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| Question: What sort of thing is The Adventures of Spacebird? Answer: The Adventures of Spacebird is a 3D animated story told in 15 parts. It is available on the world wide web in the form of 15 Sorenson-compressed QuickTime files, each around 2 minutes in length and about 5 MB in weight. It is also available by request on videocassette or DVD. Question: Why was it created? Answer: It was created primarily as a means to better learn the ElectricImage Animation System and Adobe AfterEffects. It also served to give me a place to animate in relaxation -- a place to experiment freely, without the constraints of time, budget or clients. The episodes are unscripted and unstoryboarded, because it's nice sometimes to work on something that isn't pre-planned within a millimetre of its life; it gives me the opportunity to learn new tools and discover new techniques without jeopardising the timeline or production schedule of an actual (paying) project. Moreover, improvisation is good for the soul. Question: What software was used? Answer: The virtual geometry was modeled mostly in Maxon Cinema4D XL. The textures were made with Adobe Photoshop and TripleD aFraktal. The 3D elements were animated and rendered with the ElectricImage Animation System. Compositing and special effects were handled through Adobe AfterEffects, and the final timelines were assembled with a Media100 digital editing system. The web-quality episodes have been compressed with Cleaner using Sorenson, and delivered through QuickTime. My primitive renderfarm was administered with the help of Timbuktu Pro. Question: What hardware was used? Answer: Spacebird is composed and rendered entirely with Apple hardware, including a few Power Macintoshes, two iBooks and a PowerBook. Network renders are co-ordinated by an AppleShare Server, and all footage is Motion-JPEG encoded by the Vincent 601 card from Media100. Question: Whence came the musical score? Answer: My brother composed music that appears in episodes I, XI, XIII and XV. Everything else came from my personal CD library or through the short-lived music-sharing miracle formerly known as Napster. Throughout the episodes are selections from the films of Akira Kurozawa, including Kagemusha, Yojimbo and The Seven Samurai. You'll also hear slices from the motion pictures soundtracks of Eyes Wide Shut, Lolita, Brazil, Gladiator, The Phantom Menace, Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, A Bug's Life, Akira, Ghost in the Shell, My Neighbour Totoro and Conan the Destroyer. Additional music came from the classic Star Trek series, albums like Pizzicato-5's Happy End of the World and Robbie Robertson's Music for the North Americans, plus Rossini's William Tell Overture, Holst's The Planets, and Beethoven's 6th and 7th Symphonies. I slice, dice and edit the music with my Media100. Question: Why is there no foley? Answer: Because this is just a spare-time project for me -- adding the requisite sound effects would be almost as time consuming as generating the picture. Foley is an art that shouldn't be approached half-assed. Given the choices all or none, I chose none. Question: What do 'foley' and 'whence' mean? Answer: Shut up.
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Answer: Spacebird is a blue-flavoured artificial bird-like autogenerative robot pet, with a wingspan of approximately 40 cm. His luminescent eyes are capable of discerning wavelengths from high ultraviolet to deeep infrared. He is equipped with both offensive and defensive weapons systems: the former -- a targetted, variable electrical discharge -- is deployed from his head crest, the latter -- a persistent, cloaking fog -- through his beak. Spacebird's maximum flying velocity is 300 kph. His ray-shielded wings flap during flight, but this is large for aesthetic considerations as primary thrust is supplied through twin microramjets mounted on his back. His secondary propulsion system is his unicycle assembly. Question: Why would anybody manufacture such a bird? Answer: Spacebird is an example of the flagship product of the Epsilon Eridani Toy Corporation. Sold in sets of two, these variously flavoured (and correspondingly variously abled) bird-like pets are designed to delight, amuse and to perform as self-repairing gamecocks for the betting pleasure of ladies, gentlemen and children of all ages. Question: Why is Redbird so nasty? Answer: Redbird is an example of a so-called wildcard bird. One in every one thousand birds sold was wired for megalomania and supervillainy, to keep your robotic gamecock encounters spicy. This Redbird in particular had seized upon the idea of using Violetbird for his reproductive needs, and harvesting Spacebird for spare parts. Beyond that, he's just a jerk. Question: How it is that Spacebird can reproduce? Answer: One out of every fifty thousand bird packages contains a female. If fertilised, the female bird has the capacity to generate an eggbot which, given the application of sufficient water and heat, will construct a new robotic phenotype with capabilities defined by the multiplication and compounding of the parent birds' abilities. The whole process is a marvel of directed fusion, nanoferrogenetics and quantum-level data encoding (and just a dab of nonsense). Question: What's the deal with the levitating beach-ball? Answer: The Hovering FunBall was among the first toys ever manufactured by the Epsilon Eridani Toy Corporation, and its very first big hit. The line was continued for many years, and fostered many innovations. This particular StarBall has been down on the planet for quite some time before Spacebird's fiery descent. His first adventure concerned a family of underwater star-shaped blobs, examples of the planet's aboriginal life; next, he turned out to have been inside of my trunk during Die Abenteuer von Gunther das Fliegenauto. How he got from the Isle of the Dogpeople to the catacombs and caves seen in The Adventures of Spacebird is completely open to speculation. I have no idea. I do know this much: StarBall is a pretty nice guy -- and a real cut-up, if you soak him in beer a bit. Question: What happens to Spacebird & Co. next? Answer: Lost toys have a strong instinct driving them to seek out their orbital birth factory at the star Epsilon Eridani.
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Answer: My name is Matthew Frederick Davis Hemming, and I am an animator and compositor who lives in Gilford, Ontario, Canada. Question: Can I share The Adventures of Spacebird? Answer: You may redistribute the web versions of the episodes freely, provided that they are accompanied by a link back to these pages (http://mfdh.ca/spacebird). Please do not recompress or otherwise alter the QuickTime files. If you would like to see the episodes in a different format or at a different size, just ask me. It is forbidden to use the episodes in a commercial setting without first gaining permission in writing from me. All other rights reserved. Additional intellectual property issues are discussed on the copyright page.
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This space has been intentionally left blank for reasons that are not very interesting. (While we're down here, though, we might as well admire the view. Look up. If you crane your neck way back you can just see the bottom of the FAQ. (On a clear day, you can see clear to the menu at the top of the page.) From this angle, the Spacebird FAQ looks a little bit like the introductory text of a Star Wars episode.) |
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