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From sshelby@shelbyvision.com:
I'm amazed that you could create all of this with Povray alone. It's quite an
accomplishment, but I'm judging it on the basis of the end product, as if I
have no knowledge of how it was produced, and on that basis I can't rate it
very high. I had to view it several times and read the animation description
again to really appreciate what it's about, so I think it fails to communicate
well.



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From emperorofrome@yahoo.com:

Very good Music it went with the piece.
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From rich@brickbots.com:
The end of the man from M.I.M.E was entertaining.  But after watching it several
times I am not sure I have a firm grasp of the story.  I may be missing some
required background :-)  I really liked your take on the theme, not such an
obvious choice and comical to boot! 

Generic Note:
I really enjoyed watching these animations, but I personally think that pointing
out the low points of an animation help more than pointing out the high points.
 As such, I usually only mention the problems.  Please don't take it the wrong
way :-)

Technical:
I found it very difficult to rate the technical merits of this piece. This is
the first time I have judged an IRTC animation contest, so I am not sure where
'motion' fits into the three criteria.  I suspect it should apply to both
techinncal and artistic to some degree.

From a rendering standpoint it is very well done.  You have used lighting to
good effect (see notes in Artistry) and the textures are well done.  I
especially like the interior of the boardroom, the wood was very nice and the
reflection on the table was appropriately subtle.  The video screen was great
with some of the 'transmission artifacts'. 

The actual motion of the characters was predominantly slow and floaty.  Not sure
if this was for effect.  I thought the fight sequence was in slow motion, but
the robots motion seemed almost normal speed.  All of the charcters were a bit
stiff, only individual joints moved for the most part.

My suggestion, get up, act it out and try to judge how long each action takes. 
Video is nice for this, but a mirror and a metronome works wonders too.  Be
sure to animate the whole body, especially the hips and torso.  Anticipate
large moves.  Break the motion of joints (i.e. don't have the elbow and
shoulder start and end their motion on the same frames, choose some part of the
body to lead, and have the rest follow).  Watch for twinning, similar or
identical action on both sides of the body, like both hands moving up exacly
the same, asymmetry can add interest.

Artistic:
The textures were very nice looking and you choose color combinations that were
realistic.  I liked the use of the monocromatic green lighting to help seperate
the two environments and give the impression of night.  The subtle uplighting
on the boardroom walls was very nice and helped to give the impression of a
large volume.  Most of the shots were a bit dark for my tastes, perhaps you
used a macintosh? (mac's by default have a higher gamma than PC's, but are
closer to TV's which is nice).  Your camera moves and shot framing worked
well.

 Some of the acting was strange, for instance the green boardmember who says
'Let's END this!' moves both hands towards his eyes slowly and I could not
decern the intention behind this.  Is he excited, or irritated, or so alien
that his gestures don't match human expectation?.  Also, this comes right after
a similar action by the blur boardmember so it seemed almost mocking.  On the
other hand, I think the acting from the paint can was much better and helped to
sell the dialog. 

Theme:
I liked your idea for this theme.  Not much I can add here, as I am not the best
story person.  The voting at the end was a nice touch and showed an end without
overt violence.

Have questions about my comments? Rich at brickbots dot com





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From evilsnack@hotmail.com:
Scenery is rather bland.  Technically, this did not look challenging to model or
animate.  Concept was a tad baffling.


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From Markus.Altendorff@asamnet.de:
No bad! However, there's a lot of camera movement (distracting), and the fight
(...?) scene starts promising, but then really suffers from the arm swing
problem (as noted in the author's "read me" file)
=====
From irtc_mail@yahoo.co.uk:

It is difficult to know how to judge this as you seem to be asking
people to give it the lowest possible marks.

At the begining here, we have a gigantic sign on the building saying
"Iridium Technetide Corp." and just in case we have missed it, a
caption which says "Iridium Technetide Corp."

All the characters in this have the same problem lowering their arms.
Not enough of the body parts of the characters move to be convincing
and the movements they do make are very slow.

The hero's punch lands in mid-air to right of the robots head. It
seems that your character animation system can cope with moving a
character within a pose but not moving between poses. Why is the robot
looking at his hand?

The captions have two lines of text but the box is three lines high.

Overall, I was confused about what was happening here. At the beginning
we have bad-guys discussing their nemesis but at the end they were
voting on a movie.

Something struck me as I was looking through this. It is only the
movement which spoils the overall impression. This is very colourfull
and has a definate comic-book style to it. I think this would work much
better as a 3D comic strip.