Defective Dectective

This 3D Computer Generated animation mixed with the 2D dream sequences blew my mind it's that good. The characters are modelled to an unbelievably professional standard especially for a student film. I think the animators have got the actions of the detective spot on, the way he sneaks round the side of the room, and has a curious eyebrow through a magnifying glass. There's just so much going on it's hard to even know what to comment on first. For two people to make, it's incredible, I hope I can make something this could next year. Maybe not in 3D CG. I think it is fair to comment that their university course focuses on 3D animation, but it's amazing.

It took about a year to complete the film from the story development until it was rendered and done. The film is mostly done in 3D. The program at Ringling focuses on 3D computer animation, and the course of study take you through all the stages of production, from the story and design stages, through Modeling, Animation and Lighting. In the first two years we take course in traditional hand drawn animation, and when we got to work on our film, we knew we wanted to incorporate that in some sort of way. The Detective’s dream sequences were a perfect opportunity to use a different technique that will take the viewers through a unique experience.

I love everything that is remotely Noir, detective based. There's a certain ambience that comes with moving image pieces of work in that genre. A soft but slightly coloured lighting through the blinds often with a lot of wood in the study or office the detective works in, to darken the scene. I think there's something that adds to the mystery of it because when you see that set up you know the narrative will have a detective in it. In this animation they mastered the change in lighting, from the office to the kitchen, it's really subtle and it's not there all the time but enough to give a detective feel without overshadowing the comedy of the plot. I also think the textures of the 2D animation work amazingly especially the bullet and the two main characters, I think I personally would of liked these to have more in them and be a bit longer, but I don't know if it would of ruined the pace of the film, because it is very fast.

If you see the bottom of this post are links to the blogs of the two students who made this film, and there illustrations are very textured much like the 2D animation in this.

The Music for the film was composed by Raphael Beau, who wrote the music for Micmacs (directed by Jean-Pierre Jeunet, who also directed Amelie). We really loved his work and sent him a version of our film in very early stage. Luckily he saw the potential in it and agreed to write music for us. We were extremely happy and he did such a fantastic job. From the very first draft he sent us it was clear that we are on the same wavelength, and it was pleasure working with him. The sound design was done by Clement Maleo (who worked on Gobelins, l’école de l’image film, Burning Safari) and he was also great to work with. He was very particular about every little nuance in the film and really brought it to life through sound. 

http://www.cartoonbrew.com/brewtv/detective-45212.html

Even though there's no dialogue, I think this works for the animation because there is a lot of imagery and vocals would of probably distracted from this. I think the music is amazing, it's not too cheesy but it's got enough of the detective era to fit in with the genre they were going for.

This is a really successful piece and it's really hard to pick out what makes it so successful when everything is so amazing, but I'm really glad I saw it and got to share it, I honestly can't think what they would improve except for doing more because it was crazy good!

http://avnergeller.blogspot.co.uk/

http://chocosweete.blogspot.co.uk/