“Tears of Steel” – Teaser

by - 2012/07/13 89 Comments Production

An epic teaser deserves an epic blogpost.
So here it is:
TEARS OF STEEL

HD mp4 download/play: tears-of-steel_teaser.mp4

Also cheers to Francesco for our new website!

  1. guest says:

    This is pretty awesome, though there were some artifacts I noticed on the guy in the tower.

    “Tears of Steel” when did you decide on that name?

  2. Matt says:

    Is it possible for us to get a HD download for the trailer? youtubes bit rate is far too low for what this deserves

  3. Tadd says:

    I … think I just … this is … wa .. what!? HOLY .. wa …

    *ahem*

    Well, nice job good work and all that. Pip pip.

  4. party pooper says:

    The quality of the shots seems to vary a great deal. A bit like it was the case with sintel where the shots in the cave were way way better than many others.

    Some shots look really great. Especially the ones with the blue tint.

    Sadly there is no homogenous look in the movie. The shots feel like they were taken from different movies.

    The dog robots move like they were under water the moment they jump onto the spaceship (especially the right one does), the brain looks incredibly tasteless and cheap and whenever there is sun, the yellow tint is kinda off and look unnatural.

  5. Kim says:

    This is gonna be an awesome showcase for Blender! Too bad I was bummed out by the crappy english.

  6. Michael B. says:

    I agree with Matt, I would like to see an HD or 720p version of the trailer, its hard to judge lighting without it. Other than that I love the music, the robots, and the title. Amsterdam is sure eaten!

    P.S. Nice touch with the guy on the tower with his Mango juice. :)

  7. Michael B. says:

    The darker shots look 10 times better than the brighter ones. Especially the first shot “…freaked out by my robot head/hand” seems a little too exposed and bright.

    I also agree with Matt, it would be great to have an HD(or at least 720p) version of the trailer available for download.

    Other than that I love the music, the characters(especially the old guy), and the title.
    Amsterdam is sure eaten.

    P.S. Nice touch with the mango juice that the guy on the tower was drinking. :-)
    GO MANGO! :-)

  8. Awsome revamp of the website(it looks wiked)
    the trailer looks good
    it will be interesting…
    well done Ladies and Gents

  9. Christoph Pöhler aka Dracio says:

    Nice Dialog “HUMAN”… very close to “EXTERMINATE” I like thad

  10. Emir says:

    On the DVD release, do a version of the movie without any VFX and stuff :) It’s nice to see a Before & After version of it

  11. ni-ko-o-kin says:

    Woooooow! NICE! Great CG, great voices, great actors! Way to go! Each blender open movie project gets better and better!

    The only criticism i have is that the robots at 0:10-0:13 flying/falling to slow to the ship.

    • The Twins says:

      Agreed. It looks unnatural.

      In Big Buck Bunny the cartoony fall of Frank was funny. But it doesn’t fit in Mango.

    • Martin says:

      I don’t know, those jet-packs have limited power, they wouldn’t be able to fly very fast.

      Love the music and sound-design, it perfect for robot battles.

  12. The Twins says:

    I have a transcript:

    “Murmur murmur murmur…”

    At least that’s what I heard

    The usual: AT LAAAAASSST!
    And of course, GREAT WORK!

    Can’t wait until the Feature Film.

    And please don’t require email do comment. Not everyone is at the mercy of the Inbox.

  13. ThoFei says:

    It starts to begin to show … sound :D

  14. Dusty says:

    What the…..!

    Oh wow! Finally!

    I was expecting 1 scene to preview first… but a whole teaser!!

    Well done! Can’t wait to see it all now!

  15. Psy-Fi says:

    Just one crit people (already mentioned by other people): NO SPARKS!?!

    Apart from that, great work!

  16. A says:

    XD, the juice container says Mango, XD.

  17. Rogério Perdiz says:

    Mango juice is the new Diazepam (Metal Gear Solid joke) :)

  18. stephen says:

    Very cool indeed, no constructive criticism needed as you guys know what you’re doing.

    You guys rock with a capital RO! (decided to add the extra capital because you guys deserve it).

  19. Mr. Standfast says:

    It’s great to finally see a teaser! I really like the shot at 0:19 when the quadbot falls off the tower–the lighting really sells that scene I think.

    I also like the music/sound effects. They establish a good tone. Very exciting all in all…

  20. Big Fan says:

    Hmmm…I don’t know what to make of it…is it supposed to be funny? or is it serious/dramatic? Mission Impossible/A Team type stuff? The robots seem a little Pacman attacking the ship but is that how it is supposed to be?? I don’t know…I’m not sure its pulling together in the way you intend but….OK keep up the good works. Nice website btw.

