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| 2009, November 10, Monday. |
Still alive. Still breathing.
I've been working furiously on The Film. It's almost done - at least the animation. 4 scenes left on the main body, and then a final pass to buttress some weak links, which will add another 2 or 3 minutes (or 4 weeks of work, roughly). I've found a major conductor to provide the music, and have had some expert input. It's looking good. I've been too burned out to post much, or even answer any emails. FYI, so far this year, my earnings have come to less than $6000. Most of my energy and time has been sunk into this project. Bear with me - as it should be fun when it launches in the first quarter of next year.
Here are some screenshots from sequence 2:
Reconstructed from the 1940s short "Why Play Leapfrog", your grandad (and why he was tougher than you pantywaists):
Energy slaves behind every modern American:
Different kinds of fuel:
Many drills needed to find one reservoir:
EROEI in the early 20th century - 100 barrels found for the energy equivalent of every 1 used:
Searching in deep waters (we're all in deep waters now):
The statue of Liberty...
...next to the amount of oil we use in a year (1 cubic mile):
The average american driver uses their body weight of oil a week:
Percentages of oil used in electricity generation vs. transport:
Coal mountaintop removal:
Conventional Natural gas production and extraction:
Japan's Monju fast breeder reactor:
Petrochemical dependent agriculture:
Solar Thermal power:
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| 2009, October 1, Thursday. |
Those who have been following the site for a while will know that I've been working on a large scale animated project about oil and resource depletion. I began the project (slowly) about five years ago. As I worked on it, it grew - and is now over 20 minutes long. The final film will be just under 30 minutes. The first 4 sequences are complete, give or take a scene or two. Only the final sequence remains - it will be about 7 or 8 minutes long. If I can maintain the current production rate, I should be finished with all the animation sometime in November/early December. There'll still be some work to do after that - final narration, proof reading of the script by someone with expertise in the field, post production, etc. I'm hoping to release it early next year - tentatively sometime in February.
I've been going bananas with the visuals - and it's turning out far better than I expected. Walt Disney coined a term called "plussing" - i.e., take a scene that you're perfectly satisfied with, and push it a lot further than you thought possible. That's what I've been doing the past week, and the results have been most pleasing (see previews below).
In addition, I created pages for the script, with citations for every line - as people will certainly have questions. That was a full weeks work - pretty tedious going.
Well, so that you know that I'm not a total wastrel, here are some of the best shots from sequence 1. I'll post some stills from the later sequences over the next few days.
Title screen, over the seething surface of the Sun:
The late cretaceous Earth:
Vertical pan, showing the canopy of a Greenhouse forest:
Pan down to dinosaur ambling through the vegetation:
Plate tectonics open rifts in the Earth's crust:
The new oceans are filled with colossal algal blooms, which thrive in the heat (this is the formation of oil sequence):
I'm delighted with the way this sequence has turned out - adding some simple gradients and simple facial expressions has turned this from on OK shot into a memorable one:
The algae die as they're poisoned by sheer numbers. I'd like to vary some of the faces to add a bit of variety - different angles and expressions - but ONLY if there's time left when everything else is done.
Meet our modern day algae:
Another shot which was greatly improved by simple lighting tricks - adding gradients with complimentary colours to the background wall has given this shot a texture and atmosphere that was missing before.
Same here - originally I'd coloured these scenes in simple flat colours - the scene worked, but was utterly flat. A basic gradient on the ground, and a toplit illumination suddenly provides a dramatic effect for very little cost. The narrator explains that in the 1960s we found 6 barrels of oil for every one we used:
Whereas today we find 1 barrel for every 3 to 6 that we use:
Ah, the joys of modern technology:
Ending with a financial collapse (animated in Summer 2007, btw):
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