Blender 16yo winner of UK young animator of the year

[tombox]

I'm the organizer of the YAY UK competition, and so glad Euan's work has got such wide recognition!

The completion is judged by professionals from UK Animation & VFX Studios (including ILM) and we were all blown away by the quality of the entrants - Blender and Ian Hubert are doing amazing things for the next generation of talent!

I thought people would like to hear Euan's description he entered as part of the competition submission:

"I used Blender for the animation and Davinci Resolve for the colour grading (I also used the Film Convert plugin), all animations were rigged and keyframed by me with exception of the people walking in the first shot (those were from mixamo). The TV and advertisment footage were from previous projects.

The humans in the first and second shots are free photoscans I downloaded online and then rigged, there are a few small mechanical parts that were included in a library that I used, but the majority of them are mine.

I used Quixel megascans for some of the rubbish seen at the bottom of the second shot.

Most textures are photos sourced from textures.com or taken by me in real life, but have been modified by me to include procedural grime and dirt buildup in crevasses.

Some sound effects were from purchased sound libraries or found online copyright free. The rest I recorded myself. "

[powderpig]

Roughly how many hours did Euan spend to complete this piece of work?

[poutinepapi]

Hey mate! The animation look doooope, if any of the young animators are interested in the gaming industry and need someone to ask questions from(That isn't trying to hire them or get them to sign up for a course)

I always have spots open for students and indies at my consultancy: https://www.the-lovelace-gang.tech/

[beezlewax]

This is amazing, I'm an amateur blender user and I can see how much work/time went into this. The other entries are excellent also and shouldn't be overlooked by anyone checking out this post.

[RugnirViking]

that really is an unbelivable achievement. It's complete in so many ways

[voxadam]

What kind of hardware is needed to render something like this?

[xkekjrktllss]

How is the water dripping on the window animated?

[nullpage]

Reminds me a lot of William Landgren's work[1], another young blender animator. Definitely inspired by Ian Hubert's work. Either way amazing work!

1. https://www.youtube.com/@landgrenwilliam 2. https://www.youtube.com/@IanHubert2

[benguild]

Yeah I was going to say— at first I thought this was Ian Hubert's work

[LennyHenrysNuts]

Absolutely phenomenal. I take my hat off to this young individual.

[qwertox]

When "Street Food" appeared, I was hoping that I get to watch 10 more minutes. Like a glimpse into the future.

[Nevermark]

Already nostalgic for the future days when "real" street food is "hand made" in front of you by the robots. None of that instant vending machine crap!

[BorisTheBrave]

Impressive stuff. I wonder if he's inspired by Ian Hubert's work?

[mkaic]

Almost certainly. As a longtime member of Ian's Patreon, I recognize more than a few specific techniques being used here that he's posted tutorials for on it. Not that the inspiration takes away at all from the final product! The fact that a 16yo made this would be insanely cool even if it was a shot-for-shot remake of an existing movie scene, so any originality that it has beyond that only makes it more cool!

[marcod]

I don't know much about this, but my first association was with Fifth Element :)

[resoluteteeth]

Yeah this was my first thought too

[denysvitali]

Wow. I can barely make a rectangle in Blender.

This person, especially given their age, is extremely talented!

[benj111]

My biggest take away is that this is why open source is so good.

How much is an Adobe license these days? How many kids wouldn't have had the opportunity because they couldn't afford that?

Yes I know open source doesn't equal free (as in beer) but practically it tends to be, and it allows people to get into things they wouldn't have been able to otherwise.

[mrtksn]

Here are the nominees but unfortunately the videos don't seem available: https://younganimator.uk/nominees

[Ambroos]

You can cheat with URLs to watch all of them. Grab the ID from the gif thumbnail URL, throw it in something with HLS stream support with this URL: https://stream.mux.com/<id>.m3u8 (Safari and iOS browsers work, on Windows and Android you might need to get creative with something like VLC).

[countrymile]

Other winners are here: https://younganimator.uk/winners

[dchung333]

Huh, looking at the other nominees a part of me wonders if it was created by someone else and they just had a child stand in to take the credit. This is incredibly suspicious to say the least but who knows. There's nothing wrong with a parent or someone else helping them but to the extent of this...

