"To Shoot A Rurf" featured on 366WeirdMovies.com

Our 'out there' short film "To Shoot a Rurf" is featured on the website 366WeirdMovies.com.

We're proud to be featured on the site as it celebrates the weird and odd movies that we love so much - and 366WeirdMovies also happens to have the funniest and smartest reviews I have ever read.

Seriously! Read some of the write-ups for 'Manos the Hands of Faith' or 'Death Bed: The Bed that Eats' and you will literally wet your pants!

You can watch To Shoot a Rurf film here.

"To Shoot A Rurf" - November Critic's Choice on MISHORTS

Sorry we haven't been updating in a (loooong) while, but we've been busy with other projects that have really eaten away with our time.

Anyway, here's some news;

"To Shoot A Rurf" is one of four films chosen this month on the Mishorts.com website as part of the Critics Choice.

The film was made back in 2007 and was created using Blender 3D and other Open Source software programs.
Directed by Shane Sheils and Paula Sheils, it is one of the oddest movies you are ever likely to see!



From the MiShorts site:

Guest Critic: Michelle Thomas

Michelle Thomas (aka Coco Forsythe) sits on the advisory committee of the British Independent Film Awards and has been a FutureMovies editor and reviewer for the past five years. Her ‘proper’ job is in film marketing and although preferring indie/arthouse fare, she confesses to enjoying a bit of mindless entertainment now and then.

To Shoot A Rurf

An impressive noirish animation depicting the effects of long term drinking. If that sounds like some sort of Government Health Warning, its not; with black humour, original style and fantastic sound design, its miles from Drugs Are Bad, Mkay style messages. Set mainly in a gloomy backroom bar and the protagonist’s dingy flat, this is an extremely accomplished film, deftly creating a sinister atmosphere with its clever use of lighting and colour. A film for anyone who has ever regretted that last drink.

Mr. Humpfninkel - Another Update

Here’s another update on the film “Mr. Humpfninkel’s Sales Technique”.

Attached are some new frames from the short animated movie.

The movie is being rendered in 1920 X 1080 Hi Definition – which is the first production we’ve used the format on so far.

It makes a massive difference to the output quality, as I’m sure you can guess.

“To Shoot A Rurf” was rendered at a DVD PAL standard scale of 720 X 576 and although the overall image quality was good, I feel that it would have really benefited from being rendered the way “Mr. Humpfninkel…” is being made.

The image quality is so clear and sharp and there is no loss of picture details – which is so important when there has been so much effort put into little details throughout the film.

Even if something is only going to be on screen for less than a second it should be clearly seen - otherwise what the hell was the point in putting it there in the first place??!!!

On the audio front, lots of time has been going into producing a quality soundtrack.

“Mr. Humpfninkel…” is a completely different feel to “To Shoot A Rurf” or even “Opera Baby” and the music need to both reflect this and really contribute to the overall mood of the movie.

“To Shoot A Rurf” was very sparse aurally except maybe for the big singing number in the night Club sequence towards the end. Overall it was a very sombre movie in the audio department.

“Mr. Humpfninkel…” is a jolly little movie and writing ‘jolly music’ or a ‘comedy score’ is much harder to achieve successfully than a horror or a drama.

Until the next update,

Shane

To Shoot A Rurf at Animation Bloc Party New York 2008

I've already mentioned this before in one of the other posts I'm sure but I'll give it a proper posting here now.

Our 3D Animated dark, psychological short To Shoot A Rurf is showing at Animation Bloc Party in September.

If you've been following this blog (or it's main blog over at www.toshootarurf.blogspot.com) you'll be aware that the film was produced using Blender 3D and other Open Source software in a period of 6 months.
The film has screened at a host of festivals and events worldwide, and was given detailed features in both Animation World Network and Directors Notes.


If you're in the area you should go and check it out!

To Shoot A Rurf at Animanima Serbia Film Festival

To Shoot A Rurf is playing at the Serbian Animation Film Festival Animanima in September.

The festival runs from Sept 10th to 13th.
I just scanned down through the lineup and there is some excellent films being shown there.

If for some reason you happen to find yourself in Serbia around that time, then I'd highly recommend going along to the screenings.





Shane

Mr. Humpfninkel - Old Folks Home model Location

The Old Folks Home location from the Mr. Humpfninkel short film.
Creepy looking, aint it?!

