The Great Animation ProjectThese are animations I created in my quest to make a short film. Once upon a time I hoped to put it all together (perhaps with live video for internal shots) and finish it and have a science fiction epic. Or not. Either way, it ultimately never went anywhere.
|
Flyby
 640x480 |
|
These images are taken from an animation that shows the cruiser Orion
as it flies by during a course-correction burn towards its
destination, a station orbiting the gas giant depicted in the last
frame shown here. This is really a setup animation, and pretty
basic. The cruiser flies in from the darkness (so all you see are the
running lights, more or less) and flies towards a gratuitously
colorful emission nebula.
|
Braking Maneuver
 640x480 |
|
This scene depicts the final burn of the cuiser Orion as it brakes to
match orbits with its supply base and attendant spacecraft. This scene
is even more sparse than the first, and doesn't have a nice close-up
of much of anything (although the dark side of the station -- lit with
light from the planet -- does feature prominantly). Pure credit
fodder, basically.
|
Undocking
 640x480 |
|
The scene shows a shuttle undocking with the Orion, maneuvering
around, and thrusting towards the command station. Various other
spacecraft and the planet itself are shown in the course of this
animation. This is a much busier scene than the first two, and has
some pretty nice close-ups of the cruiser at rest (relative to the
other objects, anyway). From this point on, all of the scenes are
pretty busy.
|
Spacedock
 640x480 |
|
This scene depicts the cruiser Orion being moved into the spacedock
facility by four tugs. During the course of the animation, the tugs
break away from the Orion and it is grappled by the spacedock mounting
arms. The stills of this scene are actually better than the animation;
the animation needed to be stretched out because the cruiser "flies"
into the spacedock much too quickly and the tugs have to really hurry
to get away. I would have doubled the length of the animation if could
have fit the animation in memory (I couldn't).
|
Docking
 640x480 |
|
This scene depicts the shuttle docking with the command station. Not
much else to say about it. It's pretty formula (rotating shuttle docks
with rotating station), but a good concept nonetheless. People keep
claiming that I obviously stole this from Babylon 5, but I think that
they don't have long enough memories. I obviously stole it from 2001:
A Space Odyssey. I do like my station design, though. It's obviously
not a tourist resort.
|
Cargo
 640x480 |
|
This scene shows the camera flying past a freighter where cargo is
being loaded and unloaded by maintenance pods. I really should have
done better freighters; these freighters are rather pathetic, I
think. Mostly, I had trouble figuring out what kind of insignia they
should have, and settled for something really lame (that looks bad on
the ship design to boot). Anyway, if I ever do anything like this
again I'll do better. I promise.
|
Sunrise
 640x480 |
|
This scene depicts the cruiser Orion as it undergoes maintenence in
the spacedock. The camera (on the dark side) passes along the
spacedock as a maintenance pod lights up the side. At the end of the
animations, the camera pans into the sun. This is my second favorite
animation after the spacedock scene; I like the way it looks with the
maintenance pod floating alongside the cruiser. Also, I really like
lensflares. Anyway, the camera pan into the sun at the end of this
series of animations is reversed in the first animation in the next
series as that scene pans away from a bluer, hotter sun.
|
Lunar Battle
 640x480 |
|
At the beginning of this scene, the sun of this solar system is in the
edge of the camera's view. The camera pans around past the planet to
its single moon where a base is annihilated. All that time,
thermonuclear explosion flare up all across the sky. It's really much
better in the animation than the stills; it's hard to convey the
waxing and waning of the explosions and the little moving
conflagration at the end as the interceptors launched from the lunar
system detonate, obviously failing as detonations light up the lunar
surface.
|
