Stairway to CG Heaven

March 16, 2024 12:34 PM

Top 100 CG animations of an Eternal Ascent from 2800 submissions

Earlier challenges:

https://www.metafilter.com/200696/First-video-of-Fight-Club
https://www.metafilter.com/198722/A-3D-Road-Trip
https://www.metafilter.com/196501/Footloose-3D
https://www.metafilter.com/194747/Rooms-with-a-view
https://www.metafilter.com/192416/Ball-drop
https://www.metafilter.com/191818/100-x-3-second-3D-Renders

posted by Gyan (17 comments total)

These are really cool, thanks for sharing!
posted by Harald74 at 1:46 PM on March 16

Vertical? I have this nice widescreen monitor on my desktop computer and am forced to watch a vertical video?

(This is the new you kids get off my lawn.)
posted by zardoz at 2:16 PM on March 16

Mahalo ē Akua, Iʻd love to experience the rest of every last one of these thumbnail adventures. Well well done .
posted by Droll Lord at 2:24 PM on March 16 [1 favorite]

All of these were beautiful and/or cool in various ways, but to me the ones that keyed into the tired resignation of the original character's gait felt the most true to the assignment.
posted by aubilenon at 2:28 PM on March 16 [2 favorites]

I love these. Even the samey ones (robot climbing through a Japanese-themed solarpunk landscape, necromancer climbing up through Hell-like landscape, sci fi engineer on their way to fight or build giant robots) have little unique details that make them very cool.
posted by fight or flight at 2:29 PM on March 16

My favorites were the small-scale ones, the fairies and frogs, the mouse wearily dragging the dead crow, and especially the little beetle-warrior was beautiful.
posted by emjaybee at 3:21 PM on March 16 [2 favorites]

I loved Mushroom guy in Mushroom Land and Engineer in Steampunk City.
posted by signal at 6:42 PM on March 16

Ya just want them to keep going, see what's around the corner. There is just an insane level of animation art talent out there. They should get together and do a feature.
posted by sammyo at 7:50 PM on March 16 [2 favorites]

Ya just want them to keep going, see what's around the corner.

Yes! That's exactly how I felt about the rooms with a view ones.

Does anyone else actually watch these in slo-mo? I usually speed up videos, but I slow these down to try to take in details.
posted by mollweide at 8:03 PM on March 16 [2 favorites]

From one of the previous sets:
HARVEST 2nd place winner VFX breakdown

It's a quick video about building the entry. 40 hours of work for the 5 second clip. Layers on top of layers. All those small, barely noticed details that sell the scene.

With bonus Simon Stålenhag style references!
posted by jjj606 at 8:16 PM on March 16 [1 favorite]

Does anyone else actually watch these in slo-mo? I usually speed up videos, but I slow these down to try to take in details.

At risk of yet another complaint...I think these challenges are great and I love the creativity that has gone into making them, but five seconds is far too short. Fifteen seconds would be nice; at least ten. I just get overloaded after a while and can't finish the whole video in one sitting.
posted by zardoz at 9:17 PM on March 16 [3 favorites]

Very cool, thanks for sharing!
posted by ellieBOA at 1:15 AM on March 17

Pretty cool. I suppose someone who works in the field could probably ID which software individual scenes were created on. There did seem to be commonalities in the look of many scenes. I was also pleased by how many weren’t depictions of war/violence/battle.
posted by Thorzdad at 3:38 AM on March 17 [1 favorite]

Fantastic details. Cool dragons... or whatever. It seems like the easier the medium gets for realism, the more unimaginative the subject matter gets.
posted by Rich Smorgasbord at 7:02 AM on March 17

These are very good but.. they all look so samey? All the pieces have a similar videogame aesthetic. I wonder if that's related from the community these submissions are drawn from, or maybe the tools? After watching the Spiderverse movies I guess I'm expecting some more gonzo creativity for a brief like this. I did like the cel-shaded one at 3:33, that was at least a little different.
posted by Nelson at 8:35 AM on March 17 [1 favorite]

I do agree that this compilation leaned more on the hyperrealistic style. Some of the earlier ones are more varied, especially the pinball (Ball-drop) one. I particularly like the ones that emulated cardboard or paper animation, or 2-D styles, and there's less of that here.
posted by zompist at 3:22 PM on March 17

I really liked the moon drawing back the night to reveal the sun and the day.
posted by straight at 2:47 PM on March 20