Rendering out composited frames for the film takes time and isn't helped by the fact that each shot has to be checked a number of times for colour correction on different monitors to ensure everything looks exactly as it should.
You can't trust computer monitors - especially laptop screens. The colour difference can vary greatly from massively oversaturated to dull and lifeless!


More images to follow.

We've also been very busy composing and recording the soundtrack for the film. Mr. Humpfninkel's Sales Technique is gonna have an orchestral score as opposed to the dark and eerie music in To Shoot A Rurf.

By the Way, you cancathc To SHoot A Rurf at the Animation Bloc Party in New Tork this month (July). Visit Animation Bloc Party's website for more details.

Shane

Mr Humpfninkel Short Film Update: Blender Fluid Sim

In our latest animated short Mr. Humpfninkel’s Sales Technique, the title character (an inept door-to-door vacuum cleaner salesman) is required to get sick. Yep, that’s right – vomit!

We initially intended to achieve this using Metaballs but then changed our minds and went with Blender’s fluid simulation instead.

He reason for this was the quality and realism of the FX. Our initial scepticism was based on the sometimes fiddly and random nature of the fluid simulator when we’ve used it before (We used it for the liquid pouring from the Rurf bottle in To Shoot A Rurf, but used metaballs for blood, the ‘mirror snake’ and a plane multi-subdivided and with a wave modifier for the river in the ear canal sequence)

Here are some early tests.

The first shows some gloopy vomit (the render is ultra-lo resolution) lit using approximate ambient occlusion and a single lamp.

The second shows a quick and dirty test (using open GI renderer - taht's why it looks crappy) of Mr. Humpfninkel getting sick. I know the image is small and very lo-res, but you should be able to make out that the vomit follows the movement of his head and his body deflects the flow of the vomit also.

All this talk of vomit is making me queasy!

More images and updates to follow soon.

By the way, Blogger doesn't seem to like Animated gif's so instead I use http://tinypic.com
to host them and link them to Blogger so that they display correctly on the site.

To Shoot A Rurf featured in Animation World Magazine

Our film To Shoot A Rurf is featured in this months Animation World Magazine.

It gets reviewed in the “Fresh From The Festivals” section.

An image from the film is also used as one of the main images on the front page of this months site.

AWN.com (Animation World Network) and is the biggest and best animation website on the net and they are responsible for Animation World Magazine, VFX World Magazine and the A.I.D.B (Animation Industry Database).

Here's the opening from that review:

Ever have one of those nights where you're just trying to sober yourself up enough to avoid a terrible hangover the next day, but you inadvertently take some mind-altering medication and are forced to confront the deepest, darkest recesses of your own soul instead? This film is kind of like that.

The review is by Andrew Farago, who is the gallery manager and curator of San Francisco's Cartoon Art Museum and the creator of the weekly online comic serial The Chronicles of William Bazillion.

You can read the review in full here:

http://mag.awn.com/index.php?ltype=pageone&article_no=3590&page=2




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Happy New Year!

Happy New Year from Shane Sheils and Paula Sheils at Dwarfed Films.

Thanks for visiting the site and hope we can count on you to return again!

OFFICE HOURS: what's it all about and other useless details!

Hi, I’m Shane Sheils, co-writer/director of Office Hours.
Hmmm, that kinda sounds like something Troy McClure might’ve said on The Simpsons!
Anyway, I thought it’d be “nice” to fill you in on what’s the story on Office Hours and really what the hell this whole filmmaking fuss is all about.
Well first here’s a bit of background info stuff.

It all began with To Shoot A Rurf. Well actually it started before that, but those other films were really just test runs and mainly dipping our toes into the animation water.
When I say “we” I mean myself and Paula Sheils, my co-writer/director/composer/producer/etc, but unfortunately I’m the idiot that is in charge of the animation and visuals. The reason? I have the “background” in animation and I can draw “good”. The thing is, I “studied” Classical Animation – which, in normal human language, mean’s 2D hand drawn animation like the old Disney stuff before Toy Story came along. I was a crap student. I never completed any assignments, I fell asleep in class and I hated it. Why? It was boring as hell, that’s why! I didn’t like being told what to do. Drawing should be fun and done for enjoyment. C’mon, it’s about using the right hand side of the brain – it’s not meant to be wasted on tedious repetitious lines and squiggles. Heres the thing, most animators end up doing the crappy work that people who watch movies don’t notice. Who the hell would seriously want to be the guy/girl that cleans up the lines on drawings all day? It’s not creative. It’s no different than dotting the “i’s” and crossing the “t’s”, the kind of work even the most uncreative pencil pushing office worker could do. Do I sound bitter? Heck, yeah! Classical animation robbed me of my love of drawing and I wanted out of that place fast! I also studied live action filmmaking – which I was much happier and better at – but live action equals money. I like films to look great, ye’ know sweet visuals, moody lighting, great locations, blah, blah. All that generally requires money, and anyone that knows me or has visited www.dwarfedfilms.blogspot.com or www.toshootaruf.blogspot.com, well you should know I’m a big believer in “cost saving measures”. Oh and live action also throws up the problem of dealing with stupid people. I’ve been pretty lucky that most people I’ve had dealings with were nice and tried hard, but there are always a few gimps that can mess up your whole day by doing stupid crap or simply just messing you around!

