EpicGames: Fortnite cinematic trailer

Epic Games' new cinematic trailer on the under-development new game Fortnite. A lot of people does not like the concept but I still love the fun side of zombie breakouts. Since this is a cartoon trailer there is a great space to move around the concept.

Developer: Epic Games Inc


Its style resembles to Toy Story very much. Well actually a mixture of Toy Story and Walt Disney. A very good marriage. The story is very simple: some guys go and get garbage to build a junk-bunker in a city then zombies arrive and they have to defend it against them. I love the handheld camera effect. Why would they record it? Because they gone mad? Since there is no youtube anymore... :). Anyway they blow up a big house and then they collect the... road-signs from it? :) Well, lovely madness. I am sure there are easier ways to get road-signs than blowing up a three-level building.

But they are in a rush so they do not think... at all. Again if I was building a bunker I would use something heavier than... road-signs.
Okay the way that black guy comes up from the ground is a little bit weird. I think even in a Disney animation you would have some surface scratches for such an event. So the dark smoke is, I think a little bit thin as a solution.
Anyway I love the way they rush-build that bunker. Of course electricity goes down just before the zombies appear. Well, actually I don't know what kind of creatures are they, but something similar as the ones appeared in I am Legend.
And they get the camera. And it turns out that they are mad as well.
Yeah I think I would be one of the mad guys on both sides. And most of us would be.
So this thing does not want anything else just to show us how we rush to hide from the problems. We do not think but fuss around no matter how big the problem is. I love that it is so important to make the video for them even if it takes time while they apparently in a hurry. And finally they just leave the camera outside.
And what happens when the zombies find it? They hold it and they bawl into it. Very funny. Maybe just for me.

And we clearly feel I think that it is a caricature of the daily routine aspect of living in a zombie-breakout.
The nicest thing about this video is that they just do not want to do anything more than they supposed to. They just want to make us laugh on the zombie-breakout thing and if we think deep about the metaphor we may have a good laugh on the social issue the zombie genre aims to picture. Very original concept and great fun. :).


Scores: 
Story: 10/10 (What can be funny about zombies. Here is your answer :) A world of full of idiot survivors and mad zombies hahaha!!!)

Director: 9/10( (Perfectly illustrative and modest direction.) )

Modelling: 9/10 ( Hard to take any concept on those creatures. Even in a cartoon we need to get some idea what could they be. Zombies? Aliens? That popping up thing again is shared with concept and animation. )

Animation: 9/10 (Perfect animation. Still that popping up thing...)
Render and lights: 8/10 (consistent, cartoonish render sometimes slides into ingame graphics lights and projected shadows are good but there should have been some particle systems like flying dust)
Material/textures: 5/10 (a lot of details are missing and they are definitely ingame style materials - almost complete lack of bump shaders)
Photography: 10/10 (I love that the camera is hand-held, animated perfectly)
Editing/effects: 8/10 (Edit? Well yes! I love the fast-winding of the tape. I forgot the time I have seen that thing. Good video-tapes. The video-noise is a little bit too much for me.)
Music: 8/10 (The music contributes very much to the dawn-tension like in a Dracula movie. Well not too much though but I don't miss anything it is just not a great track. The overall audio is perfect.)
Visual concept: 7/10 (I think this is great concept some details still missing though. And the zombies are too cartoonish. Even in a cartoon we need some bones and anatomy. And what is that smoke?)

____________________

Overall: 8.3

Naughty Dog: The Last of Us (Sony)

Zombies and Kids...
The Last of Us trailer released by Sony and Naughty Dog takes a zombie breakout to talk about the loss of innocence. There is a lot happening in the 2 minutes trailer. The special aspect of it is that they have shot it in ps3 which makes the thing a little bit harder since this machine is not particularly designed for such a task. This gives place to suspicion that we see ingame graphics in the trailer. Well it looks good. But since this is definitely not a gameplay video it is free to go here.
The trailer is mostly build onto the idea Cormac McCarthy unfolded in his book The Road (Trailer of the movie version): What if you survive the apocalypse with your child? Well there are no zombies in McCarthy but the idea is quite the same that there bad and good stalkers in a world where the only food left on the earth is human flash. Anthropophagy or cannibalism is very popular in movies recently. Actually the funny side of this is represented in "The Book of Eli".Well still terrible, but it goes like a joke there.

