3D Metropolis

Download the animation test videos:
power1.avi (320×240, 1.99MB, MPEG4)
-or-
power1.mpg (320×240, 6.99MB MPEG1)

Download an early test animation of the pod and its holder:
podtest1.avi (320×240, 840KB)

Now:

This project went unfinished for some rather good reasons. It was conceived while I was learning 3D Studio Max, and during the making of this piece I went down a number of dead ends. More importantly, the elements of the piece were built by process, not by design, unfortunately. Had I the time to approach a project like this now, I might be able to design and build a coherent and visually interesting machinery room to animate. For its time, it sufficed as a means to practice my 3d skills, if not as a successful visual creation.

Then

My first major short animation was one of my favorite projects, for a while. It was inspired by a number of things, but primarily by the books Metropolitan and City on Fire, and by the movie The Dark Crystal. The working title is Power because it is set entirely within this arcane sort of power distribution chamber, and the finished animation would show how it operates.

In the first 30 seconds the inside of the chamber is described, in a setting that could be futuristic yet is certainly not bright and gleaming, seemingly alien yet vaguely man-made.

Within the same span, the focus of the animation is revealed to be a pod which emerges from the floor.

The pod and its holder rise up in the center of the chamber, and their purpose would be shown in the next segment of this animation.

I have since moved on and it is highly unlikely I will do anything with this project again; while the initial spark of inspiration was neat the project itself was floundering since I was entirely new to 3D animation. Though I felt that I put enough work into it that it shouldn’t be forgotten, it was my first real attempt at an animated short after all.