    • Big Fan says:

      Well I’ve watched it a few more times and I still can’t decide if it is intended to be as it is or its just um generally not very good. Its not the technical side of things that catch me but the outcome of the effort. If I describe it with terms like b grade horror, cheesy, spoof, amateur I think I will upset the team and yet it obviously has a not too serious fun element to it. Do I laugh at the movie or with it?…dunno really…guess I’ll have to wait to see the whole thing to decide.

  21. Andreas says:

    Very cool indeed! Well done!

    I especially like the look of the scene with the brain.

    Yet I’d like to point out that due to the very low standing sun there should be some shadows on the actor/the environment at 0:18 — when first watching it I had the feeling that something was wrong, but it took quite a bit until I figured it out. So it might not be a that important issue.

    As my predecessors already said: Great work, looking forward to the finished film!

  22. Phil2.0 says:

    What a surprise!!!
    Very nice things over here! I really like the shots with old Tom.

    Good luck for the last run!

    ps: I like the title!

  23. sortvik says:

    Well, this is pretty freaky =)
    Its a shame that Blender artists can’t lease supercomputers to render in much higher quality like big studious do. Maybe some discount like 98% if movie is opensource.

    • Apos says:

      I’m guessing that 4K won’t be big enough? :D

      • guest says:

        BIGGER!!!!!!

        • The Twins says:

          We’re stamped out by the rest of the film community.

          Also everyone needs to argue about your statement on BA. They don’t want to slow it down.

      • sortvik says:

        No, I am talking about trade offs they needed to make to gain reasonable rendering time.

        Here is a quote from one of Amazing spiderman creator:
        ““Through the natural evolution of the lookdev phase we began to add in complexity and variation, eventually topping out with an 8 layered shader – as to be expected the render times swelled to 30 hours and beyond. Adding in the indirect lighting to the sub-surface calculation our renders took another big hit and reached well beyond 50 hours on medium or closer framed shots. The extra realism was a huge improvement, though we knew the increased render time wasn’t viable for a large scale production. So we started optimizing, removing layers in our shader by baking some of the look into textures and making compromises in other areas where the extra complexity wasn’t adding substantially to the overall look. In the end we reduced the Lizard’s skin shader to four layers but our render times, though markedly improved, remained too high. So we relented and turned off the extra indirect SSS contribution. Hovering around 20 hours a frame the render times were still unrealistic given scope and number of shots. It was at this point that we leaned on our facility shading and Arnold team and asked, “What can you do?’””

        They too have to make such decisions, but they have much more horse power on their side.
        This movie wouldn’t last 2 hours or so, with better hardware they could do so much more.

    • Campbell Barton (ideasman42) says:

      getting external computing power isnt really the issue (we have had a few offers).

      The problem is:
      – We dont have someone focused on optimizing our scenes and profiling why they are slow. Artists do this themselves to some extent and I do a bit too but think we could have some more energy spent here if we had a bigger team.

      – Having an external farm also means having someone spend significant time integrating it with our existing farm – or at a minimum – copying over 100s of gigabytes of footage and blend files, render manually, and copy frames back, check they are ok, re-render any that fail … etc.

      So issue as I see it – is we would need people to handle these tasks since the resources are available.

  24. Jan the Freeze says:

    I like it!!

  25. Kirado says:

    Great work guys, can’t wait to see the final. Agree that some sparks and robots need some weight to them or their jet pack after burners need to be more pronounced. But minor details. ;-)

  26. Eibriel says:

    I’m sooooooooo exitedddddddddddddddd :D:D:D:D

    Great trailer!! and great website!!!

  27. Dimetrii says:

    a slightly different….thought it would be better. may be the final version will be better. I believe in the team!

  28. Matt says:

    This is WAY better than a silly weekly. A new webpage, and a teaser. You have big shoes to fill next week… ;-)

  29. Nvmb3rth30ry says:

    Man you guys are harsh. I loved it.

  30. MeshWeaver says:

    Seriously awesome stuff, everyone! I only just realized the teaser was out :D

  31. Samuel says:

    First, I´m not a english speaker, so, please be comprensive.

    Guys, I follow this blog since the firs time i heard about the mango proyect, and you have done an amazing job, your´ve overpass all my espectatives.

    I meet the blender software for Sintel, i admite it, blender get better than the first time what i used(2.5), I never thing what the free software can do that awesome work, an now, with this vfx movie you prove the power of the free and open 3d animation software.

    Congratulations.

  32. Carsten says:

    Nice.

    I still wonder about the band-aid on the robot arm… Is it a joke or story related?

    ;-)

    • kjartan says:

      Hi Carsten. No the band-aid is not really story related. The robot hand felt a bit too “alien” so Ian wanted the band-aid to give it a bit more “human-feel”. I liked the idea and thought it was a nice and original touch to the design :)

  33. Juha says:

    I think that the robotic creature just peeked behind my window…I’m afraid…I can’t get sleep next night…

  34. phanemy says:

    It’s beautiful, I am French I hope that there will have a French subtitled versions

  35. Richard Slater says:

    Muito bom adorei mesmo, estou ansioso para recer logo os dvd’s. :)) Parabéns a Fundação Blender por mais essa realização.