So back on zombies and The Last of Us. Of course Zombies are the metaphor of conformism and consumerism. Here is a world where zombies have destroyed everything and they are hunting down the few uninfected humans who are stalking amongst the ruins of our culture. It might be pathetic but that is how the line of this metaphor goes. (Check the movies of Romero for more reference). A further slightly deeper aspect of this is the critic of capitalism. In McCarthy this is quite clear. In capitalism you are always the competitor of someone which means you are fighting for the same resources. This means also that you are eating up the others (if you think the consumption of other companies). In this respect capitalism is a quite traditional system since in history the main competitors (countries, nations) had conquered each other frequently. So eating each other is not a new thing but just the trivial darwinian metaphor of competition.
Alive humans represent values that we tend to honour in others. For example having a child is not really a capitalist virtue. It takes too much effort and time and makes your life much harder. There is the point where we arrive to the story where we have a father and his daughter. After seeing dead person (died recently for his blood is still dropping to the ground) we see a child. Since the guy is not eaten it has been killed by an other human, not a zombie. And out of the window we see that nature is strong and alive which gives the overall feeling of naturality. These things happening now belong to nature. And an other aspect is that people seem to have plenty of resources since there are other things to eat (not like the ones in the McCarthy story). And they do not need to hunt each others. They only need to survive the zombies. But apparently the kill each other. And this is their natural habit. Very critical and still only 30 seconds into the trailer (excluding opening credits so you find this at: 0:20-0:50). And then we see a girl running from the site of the murder.
There is an interesting tension in this. The girl is running like a child on the playground. And she does not notice the corpse. This shows how cruel this world could be. If children are used to corpses even bloody corpses that is a terrible world to live in. (They supposed to be shocked by that sight). She even steps into the blood which shows that for her its like only a puddle. Completely natural for her.
On a second thought, and that is where tension steps in, it is a bedroom. And bedrooms usually have only one entrance. So his coming out of the scene of the crime. And if you watch closely she has some red reflection on her right hand at 0:50-51. Well if there was a police there these things would make her easily a suspect of murder. At least this far of the trailer. The tension is elevated while we see that she is alone in this dangerous house. And something happens in an upper level. The classic horror moment comes when she tarts to go up there to see what is happening there. Very clever...And here we feel the horror feeling, we want her to be safe no matter what. "RUN AWAY KID!!" Only in almost 40 seconds. Great!
So a lot happened already under one minute. This vivid concision is a real virtue.
The tension dissolves with the next few shots. We see clearly that she has no blood on her hand when she pulls her knife out of her pocket seeing a middle age man beating an other to death. Well one tension for an other and this one is much bigger. So we got some tension already with the murder and else, but now it nicely grows.
Fortunately we realize that they are father and daughter (or we come to this conclusion very early). But then the funnies part when the father tells her: "There you are". This means that he did not know where she was. So the murderer is either the daughter or the other guy who just have been killed. This is important because it really shows the deepness of immorality in this world. Kids are held to be innocent. This means that they cannot be consumers, neither stalkers they are only survivors. If you give it a second thought kid-zombies are quite rare. They are usually adults.
Anyway a lot of tension has been generated so far. This little girl alone in a big dangerous house in a world where none cares about her psychology and the traumas touching her (most of us would protect children from horror movies for example). Two adults were fighting to death (what if his father loses?) and she only has a little knife. And she says bingo when she finds bullets. This again strengthen the impression that she is becoming that murderer
The unclearity of the murder is here again crucial since we just do not know how deeply is she touched by this environment. Could she kill someone? Apparently she could. But has she done so so far? We do not know. This thing reveals I think a really distinguished visual language. 
So far we have not heard about zombies. When they arrive we just feel the urge to take them out of there.
Okay now let us pause again. So far the father figure is very accurate. He represents strength, safety and order. His daughter obeys him which is a little bit over her age but here we have so much extreme psychological factors that it is really hard how would a child's mind react. The usual psychology would suggest that children are not so strong and cannot concentrate so well under stress. But we can accept that she is extraordinary and this can be a reason for their survival. I think McCarthy is much better in this as the son there suffers severe traumas while his father tries to protect him from these things. This attempt of protection gives us much more tension then we have here. Why is that?
Well the last of us type father orders his daughter to search the dead body. We cannot decide whether she is a stalker like her father or an innocent child who deserves a better life. She seems to be a little bit touched by the infamy of this world. She is not the representation of human dignity. And in this case this is a case of failure of realism. Children are usually the passive objects of horror and not participants of it. I say usually since this is a much deeper debate in literature. (You might think of Golding's Lord of the Flies) But whatever is the case about the cruelty of children it remains true that if they are passive objects of horror that has a deeper horror impact on us. Because since that time we are worried about not only their life but about their innocence as well. We just do not want to see them face with the horror of the world. If the girl was slightly less tough I think the tension would have gone above the stars when the zombies arrive.
And when they arrive even the strong father freaks out. There are really nice textures there by the way when he is preparing his gun for shooting the zombies who are led by the smell of the just spilled fresh blood. The thing we all notice even if only unconsciously that there is no escape from here. The are on the second floor in a bathroom. So the only way out is either to hide while they eat the body and wait them to be gone, or to kill them. I think the expression on the father's face is greatly rigged. However it is slightly late still epic.
Then the monologue of the girl and the smooth running-out-of-the-house scene gives us the relief from all the tension we have got. Since we do not know what happened between the bathroom and the doorway we cannot complain about the story. But still we can feel a logical block by the fact that it cannot be a straightforward run from the bathroom to the doorway since the zombies were there between. If they did not kill them they had to run by them. And this seems to be pretty hard. But never mind, since anything could have happened. The only thing bothers me is that the flow if the clip is disturbed by this. We just feel that according to the rhythm it needs to be a run but it cannot be. They must have spent some minutes by killing those creatures. But that does not fit into the overall flow of the film. And this is because the father says to his daughter "Run" while he shots the first of the three zombies. But if she runs, she obviously has to run towards the zombies. The she would die. So they need to shoot to more at least to make it a run. I think even if they shoot some more rounds while we see the dark transition screen this could be fine. Well easy avoidance makes it just a bigger mistake.