They say never work with kids or animals. It should really be “don’t work with gimps”. Myself and Paula put 100% into whatever we do and in return we expect at least the same in return. Some times that just doesn’t happen. Gimps create problems for you to deal with. Live would be much nicer if all the gimp-bags of the world were stuffed in a sack and dumped in the nearest river. I salute all the gimps that have crossed me – you will never get the chance againJ. Word of advice to those who are starting out in filmmaking: believe in what you do, trust your instincts, don’t get too comfortable in what you do – always be aware of what others are trying, learn from not just your own mistakes but other peoples mistakes too. Vary your interests. If you wanna do some animation stuff, don’t turn your back on live action, books, magazines, newspapers, and all the various pictures, photo’s, drawings and visual stuff out there. Slip a little of your personality into your work. Don’t be a carbon copy of somebody else. Put a little bit of your character into your movie, it could be anything like a hobby or a way of thinking or talking or acting, just do it. Can’t afford expensive equipment and tools? Don’t make excuses; just find a way around it. When we were planning a live action film called The Darkside, we didn’t have a camera, lighting or anything. Everything just fell into place, as if by magic. Remember, expensive equipment didn’t exist years ago and amazing films were made. Those guys just did their best with what they had, used their knowledge to find cool ways to do cool things that had never been done before. The same goes for story and plot. If everybody wrote and made the same films, the world would be a very dull place. Sure there are rules for story arc and all that kinda thing but rules exist to be broken! Don’t make the film others want to watch, make the film you wanna see. If others dig it, then great; but accept that your film may only find an audience with a few people. Shorts, in particular, are a tricky thing to work with. They are supposed to be a way to present and try out new ideas, but mostly they just turn out to be mini rip-offs of other feature length movies or TV dramas. And the people who watch shorts can vary from drunks in pubs, eager to laugh at anything remotely funny, to pretentious twats waiting for a literary reference to some boring old dead guy who wrote poncy poetry!

To do the films myself and Paula wanted to make we simply couldn’t achieve it properly in live action-land.
Attention turned towards animation. So I come full circle again to the animation “thing”. Ah, but this time it was different, now we were in 3D animation time. Yeah, but that 3D stuff is pretty costly, isn’t it? It is if you’re a rich idiot. I’m a poor idiot. I discovered the wonder that is Blender3d (www.blender.org), a free 3D animation programme and sequencer with advanced texture unwrapping and a fantastic in-built render engine. I’ll say it again – Blender 3D is FREE. That’s 100% free, not shareware or one of those featureless demo programmes that expires after 21 days. And it’s very reliable and dependable. Again, if you’ve visited our Dwarfed Films blog, you’ll have heard plenty about Blender as well as lots of other essential freeware programs for video/ audio/image editing. We even have an Essential Freeware List on the Dwarfed Films site with links to all the software.
Ok, if you’re still reading, then great – I appreciate your time – but you’re probably still wondering what this has got to do with Office Hours, or what the hell I’m even talking about. Be patient, we’re getting there.
So, like I’ve said, we did a few shorts, mainly as testers, using Blender 3d to see how the whole 3d thing might work out. This lead to To Shoot A Rurf. Visit www.toshootarurf.blogspot.com or www.dwarfedfilms.blogspot.com to find out more about this film and lots of images and background making-of stuff. For those too lazy to bother checking out these sites right now I’ll just say that To Shoot A Rurf utilised everything I NEVER learned from college life all those years ago. Yeah, It’s true, I learned nothing, nada, zilch. To Shoot A Rurf was a complete course – self taught – in 3D animation. In the previous shorts I’d handled lighting, camera work and basic texturing fairly well( My experience in live action lighting and camera work slightly helped but 3D lighting is more complex than the real world lighting situations). What I learned –through trial and error – on To Shoot A Rurf, was delicate character animation, cloth animation, fluid animation, physics animation setups, particle effects such as smoke, complex UV mapping, particle hair and lots of other stuff. It was a real learning experience – maybe no different than most self-taught users of Blender – but it was also one of the most rewarding filmmaking experiences I’ve had. Literally every day I learned something new. The picture edit and composing the music and all the other elements on To Shoot A Rurf was very enjoyable.

