Attached Link: http://www.realizestudios.com

Attention all artists, animators, actors and writers! We are looking for individuals who wish to participate in the first ever full-length animated movie done completely using Poser 4.0.3 and Bryce. The scenes will be edited in Adobe Premiere 6.0.1

This project will use only models, scenes, textures, etc. found on Renderosity and all audio will have to be created from scratch except for some sounds effects.

We currently have a rough story/script for this particular project. No details will be released yet. We need 2 writers to work together to complete and edit the existing script. The story is set in medieval times and involves several dragons and knights...and a young boy with a special book... hint hint..

If you want to be a part of this project please contact me now. All participants will have their names listed in the credits and will receive a copy of the final movie on VHS tape or DVD in return for your work.

You can use this to show off your abilities to others or just brag to your friends... would also be useful in your portfolio.

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Deadline to apply for writers is May 5th, 2002!
Animators, Voice Actors, etc. is May 25th, 2002

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What we are currently looking for....

2 Story/Script Writers

Voice actors for each character (open to anyone)

5 Animators (2 Lead animators will need a copy of Mimic)

2 Effects animators

2 Set and Background artists

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Anyone interested must be available to work on this project until it is complete. The estimated time to complete this movie is approx. 1 year. The length could vary based upon the script but should be between 45 minutes and 1 hour 30 minutes.

The project will be managed online using our website. Details will be given to you on how to access.

Communication will primarily be through email and our website. Assignments will be given to you to complete along with a due date. If deadlines are not met then it will just delay the project. So make sure you will be able to work on your assignments at least 4 - 8 hours per day. We will batch render the scenes as we get them via FTP.

AVI MOVIE REQUIREMENTS

Microsoft Video 1 Compressor (quality at 100%)
Size 800x600
24 FPS

MOVIES SHOULD NOT BE RENDERED! WE WILL RENDER ALL SCENES USING OUR ARRAY OF COMPUTERS.

Unrendered scenes (poser project files) must be uploaded via FTP to our server along with any files used to create the scenes. Include models, textures, etc. This also includes recorded audio (characters lines) which will need to be in MP3 format. We will render then edit the scenes together and master the final audio track.

Requirements:

Poser 4 and/or Bryce
Microphone and Audio software for recording
PC Computer (Mac if you can convert files)
MIMIC (lead animators only)

Internet connection (prefer broadband)

===============================================

If you are interested, contact me by email at

jeff@realizestudios.com

Please include your name, website with examples of your work (optional), email address, desiered username and password for access to our site, position desired. And please answer the following questions.

1. Why do you wish to participate in this project?

2. Are you willing to stick with your assigned tasks until they are complete?

3. Are you able to complete your tasks in a reasonable time or by a deadline?

4. Would you like to be considered for future projects?

Thanks in advance to those who participate! In order to have quality work you have to have quality people. You guys are great!

Regards,
Jeff Barnette
Realize Studios

It looks like you've planned the work flow diagram in some detail, but I didn't see any mention of compensation, other than a DVD and credits. It may take alot of creative thinking and "elbow-grease" to sell the project to promoters, distributors and other people with money, since the idea (medieval times, dragons, knights, young boy, magic book) has already been done a few times with live action/3D effects other than Bryce/Poser. But I hope you are able to complete this project so we can see what you can do.

If this is a job posting should there not be the what perspective employee might exspect? 4-8 a day? Only able to speak for myself, I would have to see alot more information. and your website being under construction doesn't give me much confidence. Your plan sounds solid, and the idea a good one. hope you get what you are looking for.

Attached Link: http://www.realizestudios.com

The purpose of this project is for a community produced animated movie. If a community such as everyone who makes up the Renderosity Poser Forums contributed to this project.. who knows what could be done. There may be 3D animated movies out there about (medieval times, dragons, knights, young boy, magick book) but how many of them has been created by a community of talented artists who don't work for a big animation company? If you look at programming/software terms, you could consider this effort as an open source animated movie. I understand that being compensated for work is a big deal. And everyone who participates will be compensated in many ways. But those who participate cannot expect a paycheck because after all, this is a community project made up of volunteers. The finished movie will be available to watch online (streaming form) and for those who wish to have a copy on VHS or DVD. They will be made available as well at the cost of duplication only. This project is also the first of many so called "open source movie" projects. Anyone wishing to write new scripts/stories are always welcome. Feel free to contact me by email for questions or suggestions. jeff@realizestudios.com Regards, Jeff Barnette Realize Studios

Well, if there were points on profit involved and a business model to look at, i would be interested in working the story and using my WIDE arrray of vocal talents. :) Maybe ill send in the info.

