Animation: Music of Erich Zann - new POV shot

The POV shot from the start of the animation is redone. It was a 25 hour render for the old version and 2 hours for this one. 

Animation: Music of Erich Zann (remake)

  My third animation remake, Music of Erich Zann, was my first full-scale attempt to make a short animation. I had made "Dust Bunnies" a few years before, but this was more complicated with human characters and several sets. The first version took me 5 years to make. I had to learn basic modelling, rigging, lighting... the whole works. It was done in Cinema 4D and the opening POV shot walking up the street took 25 hours to render. 

Like the previous 2 remakes, I like the original version, but it lacks, mostly because of the skill and technical deficits I had at the time, the look and feel I wanted to achieve. My goal is to have online the best versions of my films on display and use the remakes to get better with Blender and animation in general for future projects now that I am retired and have (in theory) more time to work on personal projects.

Old version of the street. Not the reason this needed to be redone, I was satisfied with the look. 

Old and new version of Zann. New is more realistic and will have more emotional range. Same with the narrator. 

The narrator: old and new

Animation update: 28 Young men by Walt Whitman

 Six years ago, I made an animated short with my writer pal Michael Z Keamy. He narrated. We had planned to do the poem live action at a secluded part of the beach in Provincetown but getting 28 young guys to splash around naked on the beach in Provincetown is harder than one might think. I decided to animate it instead. 

The original version was OK. Extremely limited by my version of Cinema 4D and my computing power at the time. Turns out having 28 young animated men isn't all that easier to get on video. 

Now using Blender and my older but still powerful 10 i9 processor imac, it was possible to improve on it. The structure is the same but the sets are better made and there are actually 28 men and the woman in the poem in the animation now. The people look less cartoon-y and all the characters move, something I could not accomplish before without crashing the computer. 

It's coming along and I feel I am doing more justice to the poem and Keamy's narration.