The lights and the textures are still between a game and a cartoon but they are consistent and really nice. The models are very detailed and despite the organic ones they seem to be perfect for me. The organis environment is great and vivid (didn't know they have those softwares for ps3). Shadows are just perfect.
The rigging of the animation is nice however the final run seems to be a little bit still dreamlike and some of the movements still seems to be manually animated. If this means that the whole thing is done so that is a great animation but if this means that they altered motion capture, well that might have been a mistake. (e.g. at 1:12-14 when she points to the corpse it is very unrealistic). At the same place I cannot understand the physics behind the corpse's chest-pack. It seems to me made of leather. It is huge. And although a body was lying on it still holds its original shape. I think it should have been creased into the chest.

Scores:

Story: 10/10 (Very well developed set and tension. I really had a ball in my stomach.)
Director: 9/10(Very detailed and distinguished visual communication, deep insights and smooth complexity, great tension pity for that mistake in the continuity at the end)

Modelling: 9/10 (Organic models could have got more details)

Animation: 8/10 (Some unrealistic movements)
Render and lights: 8/10 (consistent, cartoonish render sometimes slides into ingame graphics lights are beautiful and projected shadows as well but there should have been some particle systems like flying dust)
Material/textures: 5/10 (a lot of details are missing and they are definitely ingame style materials - almost complete lack of bump shaders)
Photography: 10/10 (The camera movement is very nice and accurate)
Editing/effects: 8/10 (Edit is fantastic, it is smooth, hardly noticeable but lacks the contribution to the story as well, i.e. nothing extraordinary.)
Music: 9/10 (Not much music but that is very nice, and the overall audio is really good)
Visual concept: 8/10 (Zombies resemble to the ones scene in a Secret World trailer but everything else is nice and original)