[system2]

Clearly, this kid didn't waste his entire day on social media. Hopes restored a little for the new generation.

[arnonejoe]

Reminds me of Blade Runner

[acchow]

I'm sure it's heavily inspired by it. The game Stray also was, and this looks a lot like Stray.

[liminalsunset]

It also reminds me of this wallpaper [1] I found a couple years ago while hunting for good quality 4K wallpapers. The resemblance is probably due to being set in the same city/area/theme but it has a similar vibe.

[1] https://thegnomonworkshop.com/blog/devon-fay/

[geuis]

5th Element and Cyberpunk 2077 too

[teacpde]

Especially the opening scene with flying cars in the back.

[muhehe]

Can someone recommend good tutorial or way to get into blender for 8yo. My kid would love to, but I don't know blender myself.

[owenpalmer]

Ian Hubert vibes

[DonHopkins]

Absolutely, which is an enormous well deserved complement! He makes it seem so easy, but he's got a ridiculous amount of skill. He's on his way to giving mind blowing presentations at Blendercon too.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=whPWKecazgM

[jasonwatkinspdx]

That is very impressive.

When I was that age I was fooling around with a copy of Lightwave I got from an acquaintance that worked at NewTek (he was friends with the leader of an anime club I attended). I was really proud when I got the most basic little sewer fly through scene done. It took a couple days to render on the family P120 much to the annoyance of the rest of my family.

I know there's a lot more resources now but still, that's incredible. Kid has a bright career ahead.

[blahgeek]

It's incredible work especially from a young animator. But I find some "mechanic motion" part of the animation specially unrealistic. For example, when the hammer goes down to hit something, it should keep accelerating to a sudden stop; but in the video it's like a simple harmonic motion; similarly, I don't feel any resistance when the machine is dealing with the dough. I don't know if it's just me, but unrealistic details like this always gives me a "nail on chalkboard" unpleasant vibe.

[skaushik92]

I noticed this too but I think it was really smart to post robots in those movement roles because it makes these motion limitations “robotic” and mechanical like you said. It felt really attributable to the robot itself being programmed to operate that way.

[drumhead]

Honestly better work than I've seen in a lot of films and tv shows. He's got a lot of talent.

[laserDinosaur]

When I was a kid, it took me about a week to model a single wineglass in Bryce3d.

[keyle]

Hah, I don't know how many vases I did in 3DS (DOS) but it was a LOT OF VASES.

Draw a curve, revolve 360... "woah"... Another!

[Blaiz0r]

This is a love letter to Ian Hubert for sure, but well done.

[jonchurch_]

Im not a 3d artist, but I still find Ian Hubert's blender tutorials[1] very cool to watch.

He comes off as an artist who immensely enjoys their craft. I have also really enjoyed his Dynamo Dream series [2] which are a labor of love for him. He's only released like 3 episodes over several years, but hey labor of love.

Ian was also chosen as the director of Tears of Steel (2012) which is one of the Blender Open Movies [3] the foundation produces. You might not recognize that film, but many of you have heard of at least one Blender Open Movie, Big Buck Bunny! A big nod (IMO) from the Blender foundation that he represents the spirit of the project and community, as well as has the skills to oversee a project meant to demonstrate Blender's capabilities.

These Open Movies are projects that HN can likely appreciate, as they are created to showcase and help push capabilities of the open source Blender software, are licensed under Creative Commons, and their assets are provided to the community for free.

(This comment is a love letter to Ian Hubert)

[1] https://www.youtube.com/@IanHubert2

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LsGZ_2RuJ2A

[3] https://studio.blender.org/films/

[bendoidic]

New title: 16yo watched ALL the Ian Hubert tutorials

But who can blame them? Ian's tutorials are some of the most entertaining videos out there, especially his lazy tutorial series: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JjnyapZ_P-g

[reactordev]

I was going to say "Someone was studying Ian Hubert's work". Glad I wasn't the only one that got those vibes.

[HatchedLake721]

Wow! Reminded me of Cyberpunk 2077

[larodi]

I'm starting to like 3Ds again with these kids' productions. <3