850 Meters

Please click here to watch 850 Meters. (P.S. this is about 15 minutes long)

     850 meters, or as I like to call it: 2788.71 feet. Well what can I say, it was wonderfully cartoony. Now that I think about it; I rarely see cartoon physics used in C.G. animation. I would guess this is because a lot of people generally use C.G. to create more "lifelike" animations, still cartoon physics is one of the things I think makes anything good. I also really liked the simple overall shape of things combined with the textures to make things detailed yet still cartoonish.
    I have to say I did not see that ending coming, it totally caught me off guard. I also really like that they didn't reveal the punchline till the credits ended (not the most normal thing to do, but they filled in some details while the credits were rolling. I also really like the theme; success comes in many forms. You wanted fame, you got fame (just maybe not the way you were expecting). Also there is a "things are not always as they seem" feeling mixed in.

The real evil he faced.

Fallen

Please click here to watch Fallen (sorry for the bad video quality)

     Well this is probably one of my favorite shorts now. The thing I liked most about the video was the vapor. The clouds were pretty terrific. You don't get much of a good look at them, but when you do they have a sense of fluffiness and also a good sunset cloud color. Also at the end credits you see the trail the character left behind, which just disperses beautifully.
     I really love the message this short conveys. The characters sees his demise, becomes scared/fearful, but then he embraces his situation and lives a little. He now plumes to his death yet he is unafraid, even accepting of his impending demise. The message: live your life to the fullest, and have no regrets.

I never thought it was going to go the way it did when I saw this intro.

R'ha

Please click here to watch R'ha.

     I think this is possibly my favorite graphics for all the animated shorts I have blogged about so far.  The character design and lighting are wonderful. I also like that they focused on the shape rather that the colors/textures, because I'm just a sucker for a good base design, I don't really like it when people focus too much on the frills (don't get me wrong; it still can be good, but I'm just a little tired of it). I particularly like the facial muscles on the "alien", for not having a overly humanoid face it shows a lot of thought went into the character.
    Now for the theme; there is obviously a humans vs. machines thing going on, but there is also a basic nature of all beings at play. The "alien" takes the first chance to escape and goes to warn his people of the "impending" attack, yet he actually leads the machines right to them. Now have you ever heard that you have "selfish" genes, this means that all beings will protect their genes (that is children, or in the large picture, their species). These to things combined show that his "genes" were in trouble so he did what he thought he had to do to save them (i.e. going to warn his people). It also has a "human predictability" theme to it because not only was he tricked into leading his captors to his people, but the machines actually planned out his entire interrogation to get him to do so (shown by the monitor).

Look at that face!