When Emmy Award Winning Director Jan C. Nickman saw a Bryce advert in Mac World magazine he was inspired. "The company (HSC Software now called MetaCreations) happened to be just down the road from where we were living in California. I met with them and found that they were working on an advanced version of Bryce capable of animating," says Nickman, "I knew then that I had my next show, a trip to alien worlds." After several meeting with Metacreations, the "can it be done" part was determined. The task of making the software animatable was to be made possible and MetaCreations commissioned a feasibility study by Rodney L'Ongnion (who later became animation producer). Planetary Traveler was born.Once Nickman had allowed his creativity to flow, he recruited Bryce experts to help him capture his Dream. The artists came from the Bryce community of America Online, some of the artists were approached because of their credibility, "The thing was just beginning as I was completing the work on The KPT Bryce Book, which would come out a few months later. So I'd made my mark as 'Bryce expert'", explains Susan Kitchens'- World Creator and Animator. Other artists were selected through a call for image submissions, all taking place online.
The team was eventually decided, made up of seven artists: Rodney L'Ongnion, Rob Sonner, Susan Kitchens, Bill Elsworth, Cathy Faye Rudolph, Dieter Erik von Schramm, and Desi Starr, each with their own unique touch of creativity and talent; and each noted for their experience with the 3D package to be used- Bryce. After each artist had created a three minute travelogue of their distant planet Nickman and L'Ongnion began story boarding Planetary Traveler. When L'Ongnion set the artists to work he advised them to, "Imagine a travelogue of Earth. This video would have to cover everything from Himalayan vistas to African rift valleys, from Ayers Rock to the Great Smokies. The worlds you are creating are just as complex, made up of as many contrasting environments. Let your imagination run wild! There are no rules unless we want to make them." The animation's of the artists imaginary landscapes were completed, then Nickman and L'Ongnion started getting their visions down on paper, taking into account what could be done.
Emails and meetings in chat rooms were fast and furious as story boards were constructed and comments on different "worlds" were given. Once everything was finalized, L'Ongnion, Starr, and Kitchens animated and sent the scenes on Zip disks to the render farm; ten 120 to 180 MHz Apple Power Mac's and Power Computing Mac clones, provided by Metacreations, and many other machines that were borrowed for the project. In all, over 50,000 hours were spent rendering, and the files were stored on Hammer hard drives and disc arrays, until they were output to video using a borrowed Targa 2000 Pro.
PROBLEMS, PROBLEMS, PROBLEMS...
As Nickman explains the problems with the project were "Daily. So many that I think I've blocked most of them out of my mind at this point. The show was [supposed] to take one year to create and took two. The biggest [problem] was working with a software that was still developmental. It of course did not yet have the bugs worked out. Also, we would do a series of animation’s over the course of several months and then throw them out and start over because new capabilities on a new version of the software made the moves look cooler."Communication was a big issue. With the team unable to sit down and discuss the project, Nickman found it very difficult to get across his ideas. "The really big problem would be trying to communicate a concept for something I was looking for or a concept an artist had and thinking the other understood the concept. Then I would see the executed concept and many times it was not at all what was in mind." explains Nickman, "If we could have been sitting in front of a monitor together, we could have been certain we were talking about the same thing and it would have taken far less time to communicate. This problem eventually began to fade as we all started to be more on the same 'wave length' and developed somewhat of a common language."
For the artists, it was a different story. They were using developmental software from Metacreations, Bryce 3D. The bugs in the software had not yet been worked out, the animators lacked training in the software, and there were no books or tutorials to help them. Luckily though, they had an excellent team. Susan Kitchens is a Bryce whiz who can do just about anything with the program if she wants to! With 2 books on Bryce- 'The KPT Bryce Book' and 'Real World Bryce 2: The Art of Digital Landscape' on her cards- Susan was on hand to help out and work her magic with the other animators and world builders. They had Rob Sonner, who works for Metacreations so he able to pop work with the developers to get all the 'bugs' in the software fixed. Rodney O'Longnion also knew his stuff when it came to Bryce, and he was able to help out with animators problems.
Despite all of the problems that the team had, they pulled through. Although tempted, Nickman didn't pull out of the project... When one artist was filled with negativity, "I was ready to pull the plug; not wanting to move forward on a project with an artist giving me much grief, shaky, un-proven prototype software, artists strung out all across the country that I had no face to face contact with, on a project I was personally bank rolling. My wife was the one who talked me into staying with it saying that the project 'was just to cool if I could pull it off' and shortly after, the artists began expressing their support to me. I took the artist with all the complaints off the project and we began. There were at least 2 or 3 distinct points down the road in the 2 years of production where I seriously thought of stopping production because of on going production 'challenges', all of which we of course eventually worked through." explained Nickman.
"I AM SUMOC, LAST OF THE PHLEIG, THE PLANETARY TRAVELERS...
... We once were a race that came to understand the folding of space. This enabled us to travel at the speed of thought, to explore the vastness of space. I our travels we were whitness to an infinite variety of alien landscape. Only rarely did we encounter star systems capable of supporting life, and less often, intelligent life. We learned of a star system with eight planets, all said to possess their own unique natural beauty. But one was said to be a meeting place of possibility, where untold numbers of beings have made the journey from one state of conciseness to another, from the world of want to the world of fulfillment. We set out to find this mysterious world. These are the visual flight logs of our journey."
With these words and a fantastic Apollo 13 style space scene the show begins. 40 minutes of breath-taking alien landscape which has an element of photo-realism and beauty that is beyond description. The real magic of this movie is that of itself, like a self contained drug let out as you watch - it draws the viewer in until suddenly you're not watching these landscapes anymore, you're there, in the front of that space craft with emotions going through you that you never knew you had...then, there are parts of the animation that are really jerky and throw out of the "world" and you realize that you're just watching a video. The point to made here is the strong contrast between good and bad animation the show contains.
The most annoying thing was the amount of noise used in some parts of the video. This didn't happen all of the time, but there were times when the vibrating noise particles drew your attention away from the other parts of the picture. Another "hick-up" was in one part of the snow world. The animation was not very smooth. There was really only one other thing that I didn't like and that was the lightning in the plasma storm. It wasn't realistic even for alien lightning, and just was too slow for anyone to believe. I'm not sure whether or not this was intentional but it was a personal dislike.
Saying those things above, there were some real breathtaking parts. The waterfall was one of my favourite scenes, and it stuck in the mind of Jan C. Nickman too. I liked the icy world (apart from the jerky animation), it had this element of photo-realism that is really very hard to get from other 3D packages and in other movies. Of course, there are the space scenes. I loved the alien ship and thought that it moved quite well. Although the Star Trek like ending was a little "corny"!
Overall, the video was animated well, and most parts were awe inspiring. "I am very happy with the end result. All of the artists created work that was beyond my expectations and I feel the finished product works on all the levels I wanted it to." says Nickman.
Planetary Traveller is a true experience, and possibly the best way to see the movie would be on the IMAX cinema, "experience all right; we would we offer air-sickness bags!", jokes Susan Kitchens!
Highly Recommended.
Planetary Traveler is available from Third Planet Entertainment at only $19.95, postage free. Order online at http://www.thirdplanet-inc.com, or from any good video store.
Paul Younghusband is a digital artist and Chief Editor of Visual Magic Magazine. He lives in North-East England and can be contacted by email at paul@visualmagic.awn.com.
