I'm putting this in the OT section namely because a good bulk of EL0 will not be in AM, though the char animation most likely will be. Yesterday we did voice recording for episode one which turned out fairly well. It was definitely a learning experience recording people from literally all over the world at the same time, but things seemed to work.

Anyways, from that voice recording, I was able to throw together an animatic of the first minute and a half of Episode 1: Destiny using pics from google and some test renders done in 3ds max, so here it is:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NevFbBtE6Kk

BTW, you do realize there was an exceedingly famous band in the 70's called "ELO", right.

Just in case some lawyers call.

keep up the good work

no, it's not abbreviated ELO, but EL0 as in zero as in O with a slash through it

Well done Darkwing. Has a nice professional look and feel to it. Is the music original because it works out very well.

Looking forward to seeing more of this.

Al

actually no, the music is a song that is royalty free to people who aren't creating a professional production for money i do believe (i'll have to re-read the terms of usage, but i believe that's what they said) however, all other music in the series so far is original, including the music used in this teaser created by someone else working on the project with us:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s7a4ZRizxP8 (again not made in AM)

That trailer doesn't use the official voiceovers though, it was mostly my brother and myself with John doing the opening narration. Now that the voiceovers have been done, it would be cool to put the real voices in sometime soon. But, my priority is to now learn character animation/modeling (something I have been trying unsuccessfully for three years now) but, i guess i have to get it right else there'll be no people in our show!

Wonderful! I gave ya 5 stars! and a comment.

this is definitely encouraging! i just hope the final product will be as good as the animatics. those of us working on it for the most part are fairly inexperienced, but giving it our best. it's definitely already had its share of difficulties and challenges, the biggest being the spline to poly conversion and working between the two.

well, we have just encountered a slight hiccup, but it's something we can work around. the creator of this project (the one I have been working with) has been grounded from his PC for an undefinable period of time which he thinks will be 2-4 weeks. So that could be nearly a month of our manpower cut in two, but that's not stopping me from working on it still, so, if anyone's interested in making some awe-inspiring space scenes, give me a whistle

so here's a shot for the opening animatic. the space background i didn't make (if I had photoshop I could've) but alas. Anyways, here's a pic rendered in HD, using darksim materials for the planets it takes 11 minutes to render and for the 4 second shot, it should take about 22 hours to render (if my math is correct)

well, i made an animated version of the logo/title card (as seen in my sig) so here it is:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ym9VNyQGXzI

still needs a few tweaks, but overall pretty cool, at least i think so

been a while since a real update, but I have just composed the opening music for the pilot episode (the space scenes and narration go over the first 20 ish seconds of it) and the rest is the actual theme for the series. This music is yet to be approved by the Director, but I'm quite positive that this is very close to what the final will sound like:

http://www.fileden.com/files/2008/7/30/202...ndtrackPt1d.MP3

EDIT: NEWER VERSION

Click to view attachment

Originally the Spitfire was going to be a different design, and I did end up modeling it (there's a thread here somewhere) but over time, both Chris and myself felt discontent with it, it felt too old looking and the Spitfire is supposed to be brand new, so I did a basic design of the new shape, and then my brother did a high detailed 3/4 view of the new design which is what the ship will really look like, so here it is

Click to view attachment

I come bearing more music, this time a piece I made, sort of representing the death of a character in the beginning to the rise and triumphs of our heroes

http://www.fileden.com/files/2008/7/30/202..._of_Heroes3.MP3

Wonderful! Definitely fits the intent of scene (conjurs all sorts of imagery) as well as being beautifully done.

why thank you, this piece definitely has me re-motivated on the project, I like the grandeur of the piece, especially once it gets past the sad bit

ONLY because Robert mentioned infringement re: ELO vs. EL0, I've wondered about Earthlink the ISP having a problem with your title. Just askin.

haven't heard of em before. we have eastlink here, but haven't heard of earth link. and besides, something that's beeing done for free, well, I can't imagine there being any harm in it. Besides, the title is Earth-Link: Zero, not EarthLink. It's all in the little things, like blue-ray and blu-ray

Hi Darkwing,

Just sent you an e-mail. Hope you get it okay...

