Madeline is now available for online viewing. The Blender-animated short film is the result of almost a year of production on home computers and is my first with a female human character.

The idea of animating a film against the setting of a subway platform has always appealed to me – the constant exchange of people and rumble of subway cars seam like the perfect place to nurture dynamic characters. The specific story outlining the struggles of creating anything worth something has also floated in my creative conscious for a while with no surprises pertaining to its origins.

From there, I used the motif of juggling (one common in my previous films) as the end result of the creative possess. Madeline, an introvert whose only contact with other humans is through her creations, juggles on the platform to try to support herself. But the common itself is not worth much, and she realizes that more ingenuity is necessary.

I finished a shell version of the film in April but it was plagued by problems, not the least of which was a poor execution of the plot. My failures with that version of that film are discussed in detail in a previous blog post.

Over the next few months, I reanimated every scene to my liking, made the film longer and easier to follow, and made the action less subtle.

I am anxious to hear what you think of the film, how it compares to my others, and any other comments and criticisms.

Madeline’s failures were twofold: the idea behind the plot was weak, and that plot was poorly executed.

The plot follows a girl trying to make money in a metro terminal. Madeline tries to street perform by juggling, gets frustrated by the lack of response cash, and retreats to her postmodern dwelling. She tries a different approach: she designs and builds practical machinery and tries to sell it. This fails as well and the discouragement continues until she decides to build a humanoid robot. Here, she is not concerned with making money and the robot serves no practical purpose. Closure is achieved when she realizes that a robot juggling is much more interesting (and profitable) than a human juggling. As I alluded to in my pre-film plot summary, Madeline gives the robot a telling smile just before credits.

A good plot must be straightforward, involve a strong central conflict, and end with a clear resolution. Madeline did none of these very well.

In fact, the best parts of the film where those which have little to do with the plot. One of my favorites is the extended first scene (which is common in my films), which sets the mood, introduces the setting and silhouetted characters, and plays with camera movement. Another is the abstract visualization of the design process, which was not in my original write-up, but felt appropriate to the mood and was largely a result of Blender experimentation.

Most of the short is plagued by seemingly-random images, which make sense to me but not to my audience. I used filler shots, reused scenes, and did not spend enough energy on scenes that mattered – like Madeline’s epiphany about making a humanoid robot just for herself.

My recent films (notably Eros) are good at setting a mood and conveying a basic theme, but telling stories is the the ultimate goal of any filmmaker. Hopefully my future films will watch more like a well-thought out short story than an improve poem at a poetry jam.