Emo and Proog

May 19, 2006 4:09 PM

Elephants Dream - A computer-generated movie made using open source applications
posted by growabrain (26 comments total)

Wow. And Blender code was brought for only €100,000. That was quite the deal for the community.
posted by jaduncan at 4:40 PM on May 19, 2006

I note with interest that the only proprietary software they used was Reaktor. Damn, open source audio sucks.
posted by Jimbob at 4:47 PM on May 19, 2006

I don't think I've ever seen a better seeded torrent. 4955 seeders right now and I'm getting over 250KB/s down.
posted by StephenV at 5:01 PM on May 19, 2006

Wow, that was quite well done.

But I wonder - Marshall McLuhan-like - how much the medium influences the message. Cybernetic fantasies and nightmares seem to be quite popular with synthetic filmmakers.
posted by loquacious at 5:17 PM on May 19, 2006

Bleh. Visually appealing maybe, but in terms of characters, dialogue, or storyline it was just a confusing ball of mess. I would not hold this up as a very good example of collaborative anything, unless you strictly limit yourself to the visual effect.

If you consider 250KB/s fast for a torrent then I think you need to find better torrent sites, because that would be on the slow end if you asked me.
posted by Rhomboid at 5:29 PM on May 19, 2006

Of course you're not going to tell us WHICH torrent sites because you love to be cool and mysterious and 1337, because you wrongly feel that earns you respect.
posted by Jimbob at 5:38 PM on May 19, 2006

Rhomboid: I was pushing the limits of my wireless connection as it was, so bleh.

But I second Jimbob's sentiment. KEKEKE... 1337.
posted by StephenV at 5:52 PM on May 19, 2006

The website seems to have died. Does anyone have a link to the .torrent?
posted by Malor at 6:23 PM on May 19, 2006

I did get through finally. Nevermind. :)
posted by Malor at 6:24 PM on May 19, 2006

Could someone explain the plot? (Seriously, I don't get it).

The rendering was sweet though.
posted by phrontist at 6:28 PM on May 19, 2006

I agree about the torrent speed; I got 2.1 MB/s!
posted by martinrebas at 6:35 PM on May 19, 2006

There's only a vestige of a plot or narrative coherence; the purpose is to showcase the output of open source DCC tools.
posted by Gyan at 6:40 PM on May 19, 2006

I haven't watched it yet but the site is working for me and here's teh torrentz0r.
posted by BlackLeotardFront at 7:40 PM on May 19, 2006

These guys have a great visual and conceptual sensibility and obviously awesome technical abilities, but the story, animation, and voice acting? Not so good.

How many times did these guys actually read the script before deciding to devote six months of their lives working on it? Because I think they could have fit more "Emmo"s in there had they really been trying.
posted by crumbly at 8:14 PM on May 19, 2006

Visually beautiful. Makes me want to fiddle around with Blender! Is anyone else having trouble with the sync? Lot of lip-flap on my end.
posted by brundlefly at 8:17 PM on May 19, 2006

Also, why did they have to name that kid Emo? I automatically didn't like him.
posted by brundlefly at 8:18 PM on May 19, 2006

65,509 peers? Jesus Christ. And I thought Doctor Who torrents were popular.

(I, uh, haven't finished downloading it yet, so I can't comment on the animation itself...)
posted by neckro23 at 8:36 PM on May 19, 2006

If you're like me, and you get halfway through this thinking "I sure hope this is leading to something", save yourself a couple minutes and hit stop. It's thoroughly unsatisfying from a plot/story perspective.
posted by robla at 11:20 PM on May 19, 2006

haha was worth it just to see the 10,000 seeds lol
posted by 13twelve at 3:08 AM on May 20, 2006

I kinda liked it. for what it was trying to be it was ok. I've really seen a lot of worse 3d animation.
posted by namagomi at 7:27 AM on May 20, 2006

Hmmm. I couldn't really get anything out of the plot either. I mean, it's a short film, so to some extent you'd expect there to be a lot of loose ends which it's up to the audience to tie up... but in this case the threads just seem to tangle and not go anywhere. (e.g. what's up with him closing/not closing his eyes?). The dialogue style and delivery, and the movement of the characters are also very weird in a fairly offputting way.

Nonetheless, I, uh.. don't hate it. And it is very pretty - at the least, a good proof of concept for Blender, which I'll probably look into. They needed a good writer/director to pull the whole thing together though - it could have been cool with a few fairly minor changes, I think (if you consider a new script a minor change).
posted by Drexen at 1:33 PM on May 20, 2006

I have done some work with Blender, and it is an almost commercial grade program. Not bad for freeware. Some complain about the user interface, but I found (as do most people) that if you work at it for about a week, it will suddenly become intuitive.

Just remember: one hand on the keyboard, the other on the mouse.
posted by Nyrath at 3:30 PM on May 20, 2006

Ecerything is great on this little movie except the story, it sucks!
posted by zouhair at 4:10 PM on May 20, 2006

question, since the site seems to be in extremely low bandwidth mode:

what did they edit with? i was not aware of any even remotely usable (for more than crappy desktop editing) open source editing software.
posted by shmegegge at 8:20 AM on May 22, 2006

Ok so I've now watched it and its crap.
posted by 13twelve at 3:30 PM on May 23, 2006

Couldn't they have spent a bit of effort on the writing?
posted by webfanatic at 11:14 PM on May 27, 2006