____________________
Overall: 8.4

Copyright notice:

Copyright Notice: The video is made available by http://www.lastofus.com's youtube channel thelastofus by leaving the embed option open for everyone. All intellectual rights for the video are reserved for Naughty Dog and Sony. I only claim the copyright for its interpretation and evaluation.
(c)2011 Sony Computer Entertainment America LLC. The Last of Us is a trademark of Sony Computer Entertainment America LLC. Created and developed by Naughty Dog, Inc.

Transformers Fall of Cybertron Cinematic Trailer

So in my Monday post I promised that I will tell you which brand new game trailer uses the Puscifer track: The Humbling River as its soundtrack. It is the new cinematic trailer of the under development transformers game: Fall of Cybertron. This is not an epic trailer, neither it is intended to be one. It is really a teaser since we just have the feeling that it is too short. However with the smooth music of Puscifer we are satisfied and relaxed. So it make the feeling that it is a complete and finished thing. We only know that the big robots are in a deperate fight and one of their best (everybody"s favourite) Bumblebee. We easily figure it out that this is a futile and already lost battle. So the set is very dramatic (and in this sense epic). We see that these robots have a good standard of camaraderie so they help the wounded Bumblebee (actually it is Optimus Prime himself if I 

am right).

Created by: High Moon Studios (Activision, Blizzard,) Hasbro,
Release date: 2011.dec.06.
Official title: Transformers: Fall of Cybertron - Cinematic Trailer

Well Transformers is a franchise where you can easily lost. A lot of complex and difficult things are going on. Mechanical life forms, time fluctuations, planet-transformers, great upgrades etc. So I will not try to untangle the lines (actually time fluctuation allows the story to be inconsistent as well so no hope to get around in one round).But the trailer is nicely done. In general you have smooth music with fitting slow motion animation of a great battle. It has a very heroic atmosphere which fits the story and the set.
We see some blue smoke or mist and the eyes of Optimus are slowly unfolding of this blue mist. The camera starts to pane back from his head and in the background we see some explosions so we realize that it is a war. I think this gradual way of composition is very smooth. Then we have our first shock. Oh My Dear Old... Bumblebee!!!! Cries out the kid in our heart. "WHAT HAPPENED WITH BUMBLEBEE?!!!" And we are already bought.Very cheap buy but certainly effective. Not only seeing them in a great war, but in such an EPIC!, GREAT!!, APOCALYPTIC!!! war where Bumblebee is injured so badly. And we see the robot with an injury and fading (by the loss of sparks?). Anyway the scene from the blue, uninteresting mist elevates to the highest tension in 20 seconds. Hm... that is an acceleration. Well done. The incoming attacking robots cannot reach Optimus and he does not fight for everybody's greatest concern is poor Bumblebee. Well all of us (you can admit) agree with those guys. NO MATTER WHAT BUT DEFEND BUMBLEBEE!

And again! Optimus puts him down and like a father (well a father robot at least) blinks his eyes and "tells him" that everything will be all right. Really touching scene. No matter whether robots can have feelings, no matter what will happen next we now know that it is all safe.

I think this trailer just lets us be kids again. And this is a good thing. It is really innocent. We have those feelings don't we? That these robots are strong allies of us. And we admire them for that.
Of course the final battle is not on the set. They leave us here obviously because the final battle will be included in the game. We only see the higher upgraded dinosour-like robot to throw some fire onto the enemy. And we know that everything will be ok now.

