Dance Macabre

Описание: This is the first animated film I ever made without assistance. It was originally just a project for my beginner's 3-d cgi animation class. This film won the "Best Animated Student Film" award in the Vision Film Festival for 2005.

This film was very experimental for me at the time. I had just learned my pencil-cel animation techniques and I was beginning to understand the basics regarding cgi. I was also just learning the program and had to kind of "roll with it" to make certain things work. A little overambitious of me, perhaps. A lot of the effects in this film I had to learn off-the-cuff, and they didn't always turn out how I liked. Looking back on it now, I cannot help but wince at a few parts, because they didn't turn out exactly how I wanted them to, and I know that I can do so much better now. Still, it's an important early work for me, and I like to think that the flaws that are so obvious to me might be overlooked by a casual audience...

The 3d parts of the movie were animated in Cinema 3d, and all of the models were constructed and textured by myself within that program, the only exception being the very best models; the skeletons, which were provided to me by a classmate, whose name I cannot recall (it has been so long), generously offered me the skeleton model he was using for his own project. The model was incomplete however; I still had to "bone" it (ha ha).

The rest of the movie was hand-drawn and animated via paper cel method. I wanted to see how well I could blend 3d cgi and paper-cel methods... however, to be honest, I was (and still am) more comfortable with the paper-cel method, and used it for certain parts that I had trouble animating in 3d.

The music is, of course, "Danse Macabre" by Camille Saint-Saens, one of my favorites. The movie did win an award, but it didn't win any money, and I made absolutely no profit from it's make.