Now, for animation!
On Monday I released my first little short in a long time, the pacing is all over the place, the concept is far from my usual fair, but I just felt like I really had to finish and release something, it had just been far too long. Its called Happy Bieberday and was originally going to be a short for xmas, unfortunately due to floods and moving it didn't quite work out that way.
Since the release of that particular short, I have gone back to work on my film project that has been dragging on for far to long, a film called The Telescope. Its about a small child that finds a telescope laying on the ground after being sent away from home by his abusive mother and this telescope acts as a portal for his imagination. I started this film back in late 2009, so the fact its still going is embarrassing, but I have made good progress the last few days, focusing mainly on filling in gaps from earlier, adding more detail to backgrounds (with place holder assets as you will see in the next two shots) and adding more animatic work to the end.
Here are some more screens just showing off some other parts of the film.
And this is what it looks like before I vector it and make it all pretty
Im not making any promises about a release date, but id really love it to be finished within the next 2 months... fingers crossed.
Alright, onto something else now.
I recently sat down to watch Spieldbergs War of the Worlds. Its been a number of years since I last watched it and seeing as one day id love to make a film based on the book by the same name (it really bares little resemblance to the Spieldberg film) I thought I would sit myself down and take some notes, on what I liked, and didn't like about the film.
Im not going to bring up the obvious stuff, like the fact the Tripods were already here and that the aliens came down in lightning bolts, that would be to easy, nor will I go on about Spieldbergs usual traps like the fact a mans video camera continues to work after everything else has been stopped by EMP and leaps in logic just to pay homage to the film from the 50's (which I will review at a later point) . Rather, my main problems were with missed opportunities to further engage the audience which are found in the book, but in none of the adaptions.
Of course this film is set in 2005 rather than 1898, technology had changed a lot, in the original novel mankind was armed only with rifles and cannons, and one naval vesel. In 2005 we had access to all sorts of advanced weaponry, which is why I suppose they gave the aliens force fields, because thats what every sci fi movie does when it wants to explain why our weapons have no effect. I guess this is one way that the films (all of them) have really deviated from the book, in the original book the army actually managed to take out a number of Tripods, using surprise attacks and playing off the fact the invaders didn't have an understanding of how all humanities technology and war tactics worked. A canon ball to the face as a tripod walks past a hill with the military hidden behind a piece of higher ground manages to take one of them out, as does the naval vessel Thunderchild, taking out a number of tripods by being unpredictable, This created hope for the reader, as you thought humanity stood some sort of fighting chance, of course the invaders were smart, and never fell for the same trick twice, crushing the readers hopes and increasing tension. In every adaption the invaders had been completely unstoppable, never showing any weakness and then just falling apart at the end. Humanity is just left in a defenseless panic and then BOOM everything works out okay. This has always bothered me.
Likewise the ending of each adaption has been completely rushed through, in the novel you have a man who believes he has lost everything, and then tries to offer himself to the invaders because he feels alone in the world, and like life is no longer worth living, this act in itself stirs emotions in the reader, you've spent the whole book with this person, you feel for them, and now they want to kill themselves. Only then is it revealed that the invaders are dead, as the narrator stands there offering himself only to find that the invader is dead, standing motionless with crows pecking at the pilots corpses.
Each of the movies just sort of rush it in, the stars of the film have pulled through this, they came out okay, and the invaders are dead, lets have a party.
Of course these are just small things and its probably just me being to much of a purist as far as the book is concerned, and I realise that written work and film are two very different mediums, and that over 100 years has passed since the books release.
There are a number of things I do like about the film, the main one of course being the design of the tripods.
And also a number of nods to the original book, such as having crows land on the tripods to show that they have lost their shields, but as a whole, after watching the film for the first time in around 3 years, I found the first 45 minutes to be as exciting as ever, but everything after the characters head into the basement is just... feels like another movie, a far less superior movie.
Personally if I could recommend one adaption it would be this one.
As for me, im going to keep doing layouts, character designs and what not while I finish up The Telescope and whatever comes up next.
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