Actually To Shoot A Rurf is probably my favourite film. It is totally mad, utterly surreal and it has a quirky sense of humour running throughout it’s 8 and a half minute running time. I just watched it again today and I was struck by a number of things. The lighting is fantastic and the mood is set up right from the opening shot. The music, which Paula and I composed and performed, is great. The music accompanying the singing Rurf, Rurfetta La Fey, is like a gonzo version of a John Barrymore Bond theme. The liquid metal mirror snake is cool. It’s hard to believe that it was an afterthought that I decided to add to the movie because I simply wanted to animate a mirror snake! Ya see that’s the cool thing about making movies – anything is possible and you can add cool stuff just because you feel like it. Now I admit To Shoot A Rurf might not be to everybody’s taste. Maybe it’s a bit too “out-there” or seen as experimental.

Now we come to Office Hours, which will be a more “logical” picture. The story is far more straight forward, for a start.
The script was written by myself and Paula a few years back. It was originally planned to be a live action short but the To Shoot A Rurf lesson showed that it was doable in 3D. The story tells the tale of a lonely office worker who falls in love with a mannequin head he discovers in a trash can outside an old back street lady’s fashion shop. After his cruel boss gets killed in an accident, he digs up her body and steals it – taking it back to his office cubicle where he stitches his beloved mannequin head to the decomposing decapitated body. A freak-lightening storm brings the mannequin to life where it goes berserk and tries to kill the man who must fight for his life against the bizarre zombie.
It’s a romantic/comedy/zombie movie, all very tongue in cheek. To Shoot A Rurf (TSAR) was very surreal and weird. Office Hours is weird but in a less “mondo bizarre” way. Plus Office Hours looks way better than TSAR. Office Hours is being rendered out in hi-def format, the characters and backgrounds are more realistic and highly detailed. Actually realistic is not the right word for the characters – they occupy a place in between cartoonish and realistic.
Lots of tests have taken place for every aspect of the picture, and they need to: rendering at full scale can take a long time. 3D animation is more enjoyable to do compared to classical hand drawn animation but it can still be a pain! Working on To Shoot A Rurf, for example, thought me a lesson in using strand particle’s for human hairstyles. The particle hairs would sometimes react weirdly to movement giving the impression that the lead characters hair was alive! Also during rendering I noticed that depending on the camera lens used (yes-3D animation uses camera lenses just like live action filmmaking) and rendering size, the character would sometimes appear to be balder or hairier in certain sequences. Irritating stuff that only becomes obvious once a sequence has been rendered out – thereby wasting a lot of time on re-renders and fix-ups. Cloth animation also proved dodgy. Blender doesn’t have a dedicated cloth animation system but instead I used “Softbody” settings. These control the elasticity and fluid-like motion of an object and by tweaking you can achieve acceptable cloth like movements, except sometimes it doesn’t work out how you want it to. The lead character in To Shoot A Rurf magically opens his hand (after being attacked by a “liquid metal” mirror – don’t ask, just go check out the film instead!) and finds a mini version of himself standing in his palm. The mini character is wearing a tuxedo jacket on which I applied a cloth-like modifier. Sometimes it moved nicely, other times it behaved erratically and went “through” the characters body or stretched weirdly. Trial and error, people, trial and error is the only way to get through awkward situations! Office Hours will present as many hurdles to cross and lots of technical difficulties, but it will be worth it in the end!

So stick with the us and follow the whole process of the making of Office Hours by visiting this site www.officehoursfilm.blogspot.com or our main site www.dwarfedfilms.blogspot.com.

To Shoot A Rurf: DVD

Anyone interested in getting hold of a copy of the TO SHOOT A RURF DVD should email Dwarfed Films here and include the subject "TSAR" in the email reference box.

The DVD extra's for To Shoot A Rurf include a number of audio tracks explaining the making of the film, animation tests, lots of still images and early concept designs and other goodies.

The DVD costs 20 Euro(exluding P&P) and is only available from Dwarfed Films.

