Some Xenomorphs

[tmafkap]

Hi folks,

some days ago I finished this little animation in DAZ|Studio. Posted it on YouTube, so here is the link:

Xenomorphic Intervention

Well, I know that in many parts it's quite humble and full of errors, but nontheless: what do you think?

[Sanderlee]

Two+ comments:

1) It's very dark. I had trouble seeing much of anything most of the time. What I did see seemed rough (though better than anything I could do!) ... the motion of the characters, for example, seemed very stiff and slow.

1a) Camera motion was a bit choppy. Not anything like the twitch-cam of BSG or the nausea-cam of Cloverfield, but still there wasn't much sense of a narrative to what I could see.

2) Not my taste in music. Fortunately, there were no sound effects or dialogue so when I turned the volume off I didn't miss anything. Music (and sound effects) should serve the video's narrative, creating tension where appropriate. Your choice, what little of it I listened to, seemed to either a) simply be something you like to listen to, or, b) serve to provide an overall atmosphere. If b, I hate to say it, but it didn't work.

What of the animation I could see in the gloom shows promise. Raise the ambient light level a couple hundred percent and give it another go. BTW - if you're deliberately going for the Dark and Gloomy look, ask some of the big names here (Coolhand, Howard Day, Tovette, or al3d) how to rig lighting to highlight what needs to be shown while still maintaining that haunting atmosphere. Or just post a "how do I light things" question to one of the request forums.

A good rough go ... look forward to seeing more (or anything!! )

Sanderlee.

[tmafkap]

Thanks for the reply.

For lightning and ambient: I worked with three spotlights only, those are "mounted" to the characters. I didn't want to use more lights, and ambient was used in some "cuts" only. Sometimes I had to "chaet" myself in order to have some light on the characters at all.
The movement of the characters is something I'm just beginning to get into, so these were my "first steps" into that. The timing (stiff and slow you say) is something I really have to work on.
Camera movement is much more difficult than expected, and in some parts I really messed it up. Fortunately there's just one move of the camera that really hurts me when I watch it.
For the music: well, you missed something when you turned it off. Anthrax is not just one of the bands that started speed metal and crossover, they also made some of the songs for the soundtrack of John Carpenter's "Ghosts Of Mars". But, well, taste is not something to argue about. The music is not something for the atmosphere, it's more like a support for the visual - or vice versa. They work together, and my intention was to create a visual background for the sound.

Well, as my next "project" is something with jazz and a lady, so nothing about SciFi, I won't link it here. Maybe when that is done I'll do some SciFi again, maybe with some spacecraft from this page. Hope the movement of characters and camera will be more natural - or at least like we are used to from the movies - then.