Scripture Bugs

[tyrone]

Hi everyone, I'm new here. I feel like I'm visiting a new ward or something...

Aaron Edson (The compser / director of the "Liken the Scriptures" movies) and I have created a new 3D animated children's DVD series called "Scripture Bugs".

Has anyone here seen the first episode yet? I did the animation for this film and I would love to get some feedback so I can know what I can improve for the next episode. I'm hoping to make the second episode even better than the first.

Also, if you or someone you know has the ability and desire to help in any aspect of 3D production I would love to know!

They are a ton of fun to make! We have a lot of great music from Aaron, and the first episode stars Jericho Road. The movies are designed to not only entertain kids, but also teach them they can always find answers to any problem from the scriptures.
If you haven't seen them you can see a few clips on youtube or our site:

YouTube - scripturebugs's Channel
Scripture Bugs

[AngelonaWing]

Haven't heard about but I sure liked the clip on the bug site!! might have to find a copy of the film

[tubaloth]

Which program do you use to for the 3D animation. I have only done some on and off over the years, and that was only teaching myself. I wanted to get into more, not sure how hard it is to learn.

[tyrone]

I use 3DS Max for the animation. I've also been mostly self taught. There are a lot of resources available for learning. The best thing you can do is learn traditional art because those skills translate into any 3D package.

[BrioCyrain]

To be honest, the animation in those look worse than the CG back in the late 90s.

[pam]

To be honest, I thought they looked pretty good.

[Connie]

This looks like something my kids would like. Thanks! We really enjoy the Liken movies and especially the awesome music. Good to hear it's the same composer.

[tyrone]

Originally Posted by BrioCyrain

To be honest, the animation in those look worse than the CG back in the late 90s.

Honestly, I have to agree. Unfortunately it is very hard to find people to work for free as we were just starting out and had no budget.

Considering that I had to create the whole 38 minutes and did so in 6 months I don't think it turned out that bad at all. That's around 72,000 frames of animation. A pixar film can take 3 or 4 years with hundreds of people on staff, of course it's not going to be the same quality. I had to meet crushing deadlines and in the end accomplished the goal but there wasn't enough time to polish it as much as I would have liked to. Unfortunately that's the reality of business.

We're poised to make a great second episode now that we have the technical obstacles out of the way. We could work more on story and quality of animation especially with a few more helping hands. I'm not sure that's going to happen though based on the reception of the first episode.

What has been most disappointing to me is the negativity. I understand that everyone is a critic and criticism in itself isn't bad, it just shows where you need to improve. I'm just surprised by how much of it is mean-spirited. I had hoped we would have received more support from our own community.

[BrioCyrain]

Originally Posted by tyrone

I'm just surprised by how much of it is mean-spirited. I had hoped we would have received more support from our own community.

I have to agree tyrone, animation is alot more expensive and labor-intensive that a live-action production. Liken the Scriptures and others like Excel and Halestorm have this "low-budget" qouta for each movie so they don't spend too much in our "small lds market".

What I don't get is people like "The Living Scriptures" were able to make a competitive quality animation series with their scripture cartoons, but they also charge 30 bucks for their dvds.

Right now I am doing an "LDS Animation" survey(3d is absent in the poll) to see what LDS members like us think about animation.

But I am pretty sure as us both being animators to some extent(you use 3DS, I sometimes use Flash) that 2D animation is now being done overseas 70 to 90 percent of the time, and it's probably hindering low-budget LDS films to breaking into the recent 2D animation market. Though I am pretty sure some of us "otakus" wouldn't mind an LDS-themed Anime, even American Anime companies sometimes take a hit when getting a china, japan, or korean studio to give them animation in a competitive quality.

I am a big fan of Robotech and when Harmony Gold for the first time was on their own they hired DR Movie, a big korean studio to do the animation, and their CFO(Chief Financial Officer) was a bit stressed about it, and also some of the mecha was done in low-quality CG so it kind of counter-acted the decent hand-drawn characters.

I wasn't really to be "mean-spirited" I just take animation-quality to what it looks and feels, and being a big animation junkie I think you were robbed for being the only animator on a project that has so much potential, we LDS members if we want others to appreciate us more as a large community we need to compete at some competitive level, and though we can be cheap in "Singles Ward" or "The RM"...animation is an art that shouldn't be wreakened with.

When they were making Batman Animated Series back in the 90s, it might be a bunched of painted pictures on paper but you need to make any kind, ANY kind of animation convincing and enjoyable, and if we are going to have solo-animator or poor-managed animation like "Scripture Bugs"...I think we need to turn up our creativity, our ambition to another level.

We are as capable as everyone else, so not why act and do like that? I just realised this is getting very long so I'll just end on the note that we should be what we are:

"Indestructible"

[BrioCyrain]

Originally Posted by pam

To be honest, I thought they looked pretty good.

I just don't see how other people are going to take LDS members seriously if we have animation that seems to be of a "lower quality" than Toy Story 2. I really wish LDS films were more serious about their budgets.