Concerning the render there are some nice things to mention. I think the lights are very evenly distributed while it is really hard to decide how such lights would look like this a good way to make the light-set. It is believable so it might be true. And that is well-enough. Same is true for the animation. This is an other planet (it is not really determined by the comic book how big it is exactly but it is determined definitely that it is indereminate what material builds it up :) no more puzzle please!) where strange creatures live. So we have no idea what is the proper setting for the gravitation. I think they could have been a little bit heavier. But how would you show that? You cannot show it by the damage they make to the environment (it is their own planet) and nor by mass movement (they should have develop some proper muscle-like things to move smoothly). So this is a really difficult task. My suggestion would be that explosion-fire should work the same way as they do on earth since we know that the atmosphere is very similar to our owns. So I think if things blow up the same way there as they do here but everything is more massive and heavier than here then there should be some different relation between explosion there and here. Maybe if bigger explosions would happen and if they would move them to less distance than they would on earth the whole thing would get a better, more alien-like framing.
The textures and materials are good enough, they are mostly the usual damaged metal. The fast changes of light makes it hard to judge what we see but I am sure about one thing. At the beginning Optimus' head looks like as if it was made of plastic. This is an easy mistake since most of us remember these guys from the toys we used to get. But I think this mistake especially for the beginning, and for a closeup and for a slow-motion is just too much. Of course we do not care but they are apparently able to make good materials so they should have corrected this.
The models are of course perfect, they are vividly animated, always turn and tumble and move their parts. So that is really nice. Huge amount of beautiful fires of explosions pampers the eye.
The only thing I miss is some particle systems. So much explosion and fire would certainly produce some soot flying in the air. And a lot of smoke probably. That would improve the visual a lot.
And two more things. One is that if there is fire on this planet there must be flammables as well. But nothing actually burns or heats (so many explosions but no heated or melted metal on the set). And if this is a war, at least some wounded dead robots would be nice since now there is only one wound on the scene the one of Bumblebee. Megatron beats one to death but then it disappears from the set. And if one is beaten to death some external marks are usually present. Like sparks, or short circuits, twitches of the body, malfunction, etc. Something indicating their agony. I think this is important for every fight scene.


Scores:

Story: 8/10 (Heroic, Romantic, Innocently touching. The "I am big but we are bigger" cliché at the end is a usual transformers thing but not necessarily applicable.)
Director: 10/10 (Nice gradual elaboration of the story and the set, and even the transformers universe.)

Modelling: 10/10 (Perfect Meshes.)

Animation: 8/10 (Consistently animated characters but no particle systems. Really rich fire animation but again no smoke or dust.)
Render and lights: 10/10 (There are no inconsistencies in lights they affect beautifully the environment.)
Material/textures: 7/10 (Good overall performance but one serious mistake at the beginning.)
Photography: 9/10 (Nice composition, no messy or empty spaces, no imbalances but there are some "we are posing together on the placard of the game" settings.)
Editing/effects: 10/10 (Very tough work. In such a short video a lot of thing happens. And we don't even feel that we are switching.)
Music: 10/10 (I have been listening to this music for almost a whole day. Great choice. And the audio is again very nicely attached to the music. I appreciate that the music set is not mute but in accordance with the track.)
Visual concept: 7/10 (Overall transformers illustration with some already mentioned mistakes - wounds, smoke.)

____________________
Overall: 8.9

Copyright Notice: The video is made available by http://www.transformersgame.com's youtube channel transformersgame1 by leaving the embed option open for everyone. All intellectual rights for the video are reserved for Activision and High Moon Studios. I only claim the copyright for its interpretation and evaluation.

HASBRO and its logo, TRANSFORMERS, and its associated characters are trademarks of Hasbro and are used with permission. © 2011 Hasbro. All rights reserved. Game © 2011 Activision Publishing, Inc. All rights reserved. Activision is a registered trademark of Activision Publishing, Inc.

Assassin's Creed: Revelations Cinematic Trailer by Digic Pictures

Cinematic Trailer of Assassin's Creed Revelations

Copyright (c) 2010Digic Pictures Ltd. All rights reserved.

