Archive notice: This article was originally published on November 12, 2008. Links and embedded videos are preserved as part of the historical record.
So far, so ordinary. But what if your own university has software licenses but offers no courses for them? Nor did it help that there were no lecturers who could provide technical advice. So take a very deep breath, open your eyes as wide as possible and simply do it anyway!
This is how Nicolas Born began preparing his bachelor’s report in autumn 2007 at the University of the Arts Bremen, in the cross-university Digital Media degree program. At the heart of this work was the production of the animated short film Cheese Moon, which tells the story of a very big celebration held by small mice, who celebrate their own New Year unnoticed by humans.
Yet the reason for these colorful festivities is not the painstakingly constructed fairground, but a farewell. Or rather, the beginning of a wonderful journey. As many of us have already suspected, the moon is actually made of cheese and therefore offers the ideal home for mice. These clever little rodents hide their own small spacecraft beneath our New Year’s Eve rockets so they can reach the “Cheese Moon” unnoticed under cover of the fireworks.
Despite these circumstances, the degree program still offered enough freedom to tackle a project of this kind. Guest lecturer Ulf Nawrot and Professor Roland Kerstein were therefore also enthusiastic about supervising the report. Alongside fellow student Markus Lihs, five other ambitious collaborators joined Nicolas Born. While Tobias Weber and Uli Nollert, who handled all the sound work, also came from the Digital Media program, brothers Markus and Matthias Maciak and Hans Hamm joined from Bremen University’s Media Informatics program.
Everyone involved in the 3D portion of the film was already familiar with the basics of Autodesk Maya, even though half the team only switched over from 3ds Max while the project was under way. However, all the filmmakers had one thing in common: they had never before faced the task of independently creating a complete animated film as part of a larger team.
“Cheese Moon” therefore documents not only the usual learning process involved in a project, but also represents an experiment: how efficiently can tasks that arise during a project be solved using skills acquired autodidactically at the same time—and therefore in a targeted way? Another challenge was the goal of creating as many of the visible elements as possible within the team rather than relying on presets or templates made by others.
All textures were therefore painted in-house, sounds recorded by the team and numerous scripts written for the production. Because efficient teamwork also had to develop along the way, the filmmakers’ nights became very, very short during the four-month production period.
However, this extremely intensive time was repeatedly sweetened by positive developments. Actor Till Hagen, known to many as the German dubbing voice of Kevin Spacey, was recruited as narrator. Thanks also go to the Stimmgerecht agency, which carried out these recordings. The collaboration with the music publisher Sonoton, whose archive supplied the film music, was also more than pleasant.
To render the data that had been created, the excellent Royal Render from Binary Alchemy was used; Holger Schönberger made it available to the team for the project phase. Fellow students and friends, such as Kevin Gledhill and lecturer Joachim Hofmann, also repeatedly helped out without being promised anything more than endless gratitude.
Naturally, such an ambitious project demanded some sacrifices. The acute hair loss suffered by the mice should be mentioned briefly here. Some time was spent creating individual yet fluffy mice. Unfortunately, both the number of mice and the unreliable stability of the tested plugin made it impossible to render them efficiently and within a reasonable period. When viewing the film, it is also clear that other choices could certainly have been made when setting work priorities.
In the end, however, most of the self-imposed goals for the technical and dramatic realization were achieved. Students in similar situations can therefore only be advised to carry such projects through to completion, provided they set achievable goals and do not reach too far for the “Pixar” stars. The film and Nicolas Born’s complete bachelor’s report were enthusiastically received at the University of the Arts Bremen. And because most of those involved still got along well, the core team founded ANIMA Entertainment GmbH in summer 2008 so they could continue working in the territory they had now explored.
Further links:
- Anima Entertainment
