"The Present" Short Film Review

"The Present" Review

By Tim Collins


           Hello people of the internet, today I will be reviewing another animated short film. This animation is titled "The Present" and I personally think that this is an excellent story. Beware there will be spoilers in this review so before you continue reading go watch the original video here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=96kI8Mp1uOU.

     
         So for those who did not click the link here is a quick summary: A teenager's mom brings home a box for her son and when it is opened a puppy jump out of the box, but this puppy is missing one of its legs and the teenager rejects it for this reason. Although when the teenager sees how dang cute the puppy is he decides to accept the puppy. But when the teen stands up to play with the puppy it is revealed that...(wait for it)...the teen is missing a leg as well!

         The character models are impressive and the textures,  especially on the dog, are outstanding. The animation itself is great, the animator follows all the basic principles of animation. Most noticeable is the use of squash and stretch. This can be seen from 1:45-1:47 when the teen kicks a ball that bounces around the room.

         Based on best practice the creator did great throughout the animation. As I have said the textures, models, and animation are all spectacular. However I did notice at a few points throughout the story the animation seems to be too fast. I first noticed this around 2:04 in the video where the puppy(who is under a box) runs into a wall. It might have been done on purpose but to me it seems unnatural.

         Overall I thoroughly enjoyed this animation, it has an interesting story and is definitely high quality.

       
     

Meet Asger

                               Meet Asger

By Tim Collins

                  Greetings to all the people of the internet. In this post I will be showing off my most recent project and also giving a short update. 

                 Since last semester I have started on different project that involves new characters and a new story. I am still in the modeling phase and have already completed one of my two characters. My two characters are a pair of vikings, the one that I am sharing with you today I have named Asger. 

         During my first pre-production phase I began drawing some character designs and eventually decided to use the concept of a pair of vikings going on an adventure. Once I had my concept down I began modeling Asger right away. And after many weeks of trail and error I finally finished his 3d model. Now I am working as fast as possible on my other character, who is yet to be named, and the environment I plan on putting them in. 

               Compared to my previous work this style is much more stylized and not as realistic. This is because I attempted creating Asger as a realistic looking character but I felt that a more cartoony appearance would fit the theme better and it would be much easier and faster to create. For being my first stylized character model I feel that I did decent. Along the way I learned further how to paint weights using Maya. My biggest problem I had involved attaching the belt to his body. The problem was that I had already painted the weights onto the model but I had not attached the belt yet. So I had to undo the weights, attach the belt, and then repaint the weights. Now I know that you should make sure you completely finishing building the model before you start painting the weights.

                       The only problems that I have with this model is that the area under the arms the skin has slightly folded into itself. I tried smoothing the area but everything I did either made it worse or did nothing at all.

Recently I entered a 360 degree spin of the Asger model into a local contest called eMagine. I doubt I will win any awards for it, but I am still proud of this model. I will definitely make another post for this project when I finish it.