What is the "Short Project"?

[GregLSullivan]

Hi Everyone,

A few years ago a challenge on Spin Quad sparked an idea in my head that would become the "Short Project". The "Short Project" is a collaborative film project with a competition twist with the goal of creating a festival worthy animated short. Like a lot of online challenges artists compete for prizes but winning entries will also go directly into the final film.

Progress on the Project's first short, 'Pocket Change' has been amazing. Now its time for Phase 6, animation.

We've got excellent sets, character designs, character models, textures, story boards and more from the first 5 phases of the project and our original score by Patrick Copeland even features Grammy winner John Popper.

Knowing animation will be the biggest phase so far I approached Tim/Aurora about having Spin Quad serve as the official community for the Short Project. There's more Lightwave talent here than anywhere and I know that this teaming will expose the most talent to the project and vice-versa. Wes and Tim graciously agreed and here we are!

For this Phase we not only have some great prizes for the artists whose work is chosen for inclusion in the short, but we also have some awesome assets for anyone who participates to play with. Not only will you get to play with our killer models but Eric Smith has arranged for every participant to get a fully functional version of Maestro 2 to use for the entire duration of the Phase.

Eric has been an amazing asset to the Project in his role as our Technical Director and you're going to love animating on his fantastic rigs.

So, head HERE to check out the prizes including a chance at a full seat of Lightwave 9, over $1000 and of course a place in the credits of 'Pocket Change'.

Head HERE to check out the rules.

Then head HERE and grab the working files.

If you aren't an animator and want to contribute in some other way, please feel free to PM or e-mail me, we can use all the help we can get.

Once we're done with animation its on to lighting and then off to the festivals!

Questions, ideas, anything else, ask in this thread.

Thanks everyone, I'm excited to see what we can come up with.

[richdj]

This is fantastic, looking forward to seeing what people come up with....

Rich

[GregLSullivan]

I'm having no luck finding the old thread that sparked this whole idea. Anyone know where the contest went where you had a to model a mantis/walrus thing from some killer character designs? I think you could win a sculpture or something like that?

[pablogrca]

This sounds good.
I read the rules, it didn't say MODS can't join. Is this true?

[GregLSullivan]

I don't see any reason that a Mod couldn't enter. The Short Project winners are selected but the production team for the Project and not by the forum mods, so I don't see any conflict of interest. So, by all means, dive in!

[paulhart]

Greg, et al,... Congratulations on getting the forums section here on SpinQuad, great move, should increase the visibility. The demo by Eric of Maestro is excellent, I have posted links to the Short Project and Eric's demo on a couple of other forum threads.
Paul

[Cesar Montero]

Lighting/Texturing volunteer at your service!
=)

[GregLSullivan]

Great to hear Cesar, I love your work! We'll probably start the lighting portion a little after we finish the first bit of animation so you lighting folk can see what you're working on.

[iaef]

I would like to know how is this going? Is it still a WIP?

[coffeebot]

Yeah, actually I'm curious too. I hope guys are still going strong. Maybe you need some light modelling done (a trash can or something to fill the void).

[GregLSullivan]

We're doing the next phase a bit differently. I think that the lack of entries in the previous rounds comes from the large amount of work involved in character animation so to encourage participation we're creating the animatic for the entire short, instead of dolling it out in parts. That way people can see the whole project in context and get excited about it. Of course creating 5+ minutes of animatic is taking me a while, but I'm working as fast as life and work allow and we'll be back in the saddle soon! Thanks for your patience and continued interest. Stay tuned.

[Tudor]

Now this looks interesting.
I will download the files, read the rules etc.
Or... as the animatic is being worked on, just wait?

[GregLSullivan]

You should definitely wait because the previous scenes for which the assets exist is already done. Feel free to download the assets and get familiar with how the scene is set up though.