ANIMATED FEED: MITE - DIRECTED BY WALTER VOLBERS

MITE from Walter Volbers on Vimeo.

Hello World!
First of all: Thank you, Thank you, Thank you. I was overwellmed by the many 'hearts' and never could have imagined to be so many. I will surely checkout the accounts of those who 'hearted' me. Also thanks for the nice comments from some 'famous' people :)
Further thanks to the other forums/sites that linked to MITE: kuriositas.com , stashmedia.tv , io9.com , karapaia.livedoor.biz, alt1040.com , thecuriousbrain.com , and of course vimeo! Which by the way offer some interesting statistics, one of which says that this video was watched from 145 countries. Just wow!



Some info about me, I've been a professional computer animator for the past 20 years and 10 years of traditional cell animator before that. So for this film to take nearly 10 years to complete is a manageable timeframe :-)
Unfortunately Softimage has been discontinued by Autodesk in 2015, if you want to see 'The Return of Mite' 10 years from now please visit: change.org/petitions/autodesk-save-softimage
Thanks for your help.

King regards Walter Volbers , europe 2014

Production info:
Modelled, rigged, animated in XSI/Softimage. Rendered in Softimage using Arnold with a maximum frame time of 3:22 hours (SITOA 1.17). Render resolution 1280x720, depth channel resolutuion 2560x1440. Comped in Nuke using Frischluft for depth of field in 2560x1440 and resized to final 1920x1080.
Camera animation is 'one shot' except for the crash zoom in the beginning with a short disolve to the key, where I change the set. I started out using Mental Ray but I was forced to switch to Arnold (faster, better, more stable).
As already mentioned, the production-time: 10Years! (not kiding)
Yes, this seems loooong, but this was an 'on and off' project done aside from my day job as a CG artist. And most time was wasted having to redo the shading with Arnold. Summed up to an eight hour workday the animation of the Mite was completed in two weeks.