Planet Blender

Starting up: Sebastian and Sergey arrived
Tears of Steel - 2012-03-02 17:51:31

Two team members arrived safely today. The studio is looking like it’s being used again, so cool :)

Friday Hangout: Do you make money with Blender?
BlenderNation - 2012-03-02 17:03:15

Howdy! Today I was wondering how many people out there are actually making some money with Blender. Is Blender part of your job, do you do freelance work or even run a business? Is Blender a small...

[read the full article on blendernation.com]

Mango: Open or Closed?
BlenderNation - 2012-03-02 15:52:19

Ton Roosendaal wonders just how much the Mango crew should share in their (almost daily!) blog updates. Do you want to be fully aware of what’s going on, or would you rather be surprised? Ton writes: In a previous post … Continue reading →

Half Life 2 Gravity Gun
BlenderNation - 2012-03-02 14:00:36

By Lino Thomas. Lino writes: I played a lot Half Life 2 the last weeks, so i decided to recreate the lovely physics gun i frequently used in this game. Because of the lack of detail in the lowpoly version … Continue reading →

Raspberry Pi
BlenderNation - 2012-03-02 11:30:40

The Raspberry Pi is a credit card sized computer that runs Linux and sells for only $35. After its announcement yesterday, 10,000 of them were sold in only a couple of hours. Here are two interesting stories involving the Raspberry … Continue reading →

Open or closed?
Tears of Steel - 2012-03-02 10:17:01

In a previous post people mentioned they’d hate it if we would give too much away here. I realize there’s a certain level of fun getting a surprise when you watch a film. However, this is also a making-of blog… so how will we balance sharing here? Here’s a couple of suggestions to promote more openess for Mango than previously for Durian/Peach/Orange.

1) Organize external help

If we want help from the outside world again, we should be able to talk about what we’re making, right? For example, we can really use help with props again (real ones and cg ones).We will have complicated vfx challenges to tackle as well – not only in smoke/fire sim and with fracture. Discussions and reviews – what to film in a studio, what to do on a film set in town, and what we’ll rely on to do “in post”- would be great to share here with an audience too.

2) There’s a lot of fun to share

We are going to talk to the costume designer, there’s going to be a casting stage – and we’d like to introduce the characters here – and we’ll do filming on public locations (and will also allow visitors on the set). We will be doing storyboading, animatics, test renders, experiments… if we have to think twice before sharing anything the threshold for posting here will get higher and it’ll result in only very few posts.

3) Low posting threshold = more involvement = less frustrating crits

I think that a higher level of openess here will also work very well for the team. During Sintel, the quite critical blog following we had was often spoiling the fun and interest to post here. We should be able to post unfinished work-in-progress here without immediately getting flooded with (constructive but) negative reactions. I think that can best be tackled by posting much more, allowing followers here to track actual progress and get involved in the process that way.

4) Process of film making is coolest thing ever!

The process of making a film is much (much!) more rewarding than watching it; even when you can only witness it from the outside. Also when you already know everything (like me), it is stil a mystery how the film will actually look or work in 6 months from now. This is a gradual process of small steps during a long period… and actually we only know if it works in front of an audience in a theatre!  Further, even though I’ve seen ED, BBB and Sintel like a 1000 times, I can still enjoy watching it. Having seen it grow and come to existence only makes watching it more interesting. Every time.

Realize that you already knew the story of a lot of movies you’ve enjoyed. Lord of the Rings, Titanic, TinTin, etc. Did it spoil the fun? Wasn’t it much cooler to watch how the filmmakers solved things in the end?

Anyway! Feedback welcome :) The team will be arriving today and tomorrow, and after next week we should together make a good decision on what to keep hidden, and what to share. Personally I think we could share much more than we did for Sintel. Just not the final edit and script itself.

-Ton-

Fantasy Characters Contest – Blend Swap
BlenderNation - 2012-03-02 10:00:27

Blend Swap has just announced a new contest on fantasy character design. Blend Swap writes: Enter our new contest!, Create an awesome, full-featured, ready for production fantasy character and win...

[read the full article on blendernation.com]

‘Viaje a la tierra del Quebracho’ Open Animation Movie
BlenderNation - 2012-03-02 06:00:14

The movie was created in MyPaint and composited in Blender. Libre Graphics World writes: Earlier this month TEMBE, a group of argentinian animators, publicly released “Viaje a la tierra del...

[read the full article on blendernation.com]

Review: Humane Rigging
BlenderNation - 2012-03-02 06:00:03

Fax on Blender did a ‘pre-review’ of Humane Rigging, the upcoming training DVD by the Blender Foundation.   Fax on Blender writes: “So what’s up with a new rigging product by...

[read the full article on blendernation.com]

Over, Under, and Elsewhere
Reyn's Blog - 2012-03-02 04:34:00

An essay by Rommel Martinez 2012-03-02 Our cunning ability for oversight is deridingly high. Whether it may be solving a problem or just trying to be creative. Our impulse to over-engineer is unusually prevalent if our initial expectations are not met. We drag our consciousness to lengths almost unfathomable because we think that if we pour in a lot of thought, the outcome is

A pretty good app for translating Italian words
Starbright Illustrations (blog) - 2012-03-02 02:11:30

This is just a little test post to see if the plugin in my blog to crosspost to Facebook is working. But just so that it isn’t too boring, I’ll tell you about my efforts to learn Italian. I’m learning it by reading a comic book, and translating as I go with a dictionary. I thought the best way to have a dicionary with me at all time was to get one as a free app for my iPod, and I was half right.

There was a pretty good app available, but not any of the free ones. None of the free dictionary apps I tried recognised any of the words, but this one at a few dollars recognises most works.

I’m Writing a Fantasy Book for Self Publishing
Starbright Illustrations (blog) - 2012-03-02 01:30:30

After reading an article in the guardian about a lady who self published a fantasy book to make enough money to buy a ticket to go see the Muppets, I’ve decided to write one too. Since then I’ve read a bunch more encouraging stories, including the top Kindle crime book, being self published. I read another interesting article about an author who raised a million dollars online, but it was on a project funding website, and the author was already well known, but I still somehow find it encouraging.

Of course I’m going to be providing the cover illustration myself, and I’ve been working on the manuscript and the digital painting for the cover at the same time. This has been a nice synergy, because the ideas I have while writing feed into the cover illustration, and at the same time the digital painting for the cover also feeds into what I’m writing.

I haven’t been able to talk about my writing project up to now, because I needed a cover image to go with my blog posts, and it has taken a long time for the cover to start looking anything like I wanted it to. It’s looking pretty good now, but it’s still a long way from completion, with every element – the main character, the dragon, the text, and the background  – needing tweaking at the very least, but I’m no longer so ashamed of it that it must remain hidden on my hard drive. I can set it free to decorate the deluge of posts I plan to unleash about my new self-publish fantasy book project.

All this writing is one of the reasons the blog has been silent for a while, but now, with a cover painting to show off with every post about the novel to be, that’s all over. I plan to write a bunch more posts about this self-publishing project, and its success or failure.

I’ve added  a ‘Flattr this!’ button for anyone with funds in Flattr, so they can encourage me to get from 60,000 words, where I am now, to 100,000 words, the planned length of the novel.