  36. mcreamsurfer says:

    Congratulations!!! The Teaser Trailer is really fun to watch and very well done (of course it is ;).

    I am eager to see the final result with all the design/editing decisions by the ‘mango’ team at the end.

  37. BernAr says:

    Great job guys! Thanks for the HD download Ton, it’s really cool being able to watch it. Looking forward to seeing the final version of course :-)

  38. Andreas says:

    great !

    what audio software was used ????

  39. Mako says:

    This actually looks hilarious. The visuals are top notch, but the cheesy movie title, one liners, and mango juice box…the teaser makes it look like its meant to be funny :)

  40. Beauregard says:

    So are you editing the movie without VFX first? That is what I am doing, I am about halfway done with my edit and have begun wondering how I am going to link the shots to the ones with effects. (In the VSE)

    If you have any tips please give them.

    Yes, I admit it, I am FREAKED OUT by your robot hand.

  41. MxD says:

    First of all, I like this trailer. I saw – and heard – a lot of pretty things. Maybe I looked 10 times back. I do not agree with some of the criticisms above, but I have a few comments myself. 1st) I constantly have the feeling that the “lip-sync” of the girl is not 100% correct. Am I right ? 2nd) The riflescope view is too static in my opinion. It doesn’t move at all and that feels like a Tintin book to me. Did you ever carry a rifle ? It is extremely difficult to hold it quiet. A very slight vibration – or shake – of the riflescope would give it a lot more realistic feel. 3rd) I think that the movements of the robots in the distance (those on the boat and those on the tower) are too slow. They seem rather “cartoonish”. The falling robot makes 1 step too much in my opinion. The way he falls feels a little bit like slapstick. I don’t think that was your intention ? Maybe the scene of the falling robot should be better with some more perspective from below ? It would be more dramatic I think. Quite a contrast with the closer robots. The close-ups are really fantastic !!!
    And finally the title : I like the title very much. The characters are simple, but the way they are growing and growing and growing … and that sound … scary !!! So, thats it ! I hope my criticism didn’t hurt anybody, and I hope I was a bit helpful. After all, very well done ! :-)

  42. Stuart says:

    Having followed the progress so far I can see why you’ve used the shots you have. The final shot of the robot turning around is top notch (referencing light from real world photos certainly paid off, plus having a semi-transparent scope border gives the shot more interest). Once the other shots get their final polish it’ll look great. You guys know what you’re doing, no need for constructive critiscm :)

    I never imagined the robots talking though…

  43. oiaohm says:

    Little bug robot hand at start needs a fix the actors hand appears slightly 01-03 as human. Then appears latter as machine.

    I know CG is so simple to miss a little fragment in frame corner.

  44. Kirado says:

    When is your premier planned?

  45. Notacet says:

    Great teaser!!!

    Nice site revamp!

    but.. Lame backdrop, light blue? Just put one of your cool city renders as a backdrop of the site.

  46. ShortFuse says:

    Is there gonna be a call for the community for a title design like Sintel? or perhapse a tiltle sequence / animated end credits?

  47. mookie says:

    In general it looks OK, it doesn’t match nowadays standards I guess but there’s no reasons to be ashamed (so it’s more or less like a Sintel case). What bothers me is that “epic” feeling here that makes it all looks pompous and funny at the same time (I just hear the crew giggling somewhere behind the scenes). It’s just trying to be too serious, too “cool”, it even seems to be made in bad taste (it goes for the title and “I love your robot hand). One more thing – I think animation could be slightly improved, there’s probably no time for big changes but speeding things up would be nice.

  48. Guido says:

    Wow, excellent!!!

  49. Guido says:

    Will you publish a trailer that will be longer than the teaser before premier?

    Do you plan a post on music and sound design as for the other blender movies?

  50. Guido says:

    Cool drink “Mango Madness”;-)

  51. PickleJones says:

    Nice work, seeing some of Ians other films, this is going to be all kinds of funsanity.

  52. meltingman says:

    hello, just 2 thinks strange for me:
    > robot to mush slight (evident in the tower fall part) just accelerate this part?
    > in 0.05 sec of teaser, the background move so Quickly, perhaps so near of the tower?

    I know this is hard work, but the requirement of this genre are more important than a cartoon or a movie pure 3D. people have references to the reality.
    This does not detract from what is done, just timing corrections are most important.
    thanks for all your work guys :-)

  53. volkan says:

    we love Blender and expect the best from him Not plastic brain and nose and glasses (sorry)

  54. FreeMind says:

    I have a feeling BF has a tendency to release teasers far to early.
    But still, this looks pretty cool.

  55. kahalany says:

    Great work!

    Is this trailer (as a work in progress) open source as well? I would really like to use it in one of my products.

    Thanks.