Trolliens...What is it? Well, it's my homage to Aliens, one of the coolest sci-fi movies of all time, and it features missing fraternity brothers, 5% beer, dry campuses and fat dorm chicks!... but it IS based on reality! Actually, a fraternity brother (who shall remain nameless, but his initials are D.M.) at Delta Tau Delta (Mizzou) would wait until a party was dying down before emerging from his room and joining the festivities in our party room (the basement). He would proceed to look for the remaining, unattached females for a hook-up, ...and his standards, ...well, let's just say they weren't too high! He referred to it as "Troll Patrolling"! (it was a new term to me in 1986!)
The idea for a spoof was originally planned with a few friends in my hometown as a live action, full-length movie... low budget, and for fun, of course. I wrote a script and did some initial planning, but it fell off our collective radar as people's schedules went in opposite directions. It was when I started exploring 3D animation for a career that I resurrected the idea.
I started modeling props and sets in 1997-ish with no timeline established, and I just worked on bits and pieces at lunch and evenings when I could, so there were spans of months when nothing was accomplished. Modeling was definitely the most time consuming aspect, as I constantly rebuilt objects to minimize their resolution, knowing I was going to render everything in frame. As props and characters came together, I used them to create 3D storyboards and began the editing process concurrently. Character-wise, my goal was to make the actors look like little clay puppets, as I'm a huge fan of stop-frame animation and I hoped to eventually render them to look like they were part of a live-action set. That's why they have little sausage fingers and big glassy eyes! The problem I ran into was that the software (and my capabilities) I used to render it at the time were very limited. As you might imagine, time constraints at the end of the project also forced me to cut down the quality of the render (I'm on a mid-level setting, hence all the shadow artifacts). The biggest disappointment I have with the piece is the sheer lack of time I spent animating, (exactly 1 week... but one VERY full week) especially as it related to the amout of time I spent modeling. Again, it was a time constraint, because at this point, (late 1999/early 2000) I was hoping to enter 'Trolliens' in a animation festival (which I eventually chickened out on) and so the last few weeks were cram sessions. In hindsight, it wasn't fair to me or the short to finish it under those conditions.
I still cringe when I watch certain parts, but as a whole I'm pleased with the "finished" product! I've grown to accept that all the little (and big) mistakes just hopefully add to it's "charm". It's amazing how much time and energy goes into something so seemingly insignificant at just over 2 minutes in length. It's actually taken me a few years to get the nerve up to try it again, (I've also been focusing on my career) but I'm getting that urge, and since I've had my next piece in the "on deck" circle (preproduction hell) for at least a few years, I think it's time to finally give it a chance to bat!
No more movie trailers! :) Even though it's a great vehicle to wrap up a range of images and ideas in a tight package, I've pretty much beaten the formula to death for the time being! My next idea is an original series of shorts which I promise won't have anything to do with a movie trailer! Thanks to IFILM, AlwaysI, and my friend Craig Mitchell's site, MyBoot.com, who originally hosted 'Trolliens'.
-tim
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