Dr Kvorak - Destroyer of worlds - A Freekstorm production

Well your the first participant in the dvxfest to pull off a 3d animation. A 4 minute one at that. An almost impossible feat in this time frame. You've just set the bar for 3d animators in the dvxfest.
A huge congrats.


A funny story. I wont give away any spoilers. Nice graphics on everything.
I liked the overhead shot, the panels, the beam.


A huge accomplishment. I'm in awe of how much work must have went into this. A huge congrats again.
 
I like that he shrinks planets and keeps them as trophies, pretty epic concept. I think you should add a layer of glows and lens flares here and there, especially to the engine on the spaceship etc. It would be a nice dimension added to the CG.
 
One man....a bunch of computers...hours & hours of work.... too much fun! This was SO well done. Cute story that took me back to the days of the old Warner Bros. Road Runner cartoons I watched endlessly as a child. I forgot how much fun this can be. The score was the icing on the cake, perfect.

I can't really comment other then to say...I bow down before the great & powerful Dr. Kvorak...Destroyer of Worlds & Collector of Planets!

:thumbsup::thumbsup::thumbsup::thumbsup:
 
Thanks for putting this in. There always seems to be one or two animated films in these fests, and they're great to see. This came across as charming and cute which is impressive considering the topic. Spoilers throughout the rest of the review.

Spoiler:


This fest I'm focusing my reviews on story. My first question is do I care about the main character? Unfortunately here, I do not. Why? Firstly, he’s an alien and I'm a human – you've made it doubly hard to relate right there. Far from impossible as the greats of science fiction show, but keep in mind whenever you use a non-human character, you need to work that much harder to make them relateable, and thus interesting.

But moreso than simply being an alien, he doesn’t display much in the way of actions or emotions I can relate to. The only thing shown that could potentially be relatable was the obsessive collector aspect of him and that has definite potential. However, it wasn’t revealed until the end, so I couldn't hold onto that during the film.

His goal is not clear. He wants a miniature planet for his collection, yes. But why does he want it? Is he looking for the perfect planet, the Wayne Gretzky rookie card? It hints at that, but it’s not clear to me as a viewer this is the case. It could well be that earth is just the latest planet, and will be set on the shelf when he gets his next one.

Who or what is the antagonist? There is nothing opposing him in his quest at all – it’s just a matter of time until he finishes. I see him frustrated with the first planet, but I don’t see him struggle and fight to overcome an obstacle. Give me an interesting character and make him suffer.

Thanks for putting this in and putting your talents up on display. I think you can definitely set a great mood, and would love to see you tackle a stronger story.

 
Spoiler:
This was a breath of fresh air to watch. However i'm afraid I'll repeat what others have said, there was no conflict. Which didn't really make me engage. Overall good job on this charming short!
 
Firstly, what an ambitious project. I could never have pulled something like this off.

My feeling was that it all moved too slowly and the score was a little noticeable, i found it kept pulling me out of the story. A small criticism, but his footsteps were all exactly the same sound, maybe just add in some different footsteps. I also found it hard to empathize with the character, because we can't see anything to relate to in him. I also couldn't see his motivation for shrinking and destroying planets, the end revealed he was a collector but i think there needed to be an emotional motivation behind the collection... maybe he could have had a son and be using the planets to make a mobile for him, this would have given him a human quality (just a suggestion).

I can't help but respect the enormous amount of work that went into this. Well done.
 
Thanks for the feedback guys
Spoiler:

Your right, it does feel like part of something bigger and it is. In order to tell the whole story I need another 3 scenes and 50 level of a computer game :)
This festival was announced just as I was prepping to start on the intro film for my next computer game. So it seemed like a good idea to do the 2 at once, given that the story was a perfect fit, and it made me focus very hard on getting it done. So thats why it feels like there should be more :) Thats also why I was able to spend so much time on this, I cant see it ever happening again!
 
A fun little film with a very nice visual design. I love this type of CG animation and you really pulled it off with style. I really liked the design of the “control room” with the screens and panels, and the Doctor’s rubber gloves and boots – too cool.
I have to agree that this was a visual rather than an emotional experience. I loved looking at the doctor and his antics, but you couldn’t really get too involved emotionally with the plot. He needed some kind of conflict to make this more than a series of well animated scenes.
Spoiler:
I had some problems with the space scenes. The spaceship looked strangely two-dimensional, with very flat lighting and a seeming lack of detail. Very noticeable on the side shots early in the film. This was made more apparent by the star field which seemed to be an extreme blowup from a Hubble photo or something. The stars looked far too big and chunky. The rays also seemed blocky and too solid. I think a glow would have popped them a bit better. Even the planets seemed flat and not very three-dimensional, and the planet blowing up should have been faster and more powerful, with a good dose of motion-blur. Not trying to be a nit-picker, as I know the amount of work involved in this stuff, but in comparison to the terrific stuff inside the ship, I thought the “exteriors” went flat.
Loved when the texture-mapping for the planets spread out on the big screen! Probably why I was surprised they looked so flat in the space scenes.
And a final nit-pick – the last scene. What should have been an epic pull back to reveal the scope of the Doctor’s collecting is ruined by the jerky movement, almost as if you repeated a single element and the perspective kept going off.
This is all technical stuff that I’m sure most viewers couldn’t care less about. Great job, I really liked this one!
 
