“The Butterfly Effect” by Dan Sumich

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The Butterfly Effect is a short CG/mo-cap animated film created by Dan Sumich at UK-based Passion Pictures. It was made in partnership with games engine developer Unity, to show-off their new Unity 4.0 3D software. Hang on, it’s a pretty wild ride.

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  • http://sparklepony.blogspot.com Peteykins

    Hmmmm… to me, the most impressive thing about the clip is the editing which, presumably, has nothing to do with the software.

  • http://dangerusscartoons.blogspot.com DANGERUSS

    High octane fun!! Loved it! Unnecessary explosions, awesome! Didn’t technically blow me away, but it worked great.

  • SKent.

    games engine… I take it this means everything is rendered in ‘real-time’, as opposed to pre-rendered which computer animated films generally are.

    Well it’s highly impressive what can be done nowadays, and how far we’ve come. It still has that video-game look. But perhaps it’s just we’ve become used to video-games looking better and better. There’s still that certain inescapable deadness to the skin tones.

    I read somewhere that ‘next-gen’ consoles would deliver ‘Avatar’ and ‘Pixar’ quality graphics. I don’t necessarily expect that to be the case, but every year it seems we’re getting closer.

    It may be that the reality is pre-rendering always allows room for tweaks and finessing, while real-time has to be built so robust that there are always some areas that can’t be polished. Be interesting to see how close things get.

    As for the short, it’s quite the exhilarating thrill ride. Unity chose well to go with Passion pictures. They always seem to do great work.

  • http://comedyforanimators.com Jonathan Lyons

    While I LOVE what’s going on in this short, I think it would benefit from giving many shots a little more time. It races by so fast I can barely laugh before I have to start thinking about the next shot.

  • http://nachosconcarne.cartoonsdammit.com Kitschensyngk

    Needed a giant city-smashing robot, or maybe a falling meteor or two.

    Otherwise, not bad.

  • http://drgrobsanimationreview.com/ Gijs Grob

    Too bad the ugly semi-realistic designs place this film right in the center of uncanny valley. A more cartoony approach would have done more justice to the silly and over-the-top plot.

  • NAveryW

    It’s like Michael Bay remade Fumiko’s Confession