TITLE: The Wu Wei Principle
NAME: Gerald Singelmann
COUNTRY: Germany
EMAIL: gsingelm@acm.org
TOPIC: Pursuit / Escape
COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT.
MPGFILE: wu_wei.mpg
RENDERER USED: 
    Raydream Studio 5.02

TOOLS USED: 
    Movie2MPG, Photoshop 6, Premiere 5, After Effects

CREATION TIME: 
    zillions of hours (it seems); every take between 5 and 15 hours,
each rendered several times for improvements

HARDWARE USED: 
    Macintosh G3 Powerbook

ANIMATION DESCRIPTION: 

The Eternal Chase enacted by two toys. both of them hungry.

VIEWING RECOMMENDATIONS: 

The movie has been created on a Mac which usually displays lighter colors than
Windows. I tried to counter this but possibly you need to throttle your
lightness button.

DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS ANIMATION WAS CREATED: 

My first Film!
i just finished editing it to get below the 5MB threshold. quite a few takes got
shorter or were dropped altogether. so, if you think, it feels somewhat
hurried... ;-)
some technical notes:
- i had to blur the first take, because for some reason or other my MPG
converter couldn't manage the original, sharper image. strangely only this take
created problems
- the "thinking" was created in after effects
- i didnt have time to work on why the cat stumbles during the first attack.
this is what is supposed to happen: the mouse has an (albeit absurd) idea how
to get some cheese off the block and the cat cannot turn fast enough and
stumbles. (sould have found an angle where you see some sort of obstacle.
wouldnt have fit into the 5MB, so thats OK)
- the face of the recovering cat is an animated texturemap. photoshop and the
quicktime movie player came in helpful here
- i didnt find a way to show that the mouse hears/feels the attacking cat
(second attack) without wasting too much time.
(did you notice the sparks under the accelerating mouse? i tried to put some of
these details in.)
- i fiddled with a soundtrack where you hear a "pladabong" when the cat falls
into the bucket and a "plonk" when this hits the broom. the rest of the
soundtrack didnt match these effects in quality and was consequently dropped.

i really enjoyed working on this little thing though it cost me quite a number
of evenings (think i'll have to take a time off next round <grin>)

