Priceless - A Stormlight Archive Fanwork using UE5
Vložit
- čas přidán 5. 09. 2024
- Contains spoilers for The Way of Kings!
Want to discuss this video with others? Join us on Discord: / discord
This animated short is taken from Chapter 69 of Brandon Sanderson's "The Way of Kings", showing the confrontation between Dalinar and Sadaes after the betrayal at The Tower. This has been 6 months in the making and I'm so glad it's finally done and I get to share it with the fandom. See you all at Dragonsteel 2023!
Music composed especially for this animation curtousy of Ian Larsen! Check out his channel for more musical goodness: / @ianlarsen3920
Shardplate and Shardblade models by @mardaliza96
Thanks to @jaydeaart for their inspirational storyboard animation! Check it out over here : • The Way of Kings, Anim...
Many thanks to Brandon Sanderson for writing such an awesome and inspiring world for us to enjoy and draw inspiration from. www.brandonsan...
Tools Used
- Unreal Engine 5.3
- Metahuman Creator
- Metahuman Animator
- Cascadeur
- Marvelous Designer
- Maya 2020
- Davinci Resolve
- Substance Painter
- Photoshop
So, for my fellow Sanderfans jumping down here to the comments to tell me what I got wrong, let me pre-empt you : there's a lot 😅. There's a number of things that I ran out of time to do, here's the short list:
- That's not actually Oathbringer
- Dalinar is wearing Adolin's gauntlet, but Adolin is still wearing 2 gauntlets
- Kaladin is suspiciously clean
- There are no spren in the scene besides Syl
Could not imagine nitpicking this - Dalinar looks so good! I imagined Sadeas a little differently, but really like the style you chose for him. This is amazing!
Sadeas is mispronounced, but otherwise great job
@@thac0wood sshhhhh, I'm sure nobody noticed 😆 (even my brother called me out on that). These are the consequences of not listening to the audio book. Ah well, next video I'll know better.
@@Omnicrola Love to see this stuff
You picked a complex scene. There are a lot of good things, still I think you can improve more.
- dialogs are way too static like an auto reader no emotions
- you have to show the emotions before and after Dalinar summons his sword. You skipped Kaladin there. Also there is no tension seen in the crowds. Sadeas had no idea why Dalinar summons it. So at first is fear(like he is taking a step back) then he should be curious but onlly after the sword is put into stone.
- Dalinar - Kaladin discussion should be like father/son a little slower
- the troops should be different like Sadeas clean in comparison with Dalinar ragged. you can use theirs colors green / blue
I love your decision to pan out to the “justice” glyph that has been burned by Navani before.
I like the detail of Dalinar wearing Adolin’s gauntlet since his own was broken.
I'm glad you noticed!
I see the core of something amazing here, thank you for creating this and I can't wait to see what you do next!
Thanks! Lots of plans for other Stormlight projects, we'll see which one wins next.
I could nitpick details, but instead I’m just going to appreciate everything that’s great about this. I believe this shows how animation is really going to be the best way to brink the Stormlight Archive to cinema. Great work!
Thanks very much!
I was just about to start nitpicking, then I saw this comment and changed my mind.
@@its_just_kamasame
That was beautiful. Makes me want a movie SO BAD.
Sadeas just standing there, listening to Dalinar and Kaladin's conversation in stunned silence. Very authentic.
I really liked how you depicted Dalinar.
Amazing work, I highly reccomend overlaying it with the audio from the Graphic Audio, it's incredible
Ummm hi this is incredible. So much about the animation is awesome-direction, staging, camera effects. Even the "writing," in translating from book to video. Really really cool! I'll be sharing with other Brando Sando fandos and hopping in the Discord :D
Thanks friend!
Incredible work to bring an incredible scene to life! Can't wait to see how the next piece come out!
My favorite scene in the whole series.
Great work. Great choice of scene.
this is amazing thank you for making it, subscribed and looking forward to more
Thanks for the sub, glad you enjoyed it!