And every "open source movie" idea to date has died a quick death. I understand your desire. However,4-8 hours a day, for a year or more, and no real statement of compensation, rights,royalties,residuduals is even adressed further than being "compensated in many ways." I'm sure you are very serious about this project of yours. However I don't believe you have thought about the business end of this. For as as I see your plan now, it is not possible for you to aquire the talent and resources you will require. I see no backing, I see no business model, i see only the hope that artists of all types just show up and do this thing. It works for the little rascals, however it does not work on this planet. Should you develop a real workable plan, with script in hand, and finnancial backing, and can answer some very basic questions, have a workable production plan (it took 3 years to make the current computer animated movies available today). Then I would be very interested in joining you.

Attached Link: http://www.realizestudios.com

There is no business model for an "open source movie" becuase money is not invloved. An addition to your portfolio or gallery YES! Or simply being able to say I was part of that project is what I am talking about here.

And true, many ideas like this have died a quick death in the past. This is because no one had any faith in them. It became someone else's project and the people invloved never really got their say...

My job is simply managing... not directing... other projects had a director and he/she told exactly what they wanted. This limited the creative abilities of those invloved so the project died quickly because those working on it never got to actually work on it.

In order to keep things moving forward there has to be some kind of order in the way things are done. It is just one of life's rules. Those who work with me on projects like these won't be given limits other than some basic technical requirements for rendering. I am not going to direct shots like a director. It would be up to those invloved as the community to decide what shots they need... even if they have to vote on it. My job is simply project management.

I also realize that the current computer animated movies available today took 3 years or more. But remember that we are not going for perfection here... nothing has to be photo realistic and there isn't a huge cast of big name actors to work with.

Just us... the people who make up these forums and the online community of 3D animators and graphic artists. And there is a whole lot more talent here than all of Hollywood combined.

Attached Link: http://www.realizestudios.com/kotd.html

For those interested, please visit the website. More details have been posted as well as a signup form.

****This project will use only models, scenes, textures, etc. found on Renderosity ****

Only stuff found here at 'rosity? Yeah, I can see that, DAZ would get pretty pissed if people uploaded their files to your ftp.

Unrendered scenes (poser project files) must be uploaded via FTP to our server along with any files used to create the scenes. Include models, textures, etc

Hrrm...
So, with no financial layout, the "helpers" are going to download and purchase/make things for the movie and upload them to you, free...
Fascinating.

I wonder what the legal standing on this would be?

"Open source" is an entertaining thing when you look at it.

will be compensated in many ways

Yes, I can say "file sharing" too...

Excuse my cynicism I'm having one of those days. :)

Attached Link: http://www.realizestudios.com/kotd.html

Ok so maybe you are getting the wrong idea here... the finished movie is not for profit!! It will be returned back to the community in which it came... I can understand if there was someone profiting from this but that is simply not so. This idea is based on the same idea you would get from gathering a bunch of your friends in a garage with a bunch of computers everyone decides to work together on one movie project. In this case it is using a limited number of people, working together, sharing ideas to create the finished product. Yes, in order to do this over the internet you do have to use such technologies as FTP, Email Attachments, etc.. I don't want anyone out there thinking that the purpose of this is to start a file sharing system or steal from any companies... that is simply not the case. *** REMINDER ***** I never suggested using items in which one purchased.. such as scenery, characters, etc.. It was never limited to that! The entire project could be done using FREE STUFF! This would make it even more open source anyway.

1. Does the project pay? Sounds like you're looking for freelance work - prepare to have people ask for freelance contracts and pay. 2) Before anyone can send you files, if anything they send you has purchased items, including Daz items etc - you have to own the actual items also. The only thing in most cases they can send are pz3's... you'll have to have the actual geometries, textures and whatever, else anyone who sends you stuff runs the risk of violating copyright agreement with the people they purchased from. Inclusive of Daz, various marketplace and/or freestuff items. Not meaning to rain on your parade... but those are things you'll have to take into account.

Attached Link: http://www.realizestudios.com/kotd.html

The concept was to use all FREE STUFF... or at least the original creations of the person.. thus making it open to the project's community... but somehow it was turned around into using items purchased. Yes I agree, I would have to already have a copy of the geometries, textures, etc.. if someone did want to use something they purchased. I don't want to violate copyright laws... The point of this however is not to use purchased items.. but freely available items... yes it is a challenge but it can be done. There just has to be those up for the challenge... and it looks like no one is so far. They are more worried about getting paid. What a sad world we live in...

shrug In a way, I guess I can agree.... but it's an expensive world, and freelancers have to pay bills. ;]