Digic Pictures, a small garage company from the EU, Hungary now one of the best if not the best of 3d animation companies of the world. They innovate and elevate 3d animation to a new level in every videos. Not only great modelling and render but excellent direction and music. Not just now but most of the time. I should make a special event for them as well but not this year, since this year is for an other excellent team: Blizzard.

But until next week's Blizzard anniversary event let us erect our first idol with the "inspirational standard" title hanging on it. This means that you can hardly do anything better than this. Of course we always keep the 0.2 points to state that this is possibly only the second best video. As they say, "always know that you are the second best since the first can't be better."

New Youtube channel

I happily announce to all my audience that I have started my youtube channel agecinematic3d. I know, I know, it is very unprofessional but I found out too late that 3dcinematic is already engaged.
You can find a ling below the blog's title page to the channel. Hopefully If I get all the permissions, I can embed videos from my own channel soon. The main advantage of that is that you can have detailed analysis right on the video and I only need to write down the extended reference and overall aesthetic evaluation without the hard to spot details. While there is not so much videos there, you can still watch my playlists of cinematic classics.
Enjoy!

Forecast for the week

Check out what will happen this week!!

Diablo 3 opening cinematic 2011

The new intense cinematic intro of Diablo3 is introduced by Blizzard. It develops new artistic means by combining traditional fantasy art with Manga animation for the beginning few seconds. As far as all this is set  to be appeared in a book which turns out to be the dream of someone it makes reference to rich symbolism.
and rather new visual experience.

Of course we could think that this prophetic dream is just the sign of a shortage of production time where concept art cannot develop to a higher CGI level. But anyway let turn ourselves into a charitable interpreter and say that this is an artistic solution no matter how necessary it was.

Anyway the solution is very nice, even if it has some immodest symmetry to Hellboy II's animated prologue scene in its originality (and the origin of all such thing: Fallout2). It is a good start to try Maya3d’s capability of producing cartoons made of pure concept art.And it is nice that they have the classic blizzard crow for the beginning.

The dream or prophecy is of a young girl, one of the few very realistic woman characters of the history of cgi. This makes this trailer extraordinary already. Very professional modelling and render as it has been always with Blizzard. So if you want a school example of CGI animation you should check this out no matter what. It is really hard to find any mistake in it. Maybe the first cartoon part is a little bit too long and perspective space is not really working everywhere there. Maybe it is so by the authors intention to develop some tension by the imperfect perspectivity, I don’t have any answers for these questions.

The script is little bit too ordinary but well this is this game anyway. So there comes apocalypse and BUMM. And that will be of course terrible. The orphan living with his uncle (it is the grandfather type actually so they have about 60 years between them which is a little bit too much) is not the most shockingly new idea I have ever came across with but the realization is really nice. They have a very intimate connection. So I did not feel that I am jumping into a cliché.

I find a little bit... well I don’t know. When it happens we all know that something will happen with the old folk and his niece and when the small drops of wood and stone starts to pour from the roof we all know that a big boom will happen very-very soon. I think the cuts here could have been different to elevate tension. It has the slight feeling that the old folk just too slow for this. Actually this frustration is a nice artistic tool to emphasize that the he is just too old for this.
There is however one undeniable problem with the intro. We have a big scene of apocalyptic war with godlike heroes where we hear that the world ends soon. And what happens? It begins... with a meteorite striking the earth? C’mon! Is that all?

I think technically it is a perfect clip those guys made everything they could and what they were told to picture they did very well. But that guy who figured out the story could have had a little more time to think a little bit out of the box of fantasy clichés. 

