Completed: Super Paper Mario World and the Video Glasses

At long last, just ahead of presentation today, I've finished (and more importantly) and I'm happy with the completed movie. And here it is....



Being honest, it has taken so many renders! And renders is themself take soooo long. I must have done about 6 renders which take about 4 hours of the walk through part in itself. And each time I'd get a new version and notice something slight and want to change it. For example, the coins weren't as alligned as I wanted, or the rotation on the goompa wasn't enough. So change it I did and render again the computer did. Poor thing has been chugging away day and night for over a week!

My favourite part is where the glasses' videos kicks in. I was going to leave the soundtracks out, but then I thought the Mario music was too much for too long, so I set about including the respective title audio. And here's when I met my next problem! I had cut the titles short to fit in with time available from the pan of the camera. So just playing the audio that came with the video meant it was choppy and didn't sound good at all. So using my direct encode on my MP3, I copied the full title audio and got to work on Audacity, cutting it down, blending bits.

But now it's completed, adding in the syncing with the rythmn of the music at the end, and using a GAME OVER screen I am really pleased. It is lively, it is Mario, and it is all of my creation (apart from the Goompas, I couldn't tamper with their iconic image!)

Even the little touch of putting the glasses on the goompas, something that was suggested in a surgery session, is a neat one. It pre empts the arrival of the glasses at the end, whilst also being a funny addition when you first see them!

Needless to say, this hasn't gone without hitches. I had problems getting Movie Maker to publish the movie in DV AVI. For some reason, it would get to 52% complete and then just stick. So after several failed attempts (can you tell I've been at this final competion stage for quite a while!) I published as an WMV and then converted to DV AVI using a program called Stoik. Technology, ain't it a right pain when it need it not to be!

If I were to change anything... (thinking about it).... I think I would like to expand the environment. OK, the focus was on the avatar, but the environment accompanies it, building up a bigger picture about my identity, so with a little more time (and more material channels please Autodesk!) I could have done the underground section underneath the pipe?

For the video glasses, I would have liked to successfully curve the lenses, making them look even better and more realistic. However, when trying this, I found it disorted the image of the video, making it look really poor. So flat screen was the way to go.

So now for the presentation. Fingers crossed all will go well and nothing will be randomly deleted as I attempt to burn the disc... it has happened before, so I'm taking no chances.

@