Also go visit the To Shoot A Rurf blog.

Render Size details

A couple of posts ago I said that Office Hours' frame size was 720X288 when instead I should have said that it is going to be rendered at 1920X540. The letterbox sized image will then be exported to DVD format at HD 1920X1080 standard. The frame size of 1920X540 comes after much experimentation with various layout combinations.
Why not full HD render, you may ask? It's because we want the the screen to have black borders top and bottom. It's a purely cosmetic choice - it just looks better, kinda like having a painting with a frame rather than without:)
It will cut down on any artifects or strange flickering type glitches that popped up sometimes in To Shoot A Rurf.
Just wanted to clear that up!

Any comments you can email us or leave a message on the site.

To Shoot A Rurf at Angel Film Festival

To Shoot A Rurf is screening at the Angel Film Festival in the UK.
You can see the film on Saturday 15th September 2pm - 5pm, King's Head, Islington.

To Find out more about To Shoot A Rurf go to www.toshootarurf.blogspot.com


Email Dwarfed Films or leave a comment on this site.

An update on "Office Hours"

An update on Dwarfed Films' "Office Hours":
We're working on improving the quality of the textures in the film. We want Office Hours to look the best and some of the UV textures are not quite right yet so I've been creating better ones with much more detail and realism. I was looking at "To Shoot A Rurf" (T.S.A.R) the other day and, although it's textures are good, they seemed in places to be a little bland. Office Hours has much more daylight scenes and detail will be far more important as opposed to T.S.A.R's nighttime setting. Textures will play a massive part in creating the 'realism' of this Frankenstein-esque fantasy short so they need to be perfect!
Images to follow...

Email Dwarfed Films or leave a comment on this blog

TO SHOOT A RURF: blog update

The TO SHOOT A RURF website has been updated with some all new images.

Office Hours has been taking up most of our time lately and we haven't had a chance to do much with the site until now.

Well what are you waiting for? Get over there now!

TO SHOOT A RURF blog

Email Dwarfed Films

To Shoot A Rurf: Directors Notes podcast & film screening

To Shoot A Rurf is now available to watch on Directors Notes, the independent filmmaking website. You can also listen to an interview with co-director Shane Sheils discussing the making of the film with Marvin Belle.
Here's a brief synopsis to give you a flavour for the film:

“To Shoot a Rurf” is a surreal 3D computer animated short produced by Dwarfed Films. This atmospheric dark-comedy tells the tale of a drunken man’s attempts to sober up after bingeing on mind-altering drink ‘rurf’. To achieve this he must literally go inside his own head and seek the source of his headaches! The film is written and directed by Shane Sheils and Paula Sheils.

Watch To Shoot A Rurf at the Directors Notes website now!
Click here to listen to the interview, view production stills, early animation tests and lots more!

Contact Dwarfed Films here

Directors Notes interview

Dwarfed Films recorded an interview with Marvin Belle of Directors Notes earlier today.

Directors Notes is a great website dedicated to the work of independent filmmakers.
Each week a director discusses the making of their particular film which is then put on the site as a podcast.
All round nice guy Marvin Belle, who runs the site, is a writer who ran the Directors Notes section of Showreel Magazine and edited the UK Filmmakers Bulletin for Shooting People.
Directors Notes is a great idea and Dwarfed Films were only too happy to discuss the making of To Shoot A Rurf.

The interview should hopefully be going out in the next few weeks. We'll keep you posted.

To Shoot A Rurf: Final Cut screening

To Shoot A Rurf is screening next month, Sunday April 01st, at Final Cut Brighton.
Final Cut is a great event organised by Richard Harris and they have always supported Dwarfed Films, so we like them :)
For more information check out it's website finalcut.gb.com/month.html

Office Hours: skin texture

Heres a still of Office Hours lead characters' face. The aim is to give him a realistic skin texture as opposed to the extra rough (intentional) unrealistic texture of the lead character from our previous short film To Shoot A Rurf.
Click on image to view it full size.

Contact Dwarfed Films here

To Shoot A Rurf: Completed

"To Shoot A Rurf" is completed.

Directed by Shane Sheils and Paula Sheils the film follows the trials of a man suffering a hangover from psychadelic drink "Rurf". Lets just say a lot of strange things happen to this guy both in the bathroom of his rundown city appartment and inside his own head!

You can find more stills and information about To Shoot A Rurf on this site and we'll keep you updated with any further news on the film too.