You just need pacing. Its not just the voice intonation, you need to give space, elaborate pauses, time to breath between dialogues for a more dramatic effect. For example, right after Sadeas showed surprised from Dalinar saying he will exchange the shardblade for the bridgemen you could have given him a much longer pause to take in the hesitation the surprise (no words needs to be said let your facial animation speak for that). Sometimes its just not the voice acting but the pacing.
Thanks for the detailed feedback!
The WIP scene allready looked super impressive, but this is just great!
Very incredible! Awesome animation! Hope to see other cool stuff from you 😊
B+ for animation
F- for voice acting
Overall pretty cool, great job!
Fair. Can you elaborate your thoughts on the voices? Because the "acting" is mine, but run through an AI morpher. So some of the intonation and inflection gets flattened. But also I'm not an actor.
@@Omnicrola yeah, I think you covered it a little bit right there. It felt flat and didn't really carry the emotion that this scene invokes. Do you read the books or listen? Because the graphic audio voice actors are pretty great most of the time and listening to this scene brought chills.
Edit: I just read in another comment that you don't have the budget for voice actors. If this is a passion project I bet you could find other fans willing to collaborate for free. Just post something on the subreddit and you would get your pick of the litter.
@jonruggles7068 it is a passion project, so not looking to monetize this beyond maybe recovering some hardware and software costs at some point.
A vast majority of the time on this project was learning tools and workflows. Now that I've figured out a few critical things I'm hoping the next one goes significantly faster.
Would love to get some fan voice actors involved!
Also, if you'd like to hear a version with original audio, all the WIP are in an unlisted playlist here: m.czcams.com/video/sy6X_ubx_Vg/video.html
you just need pacing. Its not just the voice intonation, you need to give space, elaborate pauses, time to breath between dialogues for a more dramatic effect. For example, right after Sadeas showed surprised from Dalinar saying he will exchange the shardblade for the bridgemen you could have given him a much longer pause to take in the hesitation the surprise (no words needs to be said let your facial animation speak for that). Sometimes its just not the voice acting but the pacing.
this is fucking awesome
Wow! This is amazing! I was about to nitpick, but you already pointed it all out!
Hey this is super cool! You did a fantastic job! Pretty new to Stormlight/Cosmere/Sanderson stuff, but this is one of my favorite parts of the book.
Increíble trabajo!
Gracias!
Wow man, that was amazing!!! Thanks for doing it. If this is what a fan can do a single scene , can you imagine what say a 100 mill behind a decent director and writer could get done???
Thank you. I have tears running down my cheeks. Beautifully done, and especially thank you for having it done ON the glyph.
I'm flattered, glad you enjoyed it!
This was dope, thanks for making it!
Well done! I love seeing this scene play out on screen! It's very close to how I imagined it.
Kinda got me teary eyed! Good work!!
I really like the faces you chose for them.
the facial expressions are phenomenal!!! nothing like this is seen in any 3D animation i’ve ever seen
Thank you! It's in large part thanks to the tools, which make it really easy to do face mocap. You can try it yourself if you have an iPhone: www.unrealengine.com/en-US/blog/new-metahuman-animator-feature-set-to-bring-easy-high-fidelity-performance-capture-to-metahumans
This made me smile so much, I love it!!
Overall, amazing piece. I can tell you put a lot of effort into this work, though that is not without flaws.
The models look great, with the shard plate looking close to how I imagined it based off of the descriptors.
The shardblade itself looked good, as well the mist effect from the broken plates as they leaked stormlight looked great.
Kaladin looks... close to what I imagined, but if I had to guess, I would put him a bit older.
The things I feel you messed up on (not casting blame, I imagine this project took a long as time, and looks like it took a lot of effort to put together)
Dalinar is definetely to short, The shard plates always are described as these large pieces of armor that need an entire team to put on the user. as well needing special mounts to be able to carry them.
The dialogue is very clunky, and does sound robotic. If using an AI voice thing, that is fine and useable but would need to be reworked to make it feel more natural. But the voices themself do feel like how I imagined their voices to be. Though would have added a bit more "gravel" to Dalinar's voice to show his age and experience.