So here the come the numbers:

Story: 6/10 (good old story, no surprises)
Director: 6/10 (we know what will happen next for the whole time of the clip)
Modelling: 10/10 (great, detailed job, phenomenal!) 
Animation: 10/10 (All bodies move differently, perfect weight control, eye-movement, they can be alive!)
Render and lights: (10/10) (Fantastic in all good sense. I could not pick a lost ray of light there)
Material/textures: 10/10 (Beautiful despite the low light set of the clip. Even next to the fire, materials looks nice.)
Photography: 10/10 (Nice heroic compositions)
Editing/effects: 8/10 (that do you believe me part could have been edited out easily)
Music: 9/10 (Nice composition in accordance with the rest of the audio but nothing extraordinary)
Visual concept: 10/10 (nice classic fantasy art just the way we all like it)

____________________
Overall: 9.0

Copyright notice for Diablo:
©1996 Blizzard Entertainment, Inc. All rights reserved. Diablo and Blizzard Entertainment are trademarks or registered trademarks of Blizzard Entertainment, Inc. in the U.S. and/or other countries.

Deus Ex - Human revolution trailer II. (Director Cut)

"These people Adam, they are like ghosts..." says the oracle, expressing our own feelings about today's social life. Of course we want to hear that these guys are the past and they cannot stop us, the future.
I think most of us are in when he says that. And of course even more enthusiasm comes when he says that to Adam who is the first man created by God, and the hero we would very like to identify ourselves.
continued from Deus Ex - Human revolution trailer I.  (Director Cut)

Deus ex 2011

Terminator 2 1991

Here the render is just great. The reflection of the face on the window with the beautiful sight of the city and the sides of the great neo-neo-gothic window pillars. And for the word "future" a plane from Terminator 2 flies away from the window. And most of us do not care because the moment is just great despite of the unnoticeable window frames (which looked so great from the side). These frame is alike a UI frame which is pretty bad if you re-start the video from that point as I just did :). But in the flow of the trailer you just do not notice it for there are so many things happening there.

Then we change to the view where Adam is recreated by the machines. This is again a great metaphor. Since originally God created Adam, now Adam is created (or at least re-formed) by machines. Only one doctor is there with the machines not the bunch of people as they used to be in the renaissance scene. And meanwhile the doctor says that the body may heal after recreation but the mind... Well the mind is not simply weaker but "not always so resilient". This leads us to the social aspect of the metaphor: society may find new ways of existence but the mind of the people remains the same so humanity falls back again and again to the same historical states as we see from the scope of the trailer. And after this a short reference to psychology as Adam is shown in two short shots. The first when he faces the camera the looks into it. The other is when the camera shows us the side view and he turns to us, and suddenly shots his shades and his face becomes aggressive. This shows exactly the former statement of the doctor on a personal level and makes reference to the historical heritage of humanity of aggression and war (well I am not sure whether on this point I go too far about this).
And that old way of living is of course the Darwinian struggle for survival. As Adam attacks the wall and breaks a hole into it the next picture suggests that he breaks through the web of secrets of this world and again he breaks through ourselves.
This claim is supported by the next event with the hacker. Adam cannot save him for the web is stronger and faster than him. Before going further let us have a look at the view for a second.

After the beautiful city view we see the landing air plane and I just cannot decide whether it is made of painted steel or plastic. And I am tempted to the latter one. Its not even chromed which is a shame. Even the 20 years older terminator plane looks more realistic at least on this picture above. It does not take a long time so it can be considered as a minor problem, but still it is not a real big deal to chrome a surface with maya 3d either...
The robots re-framing Adam have the same little bit of strange materials on them but well they are hi-tech  medical tools so they can be built from any UFO metals. However I still think that the arms are beautiful but I think the their chrome-rubbery material is a little bit too original. Its seems to be just strange and it is not introduced well enough to make sense in the context. I only mean here that I had to think what they look like for the first time. The x-ray see is nice and the movement of the soldier is dynamic enough. And now the break through. Well I think it is really hard to sneak-break-through a wall. I think most of you agree with me :). I would have used faster and stronger moves and rapid-cut for this. If one blows the bricks off the walls just behind you, you would be thrown away by the bricks only unless he is fast enough to grab the soldier before he is knocked down by the bricks. The hole and the lights are nice afterwards and the little pace is again a good catch. But the way the bricks fall down from nothing is... well believable but it would have been nicer if they extend the hole I think. The sparks are on the other side not realistic and while I understand that they are the wires in the wall or some security system, they are really unnecessary. So I think if there are any major ones, this is a major mistake in the trailer. However for this far you are way behind the line when you are already bought by the authors so you just don't listen to such details. The disappearance is again a very nice thing after this. And if I'm at my charity-side of understanding I think the sparks emphasize that phenomena. But well they are again unnecessary.
The 2d footage is nice again while the music elevates to a next level of intensity. I think the sparks of electricity at the hackers head are much nicer than the ones from the wall (that is again a puzzle in understanding the former ones). However again I think those are unnecessary, almost stupid. Since Adam shouts "No!" we know that he is not the killer. But such sparks should burn the hacker so much we should see some smoke and way more pain on his face.

