"Java Noir" is a 6-minute 3D character animation created entirely with Macintosh hardware and software. The director and sole animator is Raf Anzovin, a 16-year-old homeschooled student from Amherst, MA. The 1.3 GB (uncompressed) QuickTime movie took more than a year to make, contains more than 11,200 frames, and required approximately 1250 man-hours of animation work and 800 hours of rendering time.
A dark tale of obsession, greed, betrayal, and the eternal search for that one perfect cup of coffee, "Java Noir" spoofs such classic noir films as "The Blue Dahlia" and "Out of the Past," with a touch of "The Best Years of Our Lives" thrown in. (Any allegorical connection with the current power struggle over the Java programming language is neither avowed nor disavowed.) It stars Dennis the Micromutt, the Maciner from "Windowsworld"--the animation that brought down the house at Guy Kawasaki's keynote at Macworld Expo Boston '96. Dennis is also the famous MacAddict Magazine 3D cover canine (see him at www.macaddict.com) and the "bulbous-nosed dog" mentioned by Fred Rose on page 1 of the June 10, 1997, Wall Street Journal.
As with all my animations, everything was created on a Macintosh.
Hardware: PowerTools Infiniti 4200 200 MHz 604e Mac clone with 160 MB of RAM and 6 GB storage, plus XClaim VR and XClaim 3D video boards.
Software: Newtek's Lightwave 5 for Power Mac for the 3D work; Adobe Premiere 4.2 for editing; Adobe After Effects 3.0 for compositing; MetaCreations' Final Effects and Studio Effects for weather, steam, splashes, and other particle effects; Puffin's Commotion for shot cleanup; ClarisWorks for exposure sheets, routing, and scheduling.
The quintessentially noirish original score was written, performed, and recorded by Joe Podlesny of Avocet Recording, Bernardston, MA (podman@javanet.com), using Digital Performer.
Video output and hardware support were provided by Peter and Jeannine Lawall of Micro Research, Amherst, MA.
Producer and screenwriter was Steve Anzovin (my dad). He and I did all the voice characterizations.
About This CD
There are three versions on this CD. All are compressed with Cinepak compression:
1. The 120 x 68, 5 frame per second version--the version that appears on my web site.
2. A 320 x 180, 30 fps version
3. A 512 x 288, 30 fps version with CD-quality sound