Al

IMO you're perfectly safe, as I said I was just wondering if it had crossed your mind. But down here Earthlink is one of the larger and more-established ISP's, with big fancy TV ads and everything. I've been told by people when they find out I have an earthlink email address, that they're horribly old hat. but the mail goes through just fine!

maybe we can get them to make shiny TV ads about ELZ!! Just kidding. Yeah, I think we're clear, chnces of them even actually finding out about us are small. Only conflict we might come into is if we decide to sell T-shirts or DVDs or something, but even still, I doubt it. We're two completely different entities. And Al, I got your E-mail, you have quite literally mad my day, probably my week

here are two more shots of the spitfire:

Click to view attachment

Great sketch!

it's all my brother, i can draw, just limited to observational though, he cna draw from his imagination which is cool

Post Deleted

Minor update, have started working on scene 1 and am 3 shots into it, hopefully it'll take not too much more then a week to do, 2 weeks tops. Here's a pic of the forest where the action begins.....

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Very nice rendering, you might want to plop some grass around the base of the trees, this will help so they don't look like telephone poles coming out of the ground.
Roots would also be effective.

i did have grass and ferns, but when I loaded it into V15, things went wonky, I fixed it up as best I could. Fortunately it so far seems to be all right, as everything has a deep layer of mist, and the shots are quick, big on that bugs me is a shot of Aiden running, but he doesn't cover enough distance for how fast he's running

You could make a repeating background roto, simple expand on the render you have but in the scene repeat first group of objects and put paste them at the end then dolly the camera.
Take that render and roto it and you should be able to loop it. Any forground objects you may want to make a separate roto for that with an alpha so they are in front of the character that would actually be running in place.
I think you may need to render the fog and mist on the composite. You can also fake the running by framing in on the torso and up.

well, i got a whole whopping 12 seconds done over the last 4 days! It looks pretty cool and my animation skills are improving, as are my animation organization skills. I have most of next week off from work, so I intend to get the whole scene up to where Capin-L shows up animated. (I still need to build Capin-L and texture the aerial vehicle)

just a quick pic update of Aiden shootin some people!

And, Act 1 has just been set to be released on February 20th, and it will be most likely the first 2 scenes of ELZ, it just means a lot of fast work on my part!

And more from Scene-1 of Act 1 of Ep1 Part 1...gosh that's a mouthfull, here's Aiden after having a very bright light shone in his face. BTW, I have learned bright lights take a long time to render!

Click to view attachment

Hot off the press, promo pic #2 of Earth Link Zero!!

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It looks like your ELZ web site states that the first 2 minutes of the episode was January 22? Did I miss something or is the web site outdated.... or was that the opening scene with the planets that we have seen???

opening space scenes I think. I know, cheap advertising . And I'm gonna have to change the release date for Act 1, it's still 2 weeks away. There's no way I'm gonna have it done by Saturday

So, bit of an update seeing as I haven't given one recently. Chris and I had a meeting today to discuss organization, goals focus etc for ELZ. Anyways, here is our general consensus on stuff that we can tell the public. ELZ will no longer be a web series consisting of a ridiculous amount of episodes and a bunch of seasons and literally years of work (like 10). Anyways, we have seriously refined the story and made it much more focused. Our preliminary story is very cool and quite exciting. But here's how we're gonna do things, we are gonna make ELZ a movie and I have the feeling that a bunch of you are gonna say "huh? Wasn't it already supposed to be a movie?" and the answer is no. But it is now. However, with us scrapping episode one, we will still produce one of the more important scenes, one which shows a bit of everything and our lack of skill in the actual animation/modeling department. The reason we are going to produce this scene is it seems that for people with skills in those departments to help, they need to see completed products, so we have to show you guys something so that we can get a team of modelers and animators working together (a bit like SO, well, more than a bit, but you get the picture). So that is our focus in the meantime, get a particular scene done and then post it up here and then set to the pre-production of the movie.

PS: Would love a character modeler for Christmas Santa

How about sometime in mid-April? Say, the 18th?

are we going to continue to make Act 1 or just produce a 5 minute short instead?

Yea, disregard that, we're going with the shorts.

ok good. it's time to start tackling that monster of a script for the film though *cracks knuckles*

I can tell you're ready to get at the script when you start writing stage directions for your posts!

Placed screen left, Darkwing replies:

DARKWING
Ha ha, yeah

I've begun the monster of a script that's known as Earth-Link Zero. 13 pages in, about 105 left

40 pages in on the script

Here's what the title card looks like for Earth-Link Chronicles (the shorts leading up to the film)

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Here's a fighter for the Morningstar Pirates, the ship is almost done. I'm not beveling edges as these things zip around so fast you probably don't ever get a good clean look at them:

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here's the final ship, I'm rendering out a short vid now too, should be done in a couple hours

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What are you using for your script software, Word, Final Draft, Celtix, ???

we've been using CeltX, has quite a few nice features, plus the auto-formatting is very good

here's the vid, I just threw in a generic space ship sound that my brother made

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7nQeZ0Gm2VE