About
Machines Don't Cry
Machines Don't
Cry is an animated film adaptation of Mike Resnick's Robots Don't Cry, a
2004 Hugo Award nominated short story.
The project was started in
October 2005. The work was done on a PC at home using whatever free time
available from the daily grind of work and family life. Typically, about
twenty hours was spent each week by one person - me with virtually no
budget.
At the time of this writing, post-production is underway such as
incorporating voice and music.
The running time of the film is 41
minutes.
Why did I do it? For the love of movies, especially
Science Fiction films like Star Wars and E.T. The Extraterrestrial. Making
a hit movie as great as Star Wars or Toy Story is a goal and attempting to reach
that goal is an adventure. It can be a fun hobby but it can be very
expensive too. But the worse part about it is the time it takes to make
animation.
I have a lot of experience now that would be valuable for budding
3D animators interested in producing animated features in a relatively short
time, part-time, virtually no employees, and practically no
budget.
The
primary software used was Dakine Wave's VirtualStage. It was under $50
when I purchased it and it couldn't have come at a better time. I
evaluated other 3d animated software, including Machinima. The
professional tools were damn too expensive and there found problems with
Machinima, especially with intellectual rights.
In the end, the
supporting software and hardware upgrades added up. Vue and Poser totaled
around 500 bucks. But the primary engine to create the animation was
Virtual Stage and once the setup and modeling was complete, it didn't take long
to do the animation. Poser saved time in creating the critical facial
expressions of the character models.
I will discuss my reasons for
choosing the software tools I used for "Machines Don't Cry" in the near
future.