The crowd itself seemed a bit.... underwhelming to me. like they did not really react aside from the voices making objections or gasps.
I bring these not to try and discourage your work,(nor implying I can do better, I cannot) But to just give my two cents here as I do enjoy the stormlight series and am happy more people are giving it the attention it deserves.
But good work nonetheless.
Hey I appreciate you taking the time to write out such a detailed critique and present it in a respectful manner. Most of the things you mention are things I would also like to improve. Hopefully the next one is better!
Amazing work 😮, keep it up 👏
This scene only gets more meaning as we learn more about the blackthorn's past
Amazing this is significantly better than your draft just a few days ago! It’s stunning!
This was amazing! Well done.
That was amazing, thank you!
Glad you enjoyed it!
Wow that is actually so impressive 👏
This is awesome
I can’t get over though how sadeas sounds like will ferrel
damn this is incredible. While it isn't perfectly accurate, the animation is glorious. The voice syncing would be my only complaint, but that is minor.
Thanks!
Fucking amazing. Can't wait for the day SLA gets the on-screen treatment it deserves. This moment alone would absolutely break the internet!
Oh I absolutely love this, it is just how I imagined! I wish the when Dalinar summoned his Shardblade, Sadeas would be more surprised and Adolin and his army actually draw their swords but it is great!
Me too! I really wanted to have Adolin and the army draw swords, but ran out of time
Fantastic, Just really miss the delievery from the audio book, Michael Kramer portrayed Sadeas and Dalinar too well.
this is really well done
Outstanding
Amaaaziiiiing!! ❤
AWESOME!!!
Love the inclusion of the heartbeats.
espectacular!!
Amazing!
this is amazing!
I have no words for what i just see. Holy fuck this is amazing
Well storming done friend. Well storming done.
Thanks friend!
Love it!
Not for nothing, because I'd love to see you do more of these, but I'd also be happy to do some free voice acting for you. I'm not a professional, but I love me some voices.
Would love to do some voice acting for you in future videos!
Always fun to collab with other Sanderson fans, swing by the Discord and say hi!
Whoa this is awesome
this is a nice piece of work. How long did it take you to finish this of ?
Thanks! It took about 6 months or so of evenings and weekends.
The music and models are great but I'm surprised you went with the uncanny AI or AI voice changer rather than having multiple people narrate or use the existing audiobook/graphic audio dialogue. The audible audiobooks do a great job of having multiple distinct voices despite only one actor, but the AI voices are so distracting it detracts from the rest of the work
I agree about the voices. I think it was worth the experiment, but I don't plan on doing it again.
And no shade to the audio book narrators, but I didn't want to use it because I think they are performing it in a style that is tailored to the audio book format. It's not bad when overlaid onto an animation, but I think it can be even better if the performance is targeted to the cinematic animation format.
Fucking helll!!! This is amazing!
Thanks!
I’m going to have to reread the books now aren’t I😅
Better get started! There's only 147 days left until Stormlight5! 😋
Why would you have him summon the blade palm down? It's described as falling into their hands.
Simple answer: that's the way I thought it looked best, based on how well the mocap data turned out, and my preferred camera angle
you sanderson fans gotta relax this is great, plus it's fan made doesn't mean it's professional work. Amazing job and keep going, you'll only get better!
nice
very cery coool
Woah nice job! This is such a wonderful scene, though i cant share it with anyone who hasnt read the book since its literally the best moment in maybe the entire series, but for sure book 1. That, or the "im banging your mom" talk he has with Elohkar just after this.
amazing
This is really good! In fact, just created this channel to ask you about the shardblade summoning animation. I have always imagined it as a puff of mist manifesting in/around hands and extending to form the vague shape of the shardblade (same shape and look&feel when a shardblade goes through living matter). Once the "invisible mold" of the shardblade is filled with this mist, it instantly condenses, revealing the shardblade. Almost like a lightsaber ignition animation than mist rushing from all directions to form the blade.