The transition to the fight is beautiful, first everybody thinks that these two are the same scene. The animation is a nice combination of rapid-cutting and motion capture. Fast camera movements emphasize the heroic pictures of the scene and I am soo glad that we do not see some ugly animation of the smashed head of one of the soldiers.
Then again the riot view. I just cannot identify the mats of the people's clothes. I admit that I don't care about the mats on Adam and the soldiers for those may be of special tissue. Again nice sparks on the disappearing girl but her face is expressing too much pleasure (like a child) and less concentration. Of course she must be mad, but this madness is not analysed deeply. She could have a personality as well. She is now simply an idiot. But still a professional. It has the Mad Max atmosphere. I doubt that in such a world of "ghosts" such mad people gain high-tech equipment. The feeling of the "enemy" is way more professional during the whole intro than her face in the crowd.

The riot-scene and Adam's struggle merges into one big chaotic battle which clears away at into the clean picture of the sun.I again don't really understand this "sun against the black sky" thing. This could be a reference to Blade Runner again where in the night-rain-scene a pigeon flies towards the blue sky but that mistake has been corrected since that time.

So as an overview I really liked this clip. The details are much better at the beginning than in the end, but I think this is not from a lack of attention but maybe some open-air render mistake which is responsible for some constant minor mistakes. But it is a hard task to render night-scenes in artificial futuristic lights. I think less light would make a great deal of improvement on those scenes. If the authors had some night-riot footage from youtube as reference they would have added fewer lights maybe.

So my final evaluation:

Story: 10/10 (epic!)
Director: 10/10 (great job!)
Modelling: 10/10 (great job while simplified surfaces) 
Animation: 9/10 (Minor mistakes in details)
Render and lights: (7/10) (Could not reach some almost impossible goals. One major mistake. Some mistakes in details)
Material/textures: 8/10 (constant but minor ambivalences)
Photography: 10/10 (nice sets and pictures)
Editing/effects: 10/10 (Despite that one cutting mistake great)
Music: 10/10 (I have the soundtrack on my playlist now on youtube, check the piano version as well)
Visual concept: 9/10 (minor mistakes, some non-contextual reference)
____________________
Overall: 9.3

Deus Ex - Human revolution trailer I. (Director Cut)

It is great to have so much remakes these days. This can be either a historical reflection or a cultural self-reinterpretation. Whatever is the case, it is a great gift to the middle aged guys to revive their childhood. Deus Ex (2000) was one of the enigmatic games of the millennia taking place in 2052's cyberpunk future. However it is only a ten years old game, it already has the sense of a remake and a nostalgic ambience. However it is a sequel to the old game and a prequel to the story of the 2000 game. But actually it is not why I am talking about its trailer. No my friends, the reason is that this is supposedly one of the best cgi clips of these days.

= $rangeStart;

Hi this is my new blog.
I am a writer and philosopher who is in love with computer graphics. I constantly struggle with maya and max and along the years of training I developed some skills of criticism in the art of 3D.

Here I wish you all great time reading this blog. Sometimes I won't add text, only some nice anims from other authors but at least you will have a place where great artistic references are collected.

Hope you stay for a bit of a time.

For the first time check the first 3d animation appeared in a movie:
Futureworld (actually the date is 1976 according to IMDB)