philnolan3d Posted December 28, 2014 Report Share Posted December 28, 2014 For the past couple of months I've been working on a contest set up by the author D.W. Jackson. The contest was basically to make a video promoting one or more of his books. A group of judges (YouTubers) will choose the top 10 videos and from those 10 a winner will be drawn at random. The prize is a trip to Japan including flight, hotel for a week, and $500 spending money. The video did not have to be animated so I suspect the majority of entries will be just someone standing in front of a camera. However I went ahead and made an animation, plus a little video and then behind the scenes for the animation. So, does this make you want to read his book? 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Advanced Member Denis Posted December 28, 2014 Advanced Member Report Share Posted December 28, 2014 Good work Phil. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
philnolan3d Posted December 28, 2014 Author Report Share Posted December 28, 2014 Good work Phil. Thanks! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Contributor Tony Nemo Posted December 28, 2014 Contributor Report Share Posted December 28, 2014 Good luck! The "behind the scenes" part will be helpful to others. Small niggle: those aren't apple leaves. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
philnolan3d Posted December 28, 2014 Author Report Share Posted December 28, 2014 Thanks! Good point about the leaves. I didn't even think of that. I only had one leaf texture so that's what I used. One kind of strange problem with this project was that the main character is named Mark, but somewhat early in the book he changes his name to Thad. So the question was what to call him in the video. Thad makes more sense but it might confuse the viewers if they go read the book later. Another question was if I used Thad how is it pronounced? Like Tad or with a TH sound like "that". Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Contributor TimmyZDesign Posted January 8, 2015 Contributor Report Share Posted January 8, 2015 Another cool video Phil! I hope you win the paid trip to Japan! I'll be flying out to Taiwan for my sister-in-law's wedding next summer, and we might might visit Japan too while we are out there. I've always wanted to visit Japan someday, especially one of the big cities like Tokyo. I'll bet there are a lot of interesting places to visit there. Anyways, I'm interested to know which compositing software you were using, and what was that "tree-growing" software you used? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Contributor Tony Nemo Posted January 8, 2015 Contributor Report Share Posted January 8, 2015 Check out Kyoto and Kamakura for great historical stuff. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
philnolan3d Posted January 8, 2015 Author Report Share Posted January 8, 2015 Thanks guys I think I'd go to Tokyo, maybe with one day out in the outskirts. Partly because there's a big annual meet up of YouTubers that I'd love to meet during the Tokyo hanami (cherry blossom viewing). Also partly because my Japanese isn't very good and Tokyo would have the most English. Some kind of annoying news though, the final judging had been pushed back to Valentine's Day because they received 141 video entries when they expected 50 or so, so there just isn't enough time for the judges to properly watch them all by the 15th of this month. All of the modeling was done in LightWave and 3D-Coat. (plus a couple 3D scans and the characters from Poser) The tree was a LightWave plugin called DP Verdure. I did a tutorial on it below. The growing aspect is a feature of the plugin. All of my editing and compositing was in HitFilm 2 Express. it's a great program because it feels just like they took Premiere and After Effects and mashed them into one program. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Advanced Member alvordr Posted January 8, 2015 Advanced Member Report Share Posted January 8, 2015 Really good job, Phil! I love the amount of work you put into it and the "making of" portion helps viewers appreciate that. The only critique I have is that the animations are very linear, but otherwise, nice work! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Contributor TimmyZDesign Posted January 8, 2015 Contributor Report Share Posted January 8, 2015 Thanks for the info Phil! Lightwave is so awesome, I'm really impressed by it, and that tree plug-in just makes it even better! I'd also forgotten about Hitfilm, it looks like a nice alternative to After Effects. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Advanced Member alvordr Posted January 8, 2015 Advanced Member Report Share Posted January 8, 2015 I had not even heard of HitFilm, until now. Thanks. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
philnolan3d Posted January 10, 2015 Author Report Share Posted January 10, 2015 Really good job, Phil! I love the amount of work you put into it and the "making of" portion helps viewers appreciate that. The only critique I have is that the animations are very linear, but otherwise, nice work! Yeah I'm not a very good character animator. Plus I only had my spare time to work on this whole thing. Thanks though! I had not even heard of HitFilm, until now. Thanks. I first tried HitFilm last year when they were briefly offering it for free. I think I even posted here telling people about it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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