feet jumping with that horse thing; (first time) works great together with the music at that moment.
hmmm, what i don’t like?
Sometimes the Animation is a little weightless, for example where the soldier get’s shot or when the boy get’s the present. Also there could be some more subtle facial movements that would make the characters seem less cliché and more alive. Here and there the shadows are a bit harsh too (for my taste). But all that fades away cause you have totally nailed the feeling with this little piece. Wonderfully melancholic.
Hope you will keep us updated with your future work!
PS: I think it would be a good idea to give your short a more informative filename. (people will save it, search it on their hdd’s and so on) Piano_Gibbons.avi or something like that would be much better than finallarge.avi.
Thanks for the brilliant feedback, was exactly what i wanted to see to be honest. I am gonna be re-animating the shot with the boy receiving the gift at the weekend because i know its pretty weak. Im really glad you think the rest is good tho. Ive also changed the filename, that makes much more sense Cheers