Thanks for the crit. All valid points. In the end I had to choose between limiting the quality of the shots, or not finishing :) Now the fest is over I can put in some more time on the polish.

taylormade said:
What should have been an epic pull back to reveal the scope of the Doctor’s collecting is ruined by the jerky movement, almost as if you repeated a single element and the perspective kept going off.
Click to expand...
Ive seen this as well, in Windows Media player, while it played well in adobe and QT. I think that the compression needed to fit the ammount of visual change on the last shot causes some systems to stutter during playback. Try a different player, or even the online version, and see if you get the same effect.
 
I envy this film having a creation that you 100% came up with yourself...My hat is off to you sir!

One question...how is he a villain? I mean I kinda get it...bad guy has big beamy thing destroy world or hoards them away for god only knows why lol.

Still I cant imagine the amount of sleep you lost making this! Great job

Rogan
 
Spoiler:
I thought the interior shots looked really cool - they had a consistent look and I bought it. However, the exterior shots with the flat stars texture jumped out at me. My favourite bit was the blue floor lighting as he entered the darkened control room for the first time. Quite an achievement all in all - I hope to see your stuff in future DVX Fests.
 
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The more I've thought back on this one, the more I've liked it. Not just because there's no way I'll ever be able to do that, but because it was a neat simple premise. It was mentioned before, but the overhead shot was great.
Kudos!
 
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Thanks for all the great feedback guys. I'm chuffed that you all liked it so much.
I cant see me doing another of this scale again, it just takes too much time. So next time it will be people and VFX.
 
Obviously this is not a film that takes itself too seriously - its fun, amusing and i know from my own CGI work that to produce 3d animation is agonising and time consuming so I really respect the effort put into this film. As a childrens film its quite entertaining and very cute/sweet. There isn't much complexity to the narrative - and it would have benefited from more jokes (and less walking around corridors) but understanding the constraints and conditions, it was probably exhausting enough to do even that!

Every film should be regarded in its own merit and its not appropriate to directly compare this to other films with more adult themes. So for what it is, i placed this in my top 5 in the perspective of children's entertainment, warm hearted cute fun.
 
This was really impressive.

The story has a ton of promise - it's great setup, but there's a missing beat for me at the end. Some conflict or maybe some twist (e.g. Dr. Kvorak tripping and sending all those planets crashing to the floor). I don't know what it is exactly, but I do feel like it needs one more moment.

Also, I think you could tighten up the edit a bit, not a lot, but just give it a tiny bit more pace.

Still, I really did like this a lot. Another one of my fest favorites. I especially liked Dr. Kvorak - I dug his look and his almost business like approach to his collection obsession. I also loved that 50s B-Movie SciFi score.

I think with a small bit of tweaking this could really be awesome!
 
This must have taken forever! Nice job.

It was a little slow in parts but I think the pacing could be adjusted in editing.
I liked the look of it but think some good sound design could have pushed this even further. Very nice work though and I really enjoyed the story.
I didn't really see where this was going. Cheers.
 
I liked the score quite a bit too, was a perfect fit to the bright quirky style/palette. I liked his look as well, I guess I was wishing for a little more hinted at emotion (like frustration) that could have differentiated his response to the planets. Although I think would dislike it if he was TOO emotive and cartoony. He just felt a little too clinical for me, but then again he is a doctor haha. These are super nit picky things though, I enjoyed the whole thing.
 
Thanks Lawrie, Chris and Chris.

Your right Lawrie, the story is very simple and aimed at children, and yes Chris there is something missing at the end. The film is an intro to a computer game I'm writing. So I had to miss some out for it to mesh with the festival. The final planet wont be earth, and the heros of the game will leave the planet, get aboard his ship and start unravelling his plans, before finally freeing all the planets.

As far as emotion is concerned I simply ran out of time without enough morph targets for the expressions to really be effective. In isolation they look fine, but when added to the on screen actions they lose their impact. Something for me to work on I think.

Thanks for watching and taking the time to comment. It's much appreciated.
 
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