***I never suggested using items in which one purchased.. *,/i> No, you didn't. You used a generalised statement that I saw as a smokescreen to alterior motives. Sorry, but there has been a lot of scam artists around over the last twelve months ripping people off, asking for special "favours" all for "credit in the titles". Games, animations, etc etc. Maybe I am being unfair to you. But your rather loose wording so far has not led me to believe otherwise. Yes, you could make the movie with freestuff items only. Good luck. There's not too many animatable "medieval" clothing items, hair, buildings and such like. Plenty of swords and things sure. Maybe it could be a naturalist medieval movie, all the knights are naked sort of thing. But unfortunately, freestuff makers invariably would like their permission to do this sort of thing. Lots of emails being fired off on a twelve month project. Waiting for answers, watching mail bounce from dead accounts. That certainly WILL make a mess of your schedule. Most freebie authors probably won't mind, but you'd be breaking a variety of laws in different countries if you didn't check. I won't repeat what Ironbear has said about other items. I can see the merit in your suggestion. But it has one or two built in faults that are going to screw it up. Most people here work 6-8 hours a day, many others attend school. This leaves a few who either don't need to work, or can't work. Your 4-8 hour days is going to get messed up. Regardless of my cynical approach to your project. I do wish you luck in this endeavour, but I honestly think you're going about it the wrong way. Too ambitious with apparently too little forethought for the problems that are inherent in this sort of plan. If you are sincere and my suspicions are misplaced, I apologise, but I do seriously think you need to re-evaluate the plan, and the project and make something much less ambitious as a test project just to see how it works out. Open source or whatever, you have certain legal requirements to meet and also must guarantee that non-owners of these files do not have access to them. It's a dangerous ground you're walking with this. Good luck.

Attached Link: http://www.realizestudios.com/kotd.html

Ok, so maybe you have many valid points.. A few of which I have not thought of. However, there is no reason why there can't just be a few people volunteer what ever time they wish to contribute to the overall project.. Then you might say... would it ever get finished? Yes of course because I would have to do what no one does. The original plan (before I posted here) was for each person with an assigned scene to actually render the movie clip they worked on and just send that. And then all the scenes would be put together. But then I figured that would take so much time to upload... thus why it was changed to just the project files. So if there is anyone out there who would like to be a voice actor or help complete the script. Visit the website and complete the form.. If you want to help with animating the characters or scenery... please do the same. Thank you to everyone for their feedback and suggestions! It is very much appreciated.

Attached Link: http://www.realizestudios.com/kotd_participate.html

I have changed the terms and posted them on my website. Please take the time to view them. Thanks. http://www.realizestudios.com/kotd_participate.html

Thanks for listening, sorry to be such a grouch about it. I have these days once in a while. Good luck with your project and I hope it works out for you.

You need a solid, entertaining story for something like this to work. Letting all the contributors add whatever they want is a recipe for stone soup, not a movie. Until you have a script in hand, you have no idea what kind of talent you'll need or how much work is involved. I will also say that I'm quite tired of magically enhanced boys being the center of the universe. There are far too many "boy and his buddies" movies out there already. Simply saying that this is a community project is not enough to sell this idea. Why should any of us give you our precious time unless there will be exposure... and that means getting the final movie into the festival circuits, and that involves money. Carolly

Just as a suggestion (especially if you are rendering yourselves); don't commit to a video compression codec just yet. Keep the animations in uncompressed format, to allow post production and editing and compress them once the final edit is completed and the scenes are ready for splicing.

OK these means a lot of off-line storage, but they do actually zip up quite tightly.

Currently DivX looks like a much better quality/compression codec than MS Video1, and in a year or so most of the community may be running on powerful enough platforms to handle the decoding.

Sorry I can't afford the time myself, you will need to split the workload some more, 4 - 8 hours a day is prohibitive, especially for when folk won't get full artistic control of their own output or financial renumeration. Even if people commit to that how are you going to ensure that level of commitment over the entire length of the project? Anyone who does volunteer for that extended commitment is probably deluded.

Parcelling out the work a scene at a time to a larger number of artists, along with a tight script and access to sample animations may be a better bet. Also allow yourself some leeway for non-delivery and unsatisfactory work.

Why not, in the first instance, aim for a short (3 - 5 minute) trial feature, just to see how things pan out?

Whatever becomes of this, best of luck.

I'd like this kind of project to be sucessful, but in these days and times you wont attract much in the way of attention unless you make it commercially viable even at some sort of low level. You will have to find a backer or some financial asistance to really get this off the ground. The reason that sometimes a project like this succeds is because a group of friends who would have normally spent time together, get together and decide to spend time making a movie say rather than playing Q3 on a LAN. Even open source projects such as 3D gamesengines have financial backing or incentives....sure you have the hobbyists who contribute, but its the folks who then go on to make commercially saleable items that really drive those communities, as for the hobbyists, well the talented ones get picked up on the way and usually become employed in those fields. You only have to look at the successful level designers and MOD creators and see how many of them are either already employed by studios or get picked up as soon as their talent is recognised. What I would recommend is that you work out a more detailed plot and work out a financial plan, because most people arent going to give their time up for free. Not a reflection on the people, but on the times.

One other idea is to wait until the disappointment dies down over the Final Fantasy movie flopping big-time. Then come up with some good selling points and a business plan involving real money. If things turn around soon, the Venture Caps might be willing to throw some money at it by the time Poser 5 has been out for awhile and debugged (e.g. 5.0.3 or so). My guesstimate would be to start pitching the project to the VCs in mid-to-late-3rd quarter, economy-wise. G-rated Direct-to-video or maybe T.V. G-rated animated series for sale to cable channels.

Interesting idea with some merit but I do have a question/suggestion concerning the script, voice actors, and animators. Do you plan on parceling out the work, then having it done and sent in just willy nilly? The reason I ask is that before one line of dialogue is recorded, or one line of pixels is rendered you'd better make sure everybody's on the same page. In the theatrical released animated movies much of the voice work is done early on before rendering, etc. does. One reason is that the animators by hearing the voice work are able to include little things they might not have thought of previously. If you have an animator and a voice actor separately do the line "Friends, Romans, countrymen" you're very liable to end up with that line interpreted two different ways. It's not going to look right if you have the animator do the sequence as though the character were simply beginning a solemn address of the crowd whose paying rapt attention to his every syllable, while the voice actor did his work from the POV that the crowd is unruly and he's having to plead for them to listen to him. Also, I don't think you mentioned having a director, but you're going to need one. Someone is going to have to make sure everyone's going at this the same way to keep what I described from happening. You also need the script in a finalized form. You can do rewrites as the project is going together and have some things redone here and there if needed, but if you don't know exactly what's going to be said, exactly what sort of action is going to take place, and all the other minor details of each scene before anything is started you're looking at a headache of epic proportions down the line.

Gosh, so many animators - it'd be nice to see you all over on the animation forum from time to time. There has been a precedent for this kind of project, can't remember the name right now but it was done in Bryce. A community effort, no monies involved so, not impossible. I have to admit that the knights and dragons thing doesn't grab me immediately and personally, I think FF flopped due to it's complete lack of raunch - excellent movie but what do I know.....

Final fantasy flopped because it was BORING!!!
it s a shame too
the president of squaresoft
was able to take $135,000,000 of squares
Game profits and setup up a renderfarm of 800 computers in hawaii with special plugged to the hilt
seats of Maya. but instead of delivering a run of the mill
futuristic SCI-Fi action tale as the AD campaign suggested,
He Beat movie goers over the head with his Sierra Club,waldon woods ,1960s residue , berkeley california " spirit of mother earth" pablum, for two
hours!!!

if you cant come up with an original sci fi story
take the safe route...........

just rip off "alien" :-/

I'm kind of interested. But a movie. Might want to try something shorter to start with. Kind of a test. Most studios starting out make shorts then get into makeing long films. Not getting paid is a problem too. Most people (the pros) can make stuff and sell it right here and make a little something. Every now and then somebody offers to pay me for something. That then becomes first priority. I like to buy new software you know.

Attached Link: http://www.thirdplanet-inc.com/

saxon, it was called Planetary Traveler, and it was done by a lot of the early top Bryce artists and folks working alongside Metacreations in the early days. Incredible project. It was also done entirely on Macs, and the story of how they wrangled it all in was very educational. There is a second movie in the series called Infinity's Child. Here are some links, and you can even still buy it: http://www.thirdplanet-inc.com/about.html http://www.auntialias.com/pt.shtml Jeff, you might find the backstory helpful in your project as well, it is very similar to what you want to do on a technical/administration level. Best of luck with it, and if I have the time when my own movie is done, I'd interested in providing sound design and music. --Donnie

wolf, amen. FF was inconsistent. I loved the visuals, and even liked the basic storyline/idea - it was just executed badly. Throw in the dialog that was obviously ripped off from Apone's Marines in Aliens, and that just killed it. Maybe there's still a chance for one of us to do a good scifi story that DOESN'T flop!

Well good luck, but if you could seriously get good animators to work for free the world would be a different place. The "open source" model is interesting but has pretty much shown itself to be a flop. All the major Open Source projects had huge corporate backing and those that don't have basically jsut dangled aroudn till they died.

Thanks Silver, the fact that I still remember it and the fact that I've just remembered that it was on the CD that my original version of Bryce came on does make me think that I wouoldn't be adverse to doing some animating for nothing provided: a) the subject matter interested me; b) I could work more or less at my own pace (I'd probably need a gentle bollicking from time to time); and c) the project had the backing of someone like Curious (I hadn't realised that Meta had backed the Planetary Traveller one). I can see the point of having a director and continuity might be a problem. If the project was going to get true kudos then yes I'd invest some time, but not 4 - 8 hours a day, I have my own projects too.....

1 year and free labor all made in Bryce and Poser? BT we all have a dream