1) I had absolutely no ability or talent
2) My parents were wise in not investing a dime into my education.
3) I had some serious issues that needed be vented in the form of violent animation.
Actually I can't take credit for the story (which isn't the worst part of the whole thing and maybe not even half bad). But this is a great example of why you shouldn't model and rig your own characters if you don't know how to model, rig or animate. And if you are going to take on this set up for disaster then don't use 3DSMax's Character Studio. Actually I don't know if its any better now but just in case, just get someone that knows what they're doing. The only wise move I made in modeling and rigging these crows was that all three were the same rig with different heads. I didn't even bother making the heads a part of the body mesh. So you can see the glory that is a head intersecting through the body of a character. This isn't the only parts of geometry intersecting. See if you can spot them all! Take a look at the animation of the crows (which I was responsible for) and observe the complete lack of principles of animation. Another reason why this is a great learning tool for noobs. I also still had no idea what a pose was. (Though I happened to be a pretty good "poser"! Har har har!)
I won't dissect every performance in here as that would be very painful for all of us. Just know a gesture for every single phrase in a dialogue, not a good idea. Watch in particular 0:42-0:49. The words "Hey" "There's A" "Scared". This crow has some serious muscular spasm issues. And apparently the other two are completely dense or even deaf because he's having to sign out every word.
What I like:
Nothing like getting sharted on. Especially when it runs into your mouth. At the time this was also a very great technical achievement for the team. We were proud. Plus this probably leaves the same after taste that this film provides.What I dislike:
Meh, the violence is...ok I guess. It would have been better if each crow blew up in a stock video poorly composite way ala Rambo. There also was only one karate kick in this whole thing.
Lastly I was expecting my 4 year old son to laugh at the part in the image above. He didn't he just said it was bad. So I sent him to his room without dinner. What does he know...I should tell him he was an accident...
In Conclusion:
Are shorts fun! Yessiry! Do you learn a whole bunch? You bet son. Should you at least know the principles of animation before you begin such an adventure? Well maybe that's all a part of the learning but boy this short could have definitely benefited from a little bit of basics.
Even Spike and Mike weren't sick or twisted enough to accept this into their festival. We submitted and never heard a word back.