Maybe I'm cherry picking to form this opinion :) but in WoR page 1015, there is a detailed description of a shardblade getting formed (most detailed in the first 3 books! haven't read the 4th one yet) that seems to support this view. There is another one in WoK page 1068, where a puff of mist appears in hand to form the blade.
Would love to see this kind of summoning in action! But regardless, amazing work keep it up!
Glad you like it!
The Blade summoning is one of the most difficult effects of this piece, and it only takes up 0.5seconds. 😂
I've gone through dozens of variations using different settings for opacity ramps, condensation speed, shape, post process compositing, etc trying to get the effect "just right". If you go back in my channel history you can see some other earlier attempts.
I'm still not 100% on it, so I appreciate the feedback and references!
@@Omnicrola You are definitely on point with the timing and trying to cram a swirling pattern of mist travelling along the contours of the blade in just 0.5 seconds might make the animation even more difficult to realize. But there is a really good reference of this done in Marvel: Hera and her blade summoning animation. It is lightning fast and has a practical summoning motion. Here is a link (at 1min40s):
czcams.com/video/LDWoanqPqIE/video.html
I re-reading the books in prep for the book 4 right now and have an e-reader so it is easy to find references ;)
I did really enjoy the summoning fx in that movie. There's a good sense of motion and graceful death from Hera.
I really like your final summoning animation, I'd be happy to see this style of summon in a full-scale professional make. Well done/
If you could. You try the graphic audio, audio over the ai
For the next one I definitely won't use the AI again. It was a fun experiment, but even though this one is pretty good for an AI, it's still immediately obvious it's AI.
a dead spreen for an army of radiants, better trade ever made
Id love to see side carry with this model
Voices are awkward but damn this is quality
what's amazing here is that he bought an army of windrunners without knowing it, a great scene!
Dalinars a pretty cool dood...
Awesome animation, the voicework could definately use some other takes, but otherwise really cool
Hey man, if you're looking for voice actors in the future I know myself and a few other people who'd love to get in on something like this, free of charge
Thanks! I'll keep you in mind! If you join the Discord, that's where I usually post WIP if you want to see what kind of projects are coming up.
Great job. That scene hits so hard.
Critical opinion (feel free to ignore):
I honestly think working on the verbal cadence, most notably the pauses between lines, would add the most value for me. Some may want the vocal inflection, but I think the cadence is more important. Not sure if that is something that's viable to work on in the short term, but I thought I'd mention it.
Do you have an end goal with this project, or are you just letting creativity guide you?
I appreciate the specific feedback. All the voices are technically me, but run through altered.ai to morph it to sound like someone else. So some (a lot?) of the emotion got flattened out. Would like to hire some voice actors but that's out of my current budget.
No specific end goal, other than to have fun and recreate specific scenes from Stormlight. Might try pulling in more fandom collaborators for the next project though.
@@OmnicrolaOh heck yeah!
Now do Dumais Wells...
Oh is that all 😂 that would be an epic scene to do, but is a little beyond me at the moment
I never understood this, are the Kholin soldiers wearing uniforms or armor, cos uniforms don't seem very good protection in the shattered plains
I chose armor for this, mostly for simplicity, but I don't think the books actually specify. IMO it would make sense they all have armor (except archers perhaps). Though maybe the rank and file just have hard leather and the officers have metal?
@@Omnicrola you're probably right, tho it still doesn't explain when there's a line that says that the soldiers were in "Kholin blue" and unless all the soldiers have the money to paint their armor blue, I have a feeling they were wearing blue uniforms.
The motions feel robotic, and the voices lack emotion. Sadeas (Sad-ee-ess) and Kholin (stress "lin") are mispronounced. Aside from these, I think this animation is phenomenal!
Be sure to check out the Christmas version for the correct Sadeas pronunciation! 😁
@@Omnicrola I'll do that!
Remember that the shattered plains are mirrored
Voices are terrible apart from that, this looks neat.
AI acting
AI voice changer. The bad acting is 100% human.
It's not priceless at all. Far inferior to the audiobooks.
I picture Dalinar looking like the